For awhile now, I’ve been keeping an eye out for a George Davis Sovereign 350. It’s a front/back combo that has been thought to exist, but to have printed in very limited quantities. The SGC Pop Report lists one Sovereign 350 back for Davis (an SGC 80) and PSA’s Pop Report shows zero copies. In addition, a collector has been actively searching for this card via the Buy/Sell/Trade on net54baseball.com for a few years, with no success.
This recent post by Jon Weil on the net54 forum brought up an interesting question:
I looked through the population reports and found eight cards from the T206 Resource list that both PSA and SGC show no record of having graded. We previously had mentioned the Fred Clarke, Frank Chance red portrait, and Jack Chesbro. Here’s the list of the eight “pop zero” Print Group 1 Sov 350 (forest green) cards that T206 Resource classifies as “confirmed.”
Frank Chance Red Portrait Chi Cubs
Jack Chesbro Portrait NY Highlanders
Fred Clarke Portrait Pittsburgh
Tim Jordan Portrait Brooklyn
Ed Killian Pitching Detroit
Ed Konetchy Glove High StL Cardinals
Tommy Leach Portrait Pittsburgh
Jim Pastorius Ready to Throw BrooklynCan anyone out there confirm independently that any of these eight cards exists?
On a related note, SGC’s pop report shows a single graded copy of George Davis, while PSA shows no graded copies. I’m wondering if SGC might have made an error. Has anyone else ever seen a George Davis with a Sov 350 back?
He brings up a lot of good questions here. The theory that the Davis Sovereign 350 could just be a data entry error makes a lot of sense. As a general rule, poses from Print Group 1 that were printed with both Sovereign 150 and Sovereign 350 backs are much more plentiful with the Sovereign 350 back. This has made the Davis somewhat of a curiosity. If it does exist, it’s the only Sovereign 350 back that is a true rarity. Yesterday, Jon was able to ask a representative for SGC if there is any way to double-check their records to make sure the SGC 80 Davis Sovereign 350 was indeed a 350 back. He was told that unfortunately, they do not scan cards they grade and they have no way of going back and looking at the card.
The other cards listed above are also very questionable inclusions in the Sovereign 350 checklist. Since we know that Sovereign 350 tends to be more plentiful than Sovereign 150 for Print Group 1 poses, all of those poses above should be relatively easy to find with a Sovereign 350 back. That is, if they exist at all. So far, no one has come forward in the net54 thread with proof of the existence of any of the above cards with Sovereign 350 backs. We know that T206resource.com has these cards listed as confirmed, with the exception of Fred Clarke portrait. They have Clarke portrait listed as a “Probable No Print” in the Sovereign 350 checklist, but in the T206 Master Checklist, it is confirmed to exist. Hopefully, a deeper look into all nine of these subjects will help us get to the bottom of this. T206resource.com is an invaluable tool for back collectors, and I’m not trying to nit-pick their work. Their checklists are extremely reliable, and they allow collectors to have conversations like this using a common rubric. However, in this case I think it’s fair to wonder if these Sovereign 350s with zero Pops might be data entry errors on their part. The SGC Pop Report below for Art Devlin shows a typical distribution of Sov150 v.s. Sov350:
Personally, I’d be surprised if Davis or the other 8 poses listed above exist with Sovereign 350 backs. I am about 99% sure I’ve not seen any of them, but to be fair I’ve only been actively looking for a few years. If evidence that any of these cards do exist surfaces, I will be sure to write an article with an update. I hope they do show up, so that we have some more scarce cards to hunt after.
If you own any of these cards, or have scans of any, please send me an email at luke@thatt206life.com