The first decision you’ll need to make is what condition you’d like your cards to be in, which I alluded to in Part 1. The main consideration in choosing a condition range is how much of a budget you’re going to allocate to your T206 collection. If you have a very large budget, you can afford to collect mid and high grades. If you’re like most of us, your budget will be more modest, and lower grades will make more sense.
For the purposes of this series of articles, I’m going to focus on lower grades, in the Fair-to-VG range. The reason for this is twofold. For one thing, in my experience, most people that decide to start collecting T206s begin with lower grade cards. It makes sense to test the waters when you’re trying something new, and lower grade cards are a great place to start. Secondly, these articles would be a lot less helpful if I used mid-grades as our benchmark. This article would just be about buying one PSA common for example.
If You’re Starting with Raw T206s:
Buy one Hall of Famer and two nice looking commons:
I would start by targeting a nice looking George Davis, Vic Willis, or Fred Clarke. These Hall of Famers are under-valued in my opinion, and offer a great bang for the buck. With some patience, you should be able to find one for $60 or less. Then I’d go get a couple nice looking lower grade commons as well.
Buy four nice looking commons in GD+/VG condition:
These days a GD/VG T206 common can be had for $25-30. I would imagine $100 would buy a nice group of 4 pretty easily. As I mentioned in the first installment of this series, I think it’s smart to buy some raw T206s as soon as you can. Take them out of their top-loader or card saver and examine them closely. Feel the paper, look at how the ink sits on the paper, notice how a wrinkle or crease looks on an authentic T206, etc. This next bit of advice may seem odd, but you should also smell your raw cards. They tend to have a distinct old and musty smell. All of these things will help you get comfortable with handling T206s. At some point in the future it will pay off when you have a chance to buy a raw T206 (or more often a group of raw T206s) at a good price and you have the confidence to pull the trigger because you feel confident the card is legit.
If You’re Starting with Graded T206s:
Buy one Hall of Famer in a “1.5”, “2”, or “2.5” graded holder:
When buying graded cards, your money won’t go quite as far as it does when buying raw, so I would probably just try and spend the entire $100 on a single nice looking Hall of Famer that can be the centerpiece to your new collection. The players mentioned above should be available in a “2.5” or “3” if you spend a little time looking. Below is a list of Hall of Famers that are typically available in a graded “2” at $100 or less:
- Beckley
- Bender
- Bresnahan
- Chance (Yellow Portrait)
- Clarke
- Collins, Jimmy
- Davis
- Duffy
- Flick
- Griffith
- Huggins
- Jennings
- Kelley
- Marquard
- McGinnity
- McGraw (Finger in Air and Glove at Hip)
- Wallace
- Willis
Here is a handy checklist of the Hall of Famers in the T206 set, courtesy of T206resource.com:
T206 Hall of Fame Checklist
Buy three graded commons:
If you spend a little time looking, you can find three nice graded commons in the GOOD/VG range for $100 or less. Buying a group from a forum or Facebook group is probably the most efficient option as it will allow you to save on shipping charges, which is always nice when you’re trying to build a T206 collection on a budget.
