Category: News and Current Events

Group of 80 Hand-cut T206 Polar Bears Surface at Auction

Recently, a group of 80 hand-cut Polar Bear came to market via Weiss Auctions.  To my knowledge, this is the first time these cards have been known to the hobby.  When I first heard of Weiss Auctions, I assumed it was a small auction house, but upon checking out their website it looks like that is not the case at all.  It looks like they mostly deal in antiques, but they have sold some high profile baseball items in the past including a SGC 40 T206 Wagner (which sold for $791k).  I don’t think Weiss Auctions is on the radar of most T206 collectors, but it may be a good site to bookmark just in case they get some more cards in the future.

The cards were sold in two groups, one had 44 cards and the other had 36.  If my count is correct, there are 59 unique poses in the group, with 21 of them having a duplicate.  You’ll notice that all 80 cards feature poses from the 350 Only Series.  There are two Hall of Famers in the group, Joe McGinnity and Jake Beckley.  Unfortunately, neither of them is duplicated.

The quality control on Polar Bears was pretty good, so it’s rare to see a significant print flaw on a card with a Polar Bear back.  Prior to seeing this group, I had never seen or heard of a hand-cut T206 with a Polar Bear back.

When a friend of mine told me about these cards, I couple of questions came to my mind immediately:

  1. Did these cards all come from the same sheet(s)?
  2. I wonder if they can be lined up and put back together like a puzzle?

A friend of mine won the lot of 44 and sent them to me so that I could take a look at them.  I was excited to see if I’d be able to line them up and re-create a partial sheet (or even just connect a few of the cards).

When I received the cards in the mail, I realized pretty quickly that it was not going to be easy.  While all of the cards are clearly hand-cut, only a few of them have a really unique cut.  Ideally they’d all have some wacky cuts that would make it easier to figure out how they fit together.  When I sat down to work on the puzzle, I was hoping to make some cool discoveries about how the sheet may have looked.

I’m sad to say, I didn’t find any cards that I’m 100% sure were situated next to each other on a sheet.  The only possible match is these two Bugs Raymond cards below.  I’m not totally sure they are a match though, as I think the space between the to cards looks a little thin.

I still think these cards came from the same sheets, but unfortunately I was not able to prove it.  My hypothesis is that the cards were cut from a sheet by hand, but whoever cut them did a little extra trimming on some of the cards.  If that happened, it would explain the difficulty I had in trying to piece them back together like puzzle pieces.

I don’t know who won the other lot of 36 cards.  If you won it, please reach out to me and let me know.  There’s still a chance that some of the cards I have fit with some of the cards in the other group.  It would be pretty significant if we could re-created a partial 350 Series Polar Bear sheet.  Even if we’re not able to learn more from this group, it’s still pretty cool that there are now some Polar Bear backed examples of printer’s scrap in the hobby.

Pulled From T206 Production Early: Tubby Spencer (and the recent sale of a Piedmont 350 SGC 40)

In honor of the Tubby Spencer Piedmont 350 in a SGC 40 holder that sold for $2,839 on June 11, 2018, it’s time for the next exciting episode of Pulled From T206 Production Early!  Spencer is one of the 11 players who were pulled from T206 production very early into the “350” portion of the 150-350 print run.  This group of players are known as the “Elite Eleven” among T206 collectors.  The term was coined by Ted Zanidakis in this Net54 thread, which was published in June of 2013.

Tubby Spencer was a light-hitting backup Catcher for the St. Louis Browns from 1905 to 1908.  He averaged just 68 games played in those four seasons, which makes it a little surprising that he was included in the set in the first place.  In 1909, he appeared in just 28 games with the Boston Red Sox, which presumably made the decision to pull him from the set a fairly straight-forward one.  He spent most of 1910 and 1911 with the St. Paul Saints of the American Association, and then had an 11-game cup of coffee with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1911.

For the next five years, he bounced around the Minor Leagues before catching on with the Detroit Tigers.  In 1916 he played 19 games, and followed it up with 70 in 1917 and 66 in 1918 before returning to the minors for good.

I’m not sure exactly why, but it seems that backup catchers got a lot more love in the deadfall era than they do now.  Spencer’s inclusion in the T206 set seems a little surprising based on his lack of playing time offensive output.  What’s really shocking is that he was chosen to be included in Philadelphia Caramel’s 30-card set (e96) released in 1910, about the same time that he was being pulled from T206 production.

Spencer is considered by most T206 back collectors to be the scarcest of the “Elite Eleven” *.  The recent sale I mentioned above resulted in a few messages from friends, all of which sounded something like, “Did you see what the P350 Spencer just sold for????  What the (heck)???”  Going into the auction I was asked by a couple friends what I thought the card would sell for.  I did give a range that I thought it might fall in (which was way off, sorry guys) but I told them that I didn’t have a great feel for where it might end up.

At the moment it seems that these tough Piedmont 350s are among the most volatile T206s in terms of what they will sell for on the open market.  It makes some sense.  We have near perfect information about many front/back combos, but the “Elite Eleven” Piedmont 350s are still a gray area.  It’s hard to know how many of each player are out there, and even tougher to guess what they’ll sell for when they hit the open market.

* This seems to be the consensus among the collectors I talk to.  If not the toughest, Spencer is certainly in the top three in terms of scarcity

T206 Ty Cobb Red Background Portrait with Broad Leaf 460 Back Sells for $60,000

On March 11, 2018, an eBay member listed the above Ty Cobb Broad Leaf 460 as a 7-day auction.  As you can imagine, it caused quite a stir in the T206 collecting community.  I was notified within minutes when a friend sent an email titled simply, “Did You See This?”  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  Not even a year earlier I had written an article about the only Cobb Broad Leaf 460 in existence.  I got online to take a look at the card, fully expecting the find reasons to doubt its legitimacy.  I pulled up the listing, and my initial gut reaction was, “Holy crap.  This is real.”

I took a closer look at the edges and read the seller’s description. Anytime a significant front/back combo shows up for sale in raw form, the main thing you want to look out for is the possibility that the card has been re-backed.  There are two types of re-backs. In the first type, the front is real, but the back is fake.  In the second, the front is real and features a huge star like Cobb, Young, Johnson, etc and the back is also real, but was taken from a common player’s card and affixed to the Hall of Fame front.  After looking closer at the card, I felt more confident that it was legit. The back was clearly real, which eliminated the possibility that someone had bought an $800 Cobb, created a fake Broad Leaf 460 back, and combined the two.  The seller’s description also rang true.  I’ve read hundreds of eBay descriptions written by scammers, and this one didn’t raise any red flags for me.

A thread soon developed on Net54.  Not surprisingly, a majority of posters were concerned about the card being a fake, or more specifically, a fake back affixed to a real front.  I was a little surprised at how many posters felt certain the card was no good.  Plenty of well-known collectors who have handled tons of T206s flat-out called it a fake.  There tends to be a good deal of skepticism among collectors on Net54 with any new find a raw card, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised.  In this case, I don’t blame people for being skeptical.  The seller didn’t have any recent feedback, and more concerning, they hadn’t listed any common players or backs.

The auction ran for two days, and the Net54 thread raged on.  On March 12th, a Net54 member posted the following message he had received from the seller:

Hello xxxxxxx,

As I stated in my listing yes, I would refund high bid if and only if, card is a fake or rebacked (word of the day) lol.  I have an offer of $21,000 to end auction and 2 collectors flying out to view card before making an offer.  Both collectors are aware of the $21,000 offer.  Good luck bidding.

regards,
xxxxxxx

On the 13th, the auction was ended by the seller.  It wasn’t immediately clear what had happened, but we didn’t have to wait long to find out where the card had ended up.  In the meantime, a friend of mine, who had been corresponding with the seller, sent me the following pictures of the other cards in the collection the Broad Leaf 460 Cobb came from.  It’s a small collection, but man is it packed with some tough cards!

On March 23rd, Brian Dwyer of REA posted the preview of the Spring Auction, which would be headlined by the Cobb Broad Leaf 460!  On April 13, 2018, the auction opened to the usual fanfare of an REA offering.  Before I even had a chance to put in my initial bids, the lot was at $20,000.

When the auction ended last Sunday, (May 6, 2018) the final sale price was $60,000 after the juice.  My opinion probably doesn’t mean that much, as I was just a spectator, but I feel like the buyer got a great deal on this card.  Obviously $60k is a lot of money, but for T206 back collectors, it doesn’t get any better than this.  In my article titled T206 Hall of Fame Front/Back Combo Power Rankings: The Elite: Top 10 (Which is a fun read that I recommend checking out), I ranked the Ty Cobb Red Background Portrait with Broad Leaf 460 back as the #1 most desirable front/back combo in the T206 world.

It was a lot of fun to watch this saga unfold.  It’s something of a feel-good story for all involved.  I imagine the consignor is very happy to pocket $50,000 for a card they didn’t initially realize was anywhere near this valuable.  The seller got an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime card at a very nice price.  And all of us onlookers got a great show!

Sources:

–http://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?p=1756667
–https://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-11-AUTHENIC-t206-Ty-Cobb-Red-Portrait-Broad-Leaf-/123014766205?ul_noapp=true&nma=true&si=FxvAju%252FrlQGmLecQpFMeR6UidQQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Huggins and Scott Auctions off Three T206 Mis-cuts from the same Piedmont 350 Sheet

Huggins and Scott recently sold this very interesting trio of mis-cut Piedmont 350 backs.  The lot, which ended on February 8, 2018, sold for a final price of $840 after the juice.  Though they were not advertised as such, these three cards all came from the same sheet.

I don’t have firsthand knowledge of the provenance of these cards.  However, I believe they may be Printer’s Scrap.  This means that they were not included in packages of Piedmont Cigarettes, and instead left American Lithographic Company with one of the printers, or were discarded and saved by someone else.

The fact that they are so severely mis-cut is the first clue.  By itself, that doesn’t really tell us much though.  The second clue is the condition of each card.  They are all in very nice, uniform shape.  The third clue is the presence of both Seymour and Cicotte in the group.  The pink print marks below connect Seymour and Cicotte, proving they were right next to each other on a Piedmont 150 sheet.  We don’t know for sure that the layout remained the same for Piedmont 350 sheets, but it’s another piece of circumstantial evidence, all of which points in the direction of these three cards being printed on the same sheet.  To read more about the Seymour-Cicotte connection, and Piedmont 150 sheets in general, check out the links at the bottom of this article to other articles I’ve written on the subject.

The final clue is that all three cards came from the same collection.  It would be hard to imagine these three cards looking as similar as they do without them having been stored together for many years.  In the same vein, it would be hard to imagine them being released in packages of Piedmont Cigarettes and eventually making their way into the same collection without exhibiting different levels of wear.  However, there’s always the chance that these three cards were inserted into one carton of cigarettes and a few packs were purchased by the same smoker.

There are other examples of similar cards floating around in the hobby.  They are often referred to as “no name” cards because they are mis-cut in such a way that the caption has been cut off.  If I saw just one of these cards by itself, I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it was Printer’s Scrap.  Though they are severely off-center, they are certainly factory-cut.   The vast majority of cards that we refer to as “Printer’s Scrap” will exhibit rough, hand-cut edges because the cards were scrapped as a full sheet, and cut up by hand.  There’s no way to know for sure, but my guess is the sheet these three cards were printed on did not pass quality control (for obvious reasons) and the cards were never inserted into packs of Piedmont Cigarettes.

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll delve deeper into these topics.  Writing about these three cards (which may or may not be scrap) made me realize I haven’t written anything about the topic on this site yet.  So, next week’s article will be an overview of T206 Printer’s Scrap.  I’ll define the term, talk about all the different kinds, and show off some really cool examples.  Two Sundays from now, we’ll take a look at other examples of T206 sheet-mates that have survived together all these years.

Links and Sources:

Pat Romolo’s T206 Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Project (Part 1/2)

Pat Romolo’s T206 Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Project Part 2/2

What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part One

What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part Two

What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part Three

What I Have Learned from Pat Romolo’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Research: Part Four

https://hugginsandscott.com/cgi-bin/showitem.pl?itemid=25159&catid=135&lotno=412

Lena Blackburne’s Baseball Rubbing Mud

1 Comment on Lena Blackburne’s Baseball Rubbing Mud

Lena Blackburne appears in the T206 set with the Providence Grays, with whom he played in 1909 as a 22 year-old.  He spent parts of the next five seasons with the Chicago White Sox before bouncing around the National League with Cincinnati, Boston, and Philadelphia in 1918-19.  He is credited with playing one game with the White Sox in 1927, and another single game with the Sox in 1929, when he was the manager of the club.  Blackburne managed the White Sox in 1928-29, to a 99-133 record over that span.

Clearly this article is not going to be about his playing days, though he was a baseball lifer who had a lengthy career as a coach and manager in both the Major and Minor Leagues.  In addition to his managerial record shown below, he served as a coach on Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics ball clubs for the better part of 16 years between 1933 and 1948 (1933 through 1938, as well as 1940, 1942, 1943, 1947, and 1948).

Though his playing career was fairly nondescript, Blackburne left a lasting imprint on the game of baseball.

It all began in 1938 when an umpire complained to Lena Blackburne, a third base coach for the old Philadelphia Athletics, about the sorry condition of the baseballs used by the American League. Back then a ball was prepped simply with mud made of water and dirt from the playing field. The result? The ball’s cover was too soft, leaving it open for tampering. Something was needed to take off the shine but not soften the cover.

-http://baseballrubbingmud.com

Blackburne decided to try to tackle the problem.   He returned to New Jersey and combed the tributaries of the Delaware River, looking for the perfect consistency of mud to rub down a baseball without making it wet.  After some searching, he found just what he was looking for.  He brought some of the mud to the ballpark and found that it worked perfectly.  It took the sheen off the ball and allowed for an easier grip without adding water weight.  It also had no odor, and didn’t turn the balls black.

Thus, Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud was born.  By the end of 1938, every American League team was using his Rubbing Mud to prepare baseballs for use in games.  Though the A.L. was using the mud in 1938, it wasn’t until the mid 1950’s that the National League began to use it.  It wasn’t that the N.L. was slow to adopt the product though.  Blackburne was a staunch American League supporter, and refused to sell his product to the National League for almost two decades.

The business still exists today, supplying Rubbing Mud to all MLB and MiLB teams.  Small containers are available for sale to the general public.  Upon Blackburne’s death in 1968, the company was willed to his close friend John Haas.  Haas eventually turned the business over to his son-in-law Burns Bintliff.  The company is currently run by Burns’ son Jim.

The exact spot where the mud is sourced remains a closely guarded secret.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Lena_Blackburne

http://baseballrubbingmud.com

Photos courtesy of baseballrubbingmud.com

T206 Brown Hindu Power Rankings (Top Ten)

Based on the feedback I’ve received from other Top Ten lists I’ve published, it seems like people enjoy them.  So, I decided to put one together for my favorite back.  Besides being one of the most aesthetically pleasing backs in the T206 set, Brown Hindu is notable for being the only back that is unique to the 150-350 Series*.  There are 136 poses in the Brown Hindu Subset.  Brown Hindu is the most valuable back for almost all of these 136 poses (with a handful of exceptions noted below)**.

I’ve attempted to list these these cards in terms of demand (current market value) from highest to lowest.  I started with 17 poses and worked it down to ten.  The other 7 are listed as honorable mentions below.  As always, this is a subjective list and some readers may disagree with an exclusion or two.  Overall, I think it’s about right though.

Without further ado:

1.  Walter Johnson (Portrait)

2.  Cy Young (Portrait)

3.  Christy Mathewson (Portrait)

4.  Christy Mathewson (White Cap)

5.  Nap Lajoie (Portrait)

6.  Joe Tinker (Portrait)

7.  Mordecai Brown (Portrait)

8.  Johnny Evers (Portrait)

9.  Ed Walsh

10.  Addie Joss (Portrait)

Honorable Mentions:

-Evers (Cubs on Shirt)
-Brown (Cubs on Shirt)
-Chance (Red Background Portrait)
-Lajoie (Throwing)
-McGraw (Portrait)
-Tinker (Hands on Knees)
-Waddell (Portrait)

*Sovereign 150 also technically falls into this category, but because Sovereign backs were printed throughout the set.  Therefore, I feel Sovereign 150 has more in common with Old Mill and EPDG than Brown Hindu.

**The exceptions to this rule include the following “Elite Eleven” poses:

  • Dahlen Boston Piedmont 350
  • Ewing Piedmont 350
  • Ganley Piedmont 350
  • Jones, Tom Piedmont 350
  • Lindaman Piedmont 350
  • Schulte Piedmont 350
  • Shaw, Al Piedmont 350
  • Spencer Piedmont 350

T206 Carolina Brights Power Rankings: The Top Ten Poses

I received some good feedback the last time I posted a Power Rankings article, and I figure it’s about time for another one.  Last week, I wrote a little introduction to the Carolina Brights subset, and as a fun companion piece, here are the top ten poses available with Carolina Brights backs.

It was a little tough to decide how to rank these cards.  My main objective was to rank them according to level of stardom of the players, but I also wanted to take into consideration that some of these poses are available with less backs than others.  For example, I ended up ranking Speaker above Mathewson because Speaker, a 350 Only Subject, was printed with fewer rare backs (only Carolina Brights, Broad Leaf 350, and Drum) than Mathewson Dark Cap (a Super Print).

The one thing I couldn’t figure out how to incorporate was individual scarcity.  For example, Chase Blue Portrait with a Carolina Brights back is very scarce.  If a nice one came to auction right now, it would likely sell for more than many of the players above Chase on this list.  But because I couldn’t figure out a good way to quantify that, I have just stuck with a mix of stardom and desirability.  I’m sure many of you would rank these slightly differently, but I feel like it’s a pretty good list.  Let me know what you think in the comments section!

1.  Ty Cobb (Red Background Portrait)

2.  Tris Speaker

3.  Christy Mathewson (Dark Cap)

4.  Eddie Collins

5.  Frank Chance (Yellow Background Portrait)

6.  Johnny Evers (Chicago on Shirt)

7.  Jimmy Collins

8.  Chief Bender (Trees in Background)

9.  Hal Chase (Blue Background Portrait)

10.  John Titus

 

Honorable Mentions:

Roger Bresnahan (Batting)
Hal Chase (Dark Cap)
Joe Kelley
Joe McGinnity
Luther Taylor

Why Do You Collect Backs?

Recently, a net54 member posed the question “Why do you collect backs?”.  A very simple question on its face, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized answer wasn’t so simple.  Like most other back collectors, I didn’t begin collecting pre-war baseball cards with the intention of collecting the tobacco advertisements on the back.  The question made me stop and think about my motivations.

The Thrill of the Hunt

My main reason for collecting backs is I find it exciting.  When I am searching for a new T206 to buy, I find it much more fun to find a scarce front/back combo than if I find a common backed card in really nice shape for a great price.  The reason is simple.  You can always buy a common back in nice shape as long as you have the money.  However, it takes more than just having money to acquire a scarce combo.  You still need to have the money, but now being the first person to find it is much more important.  This aspect of collecting backs is really fun for me.

Scarcity Within a Very Common Set

While somewhat related to the previous topic, this is a bit different.  With T206 more than any other set, you can get “scan overload” if you spend too much time searching eBay for new cards.  If you looked at every new listing for a year, you would probably see a few hundred copies of Dode Criss with a Piedmont back.  In that same time frame, you might not see a single Criss with Old Mill or Sovereign 150 back.  If you did find either, it would likely just be one or two over the span of a year of searching.  The upshot is the more you search for T206s, the more appealing the tougher backs become.  Seeing how many common backs are out there makes me appreciate how comparatively scarce the mid-tier and rare backs are.

Variety

Even before I made the plunge into full blown back collecting, I enjoyed the variety that the different backs can bring to a collection.  I love a good front as much as anyone, but there’s no doubt that a stack of T206s with a bunch of different backs is more interesting than if they all had Piedmont backs.  I know there are plenty of T206 collectors who don’t care about backs and just go with the most affordable card they can find in their desired grade.  That being said, I have to imagine the majority of collectors do have some interest in the backs.  Even if that just means keeping an eye out and snagging a few mid-tier backs when the opportunity to get them at good prices presents itself.  Another cool thing about the various T206 backs is that often your non-collector friends and family will be more interested in the tobacco ads than the fronts of the cards.  A lot of people that aren’t sports fans will still appreciate the ornate back designs and seeing the logos of these long forgotten brands.

Value

In my opinion, the mid-tier T206 backs are very undervalued.  I realize that the market prices for mid-tier backs are arrived at through supply and demand dynamics, but it still doesn’t make a ton of sense to me.  Not too long ago I paid $50 for this McElveen Tolstoi.  I’ve probably seen scans of 200 or 300 different Piedmont 350 McElveens, but this is the only Tolstoi I’ve ever seen.  A Piedmont 350 in the same shape would probably run you about $12-$13 or so.  So, I essentially paid a 3x premium above what the Piedmont would cost for a card that is 200-300x (a ballpark estimate) scarcer.  This kind of goes back to my first reason.  Finding cards like this is fun and exciting, and it’s why I enjoy collecting T206 so much.

An Interesting Discovery: McCormick Sovereign 350 with Strange Background Shading

I recently found this McCormick Sovereign 350 with a strange orange/red background.  The odd background shading stuck out to me immediately.  At first glance, it looks like to me the red ink was brushed or wiped in some way while wet.  The problem with that theory is if the ink were disturbed while wet, it would have spread across the white borders, which it obviously didn’t.

I reached out to a couple friends who I thought may have seen something similar over the years.  My friend Steve Birmingham replied with some very interesting insight on how the streaking effect was created:

It’s another interesting one, your thought that it was wiped while wet is really close, and you’re right that that should have caused red being spread into the borders.

What that’s from is the pressman wiping the inking rollers while operating. A bit sloppy, and not all that safe but it’s done.  If the result didn’t look too bad it probably would have been allowed to slide through. Especially late on a Friday 🙂

Sometimes the ink will be too heavy, or will start to dry on the inking roller leaving bits of dried ink that can cause a bunch of flaws. Usually over-inking just gets adjusted away.  Drying ink is a bigger problem, and can come from under-inking.

The exact roller washed in this case would be the final inking roller that transferred the ink to the stone. The ink is in a bin of sorts, and a series of rollers spreads it evenly onto the final roller. Washing the earlier ones wouldn’t usually show up on the final product except as a bit of under-inking; wiping the last roller would get transferred to the plate as a streaky impression like this card has.

We don’t see more of them because that wiping isn’t a regular thing, usually only being at shift/days end, or during a changeover to a different ink or job. Having the ink get too dry to spread is really unusual, I think I only saw it happen once in a bit over 2 years. It has to be a very dry day with a really light ink pass (Either from not having enough flow or if a light coating is required).

The solution to massive over-inking or drying ink is basically the same. The ink flow gets adjusted, and if the problem doesn’t seem to sort itself out the inking rollers need to be washed. Basically wiped down with a rag soaked in solvent.  As you can imagine that leaves some really uneven ink until the rollers even it out and things get back to normal.

It’s also done at the end of the day to wash off the rollers for sitting overnight. Pretty much the entire press gets washed. The inking system cleared out and cleaned, plate and blanket cleaned. That way it’s clean and ready for the next day, or next shift or next job or color.

This card would technically be one of those tweener scraps. It shouldn’t have been released. On the other hand it’s a neat insight into the process and practices used at ALC at that time.

A big thank you to Steve for being kind enough to share his expertise with us!

Can You Find a Scarce T206 For Less Than $5.00 ?

2 Comments on Can You Find a Scarce T206 For Less Than $5.00 ?

It turns out this is possible, but only if you’re not too picky about how it looks.  This particular front/back combo has only been graded twice by SGC (one 10 and one 50) and not at all by PSA.  When I first spotted it on ebay, I was excited at the chance to add a Killian Tolstoi to my collection.  It’s a card I’d been hoping to find for a little while.  Obviously, the condition leaves something to be desired, but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to rare 100-year-old baseball cards.

The listing didn’t mention the back, and I was hoping that the front scan would scare most people off and they wouldn’t even click on the listing.  Based on the final hammer price of $4.52, it looks like this is exactly what happened.  I probably would have won the auction even if it had been listed properly, but I was happy to save a little bit of money due to the back not being mentioned.  It’s possible that I’m the only collector who would be excited to own a card this “well-loved”.   However, I bet there are some other collectors out there who can see the beauty in it.

It’s fun to have some collecting targets that don’t cost an arm and a leg to acquire.  I’d go broke pretty quick if I tried to chase down all of the highest graded examples of the scarce front/back combos I am looking for.  Being flexible on condition makes it possible for a smaller budget collector to build an impressive collection over time.  Granted, this Killian is below my typical condition preferences.  But, the fact that it is so badly mangled kind of makes me like it more than if it was just your run of the mill “beater”.

Besides the fact that this is a scarce combo, I love it because Ed Killian was a great pitcher.  His two best season were 1905 (23-14 record, 2.27 ERA) and 1907 (25-13 record and an ERA of 1.78).  In 1909 he posted his career-best ERA (1.71) to go with a record of 11-9.

Killian’s T206 Portrait was released in 1910, which was his final season in Major League Baseball.  In 8 seasons with the Detroit Tigers, he went 103-78 with an ERA of 2.38.