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
