Tag: Blank Back

The Mysterious T206 “Wagner Strip”

I touched on this piece in last week’s article.  It’s the closest thing we have to an uncut T206 sheet.  Clearly it’s significance goes well beyond that fact though.  It’s hard to believe that such an item exists given how rare the T206 Wagner is to begin with.  In my opinion, this “card” is the most desirable T206 (or related item) out there.  Some people might prefer a Wagner or the Collins With Bat Proof, but I’d take this strip every day of the week.

Legend has it that this card was found in the attic of a home that Wagner had once owned.  The attic contained many of Wagner’s personal items including baseball gear and uniforms.  In fact, this card is said to have been found in the back pocket of a pair of uniform pants.  The generally accepted theory is the strip was given to Wagner in an attempt to secure his permission to use his likeness.

As you can see, there are many differences between the way the cards in the strip look and the ultimate finished product.  These differences are not too surprising given that this piece was a “Proof” which was given to Wagner before all of the details were ironed out.  The lines between the cards caused quite a discussion on net54baseball.com back in 2010.  The lines are odd because, as we know, T206 sheets were ultimately not printed with lines between them.  There was a bit of back-and-forth between people who had viewed the card in person and were confident that it was one continuous strip of paper, and a vocal minority who theorized that the strip was made up of 5 individual cards which were carefully pasted together.  In this theory, the lines between the cards was actually a seam.  Ultimately, it seems that the people who held this viewpoint had not viewed the card in person (at least for the most part) and just couldn’t accept that the lines were printed on the cards.  However, there were many differences between the strip and the ultimate finished product, so it doesn’t really make sense to make such a determination based on the printed lines.  Lots of minor details were changed between the time this strip was printed and the time the first T206 cards were released in cigarette packs.  On June 12th 2010, Wayne Varner made this post on net54:

Ted Z and others, I can shed a little light on this proof strip. Back in 1978 Bill Zimpleman, Mike Wheat, Ken Blazek, and myself, Wayne Varner were on a buying trip in the Pittsburgh area and we purchased this strip from a gentleman who had purchased Wagner’s house. We bought a number of items he found in the house. I cannot remember all the details, but after we purchased the strip, we had a drawing, and I won the strip. I sold it in 1980 to Barry Helper, who to my knowledge owned the strip until he passed away*. I can tell you from holding the strip many times, it is not cards pasted together. Could that have been done at the factory and then potographed to send to Wagner, possibly, but not likely. However it was done, it was definitely done at the factory, and has the proof lines like all the proof cards I have ever seen. I have seen the strip on several occasions since Barry passed away and it is in the same orginial condition as when I owned it from 1978 until 1980. There is no question it is orginial and unaltered no matter what anyone says. Hope this helps a little.

Wayne Varner
SHOEBOX CARDS

Mr. Varner was the first collector/dealer to own the card.  He mentions that the thought Halper owned the strip until his death, but actually, Sotheby’s auctioned off the Barry Halper collection in 1999, 6 years before Halper passed away (in 2005).  The next few years after the Sotheby’s auction were quite eventful.

Sotheby’s auctioned off the strip in 1999, as part of the Barry Halper Collection.  It sold for $85,000.

In late 2000, the strip sold for $93,000 in a Steve Verkman Cards and Memorabilia auction.

The winning bid was placed by the “Shop at Home Television Network”.  They bought it with plans to feature it as a prize in an upcoming giveaway they were doing.  It was won by a 15 year-old from California named Jordan Marquez.  Unfortunately, Jordan was hit with a hefty tax bill as a result of winning the strip, and was forced to sell it.  It was consigned with Mastro Net in 2002, where it sold for $78,665.

After that busy three year stretch, the strip stayed out of the spotlight for a while.  However, it wasn’t too long before it surfaced again.  In May of 2010, the Wagner Strip was on display at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia to promote it’s inclusion in the upcoming Hunt Auction, which took place at the All Star Fanfest.   The winning bid of $316,250 (after the juice) was placed by SCP Auctions on behalf of one of their clients.

The Wagner Strip has not sold publicly since 2010.  The T206 market has been quite strong in the intervening eight years.  I imagine the strip would sell for quite a bit more if it were to hit the auction block in the near future.

Sources:
http://www.t206museum.com/page/periodical_32.html
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=123958
https://www.huntauctions.com/live/imageviewer.cfm?auction_num=27&lot_num=242&lot_qual=
http://www.t206museum.com/page/periodical_13.html

T206 Cards From the Same Sheet

This trio of Piedmont 350s from the same sheet was sold recently by Huggins & Scott Auctions.  Seeing them got me thinking about other cards that we know came from the same sheet.  In his fantastic book, Inside T206, Scot Reader surmises that the total number of T206s produced could be over 100 million.  Given this staggering estimate, it makes sense that finding two or more T206s that were printed on a single sheet is no easy task.

One of my favorite things about this set is that it lends itself very well to research.  If you learn something about a certain pose or front/back combo, there is often a logical pattern to be followed, which will lead you to more discoveries.  The same cannot really be said for today’s topic.  Finding T206 sheet mates is very cool, but it usually is the result of random happenstance rather than a larger pattern.  In that same vein, there will be little structure to this article.  I mainly just wanted to post some of the coolest T206 sheet mates.

Most of the times that we’re able to trace multiple T206s back to the same sheet, they will be of the printer’s scrap variety.  The reason for this is pretty simple.  In order to make connections between two or more cards, there has to be something that makes them unique.

Take these Hoblitzell and Oakes Piedmont 350s.  They showed up on eBay one day in a group of offerings from the same seller.  I wasn’t able to find out anything about where they came from, but it doesn’t take much of a logical leap to assume they were cut from the same sheet and kept together all this time.  Their large, hand-cut borders and darker-than-normal colors are a dead giveaway.  I’m not sure there’s anything to be learned from them, but they sure are cool.

These three Blank Backs share a similar cut as well as adhesive residue on all four corners of the backs.  They were clearly kept together in an album or frame for many years.  They made their way to market via SCP auctions, where I was able to buy them and keep them together.

The “Lash’s Bitters” T206s are another example of printer’s scrap that work as puzzle pieces that help us to re-construct a sheet of T206 cards.  I have an article in the works featuring these awesome scraps, so I’ll keep this description short.  The back of these T206s was used as a test sheet for trade cards featuring “Lash’s Bitters”.  The fronts look a little odd as well.  They appear to be missing a layer of red.

T206 collector John Dreker was kind enough to send me scans of these four upside-down and mis-cut Piedmont 150s that he owns.  He found Davis in a group of 40 cards he bought in 2000, then bought Tannehill, Doolin, and Cicotte together in the same group in 2002.

This group of cards has been dubbed the “Test Print Sheet”.  As you can see, the backs have a lot going on.

Much like the Lash’s Bitters sheet above, the back of the sheet that Griffith, Lake, and O’Leary were on was used as a test sheet for a Twin Oaks Tobacco advertisement.

This quartet of Blank Backs are very likely to have originated from the same sheet.