Tag: Cy Young

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

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

Why was Wilbur Goode printed with Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 back, but Ty Cobb and Cy Young were not?

An unexpected result of Pat’s research is that he was able to recreate the Piedmont 150 sheets that were later used to print Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 backs.  I always wondered how the players were chosen to be printed with this back.  Logically, if I were going to print a subset made up of just 34 cards, I would pack it with stars.  So what was Wilbur Goode doing there?  Well, now we know.  ALC simply took two plates it already had and printed them with Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 backs.  The printers had done their best to include a group of stars, or they might have just gone with pure convenience based on which plates they had handy.  Despite missing Cobb and Young, those two plates include Bresnahan, Davis, Griffith, Johnson, Lajoie, and Mathewson, so it was by no means devoid of stars.

The image below shows Piedmont 150-backed examples of the poses in the Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 subset.  To see a larger image, please click the link below.

https://photos.imageevent.com/patrickr/updatedplatescratchsheets/Sheet%201A-1B.jpg

Why wasn’t Ty Cobb printed with a Brown Hindu back?

Brown Hindu was the first of the tougher backs that I studied and began to collect when I got interested in back collecting.  The first thing I did was to make sure I had a complete checklist of which cards were printed with Brown Hindu backs.  It struck me immediately that neither Ty Cobb pose from the 150-350 Series was printed with a Brown Hindu back.  I wondered why.

The plate scratches answer this question as well.  If you take a look at the Plate Scratch collages below, you’ll notice that all of these players who appear together on a sheet were left off the Brown Hindu print run.  Much like the SC 150/649 subset, the poses that were printed with Brown Hindu backs were likely chosen primarily for convenience on the part of the printers.  In other words, they didn’t pick and choose individual players.  They just took existing sheets and printed them with Brown Hindu backs.  They simply chose not to use a sheet with Cobb on it for the Brown Hindu print run.

The partially recreated sheet below shows us that almost this entire section consists of poses that were not printed with Brown Hindu backs.  Curiously, there is a section right in the middle (the cards inside the red rectangle) with four poses that were all printed with Brown Hindu backs.  That is an odd wrinkle, and likely something that will never be fully explained.

The image below is too small to see detail, so please click this link to take a look at the image in full detail:

https://photos.imageevent.com/patrickr/updatedplatescratchsheets/Sheet%203%20Full.jpg

I’d like to thank Pat Romolo for collaborating with me on this series of articles.  Thanks for answering all my questions, making sure I wasn’t missing anything, and for providing all the scans I kept asking for.

Sources:

The “Rosetta Stone” of T206

This week I’m excited to team up again with Jamie Blundell to tell the story of quite possibly the coolest T206 ever printed.  Dubbed the “T206 Rosetta Stone” by net54’s resident T206 Freak, Johnny V., this card is truly one-of-a-kind.  Whatever you choose to call it, it’s clearly the most impressive example of T206 Printer’s Scrap in existence.  Its simple front gives no indication of the craziness awaiting you on the reverse.

The front features Southern Leaguer Dom Mullaney of Jacksonville.  The back has so much going on that it’s almost impossible to pick up with the naked eye.  Here is a full list of everything printed on the back of this card:

  • Brown Old Mill back (The rarest of all T206 backs)*
  • Upside Down Miscut Piedmont 350 back showing parts of 4 backs
  • El Principe de Gales back
  • Upside Down El Principe de Gales back
  • Upside Down ghost image of Cy Young (Portrait)
  • Yellow ink pass for Cy Young (Portrait)
  • Yellow ink pass for George Mullin (Throwing)

Below is a really cool graphic made by T206 collector Chris Browne.  He isolated each individual component of the back for easier viewing.

This is one of my favorite T206s in the entire hobby.  It’s crazy to think this card survived all these years, while none of the other cards from the same sheet did so.  Someone must have salvaged the sheet this card was printed on, cut up the cards, and saved them.  My guess is the main reason this particular card survived while others didn’t is the image of Cy Young on the back.  I can imagine most of the other cards being discarded due to being both exceedingly strange and depicting a nondescript Southern Leaguer.  The presence of Cy Young on this card no doubt elevated it to a higher status within the collection it resided in.

Multi-strike backs are rare enough, but the fact this one features a Brown Old Mill back and a Cy Young ghost (not to mention everything else) makes it an unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime card.  Since the T206 Wagner already staked claim to the term “Holy Grail”, I think “Rosetta Stone” is a fitting nickname for this incredible specimen.

Unlike many T206s whose provenance is a mystery, we can trace this card from its current owner all the way back to its original owner.

Timeline:

  • In 1970, this card was purchased by a nostalgia shop called Little Nemo’s in Queens, New York from the original owner’s family.
  • This card, along with around 180 other tobacco cards was purchased from Little Nemo’s by Tom McMorrow, the future owner of East Hampton Auctions on eBay.
  • In 2008, after owning the card for 38 years, East Hampton Auctions listed the card for auction on eBay.  In an effort to promote the listing, he made the video below and posted it on YouTube, where it still resides.  Mr. Mullaney (and friends) was won by the owner of the net54baseball.com forum, Leon Luckey, for a final bid of $9,750.

In addition to the video, Tom gave a little more information about the card’s history in the auction description, which was captured for posterity by the website, t206museum.com:

“This card was one of about 180 purchased in a shoebox from a nostalgia type store on Ascan Avenue in Queens, NY named Little Nemo’s back in the early 1970s. The store had just purchased them from original owner’s family. The collection was fairly typical for what a boy growing up in New York area would have collected back in 1911, weighted towards Hall of Famers (three Cobbs, at least five McGraw, several Matty, quite a few New York Giants in the group) all in Gd to Ex condition with a few lower grade, no reverse stock loss on any, and nothing out of the ordinary but for this one. It looked like a normal kid’s collection of baseball cards, much like the Topps cards I had collected in the 1960s. This card was probably obtained by that child back in 1911 the same way kids obtained their cards for generations, by trading, flipping, or straight out of the pack.”

-T206 Museum July 9, 2008

  • In August 2015, the Leon Luckey collection hit the auction block via Heritage.  On August 13, 2015, with a final hammer price of $19,120, the “Rosetta Stone” found a new home in the collection of Jamie Blundell.

If you’ve been reading this site for awhile, you may remember the article I wrote with Jamie about his incredible T206 Ty Cobb Back Run.  If you missed it, that article can be read by clicking on the link below:

The Greatest T206 Back Run Ever Assembled: Ty Cobb Red Background Portrait

It’s really surprising to me that the market wasn’t stronger for this card when it sold at auction.  In my opinion, it’s much more desirable than any of the other Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers.  Don’t get me wrong, any Brown Old Mill is an amazing card, and isolating the Brown Old Mill back by itself is arguably more pleasing to the eye.  I just feel the Rosetta Stone has a mystique unlike any other card, save perhaps the Eddie Collins With Bat Proof.

Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers are incredibly rare.  They are all hand-cut and were not distributed in cigarette packages.  The prevailing theory is the printers used brown ink by mistake, and scrapped the sheets.  The cards were then cut up and saved either by one of the printers themselves, or perhaps by kids from the neighborhood.

A few Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers have sold publicly in the years since Jamie won the Rosetta Stone.  I was surprised to see a couple of them sold for more than the Rosetta Stone:

Sid Smith SGC A sold for $24,000 in REA Spring 2015 auction

J.R. Helm SGC A sold for $14,400 in REA Spring 2016 auction

Dutch Revelle SGC A sold for $20,400 in REA Fall 2017 auction

I want to thank Jamie for sharing the story of this amazing card, and for providing me with much of the info presented above, which helped me put together the ownership timeline.

*Or the 2nd rarest if you consider the Ty Cobb back to be a T206

The Legendary T206collector.com Signed Pre-War Baseball Card Collection

1 Comment on The Legendary T206collector.com Signed Pre-War Baseball Card Collection
I’m very excited to share a interview I recently conducted with Paul of t206collector.com.  Paul has put together a mind-blowing collection of autographed pre-war baseball cards.  As you could surmise from the name of his website (t206collector.com), Paul is a T206 collector at heart.  However, as you’ll see in the Gallery below, he doesn’t pass up a chance to add a significant signed card from any of the other sets produced during the era. In my opinion this collection belongs in a museum.  After you read the article, please take a couple minutes to scroll through the Gallery below.  I’m always blown away when I look at Paul’s cards.  It’s almost beyond belief that this many signed Pre-War cards reside in a single collection.
Without further ado, here is our conversation:
What was the first signed card you acquired?
 I met Mark McGwire in October 1987, right after he broke the rookie record for home runs in a season.  He signed my 1985 Topps Olympic card.  I still have it.
What was the first signed tobacco card you acquired?
 In or about 2004, there were four signed Rube Marquards from the same collection listed on ebay over a couple of weeks.  I won them all.  Two of them, my hands at sides and my portrait, I still have.  The others (dupes obviously) were traded or sold over 10 years ago.
  Was there a specific moment when you decided to steer your collection in the direction it has ultimately taken?
I would pick up a signed T206 Snodgrass batting and a signed T206 Doyle Batting between 2004 and 2007, but my interest took a serious turn as a result of the Great Pittsburgh Find of Signed T206 Cards in 2007.
When did you decide “I’m going to get as many signed T206s as I can?”
I didn’t see that as a realistic goal until 2007, when The Great Pittsburgh Find of Signed T206 cards began hitting eBay.  I thought about getting all the dupes too, but quickly ran out of money!
How many signed pre-war cards are you able to add in a given year?  Has it varied over the years?  I’m assuming it has gotten tougher as they have all dried up (thanks to you, haha)?
Exactly.  It’s about 1 per year over the last seven or 8 years.  Normally I already have the poses signed that come to market.  Goodwin just had 7 signed T206s last month.  But, I already had them all (and had previously owned many of them as well, but had upgraded).
Do you have a favorite card in your collection?
That is a really tough one, and it changes periodically.  I love my signed T206 Lajoie, T206 Clarke, T206 Doyle Batting, M116 Sporting Life Wagner,  M101-2 Speaker,1914 Cracker Jack Marquard, T201 Leifield and T201 Wheat, among others.
Do you have one or more favorite stories of how you acquired certain cards?
Being connected with an old time autograph collector who sold me the signed Lajoie and Wagner, as well as a signed T206 Baker and signed T206 Crawford batting, was outstanding.  I literally flew from NYC to North Carolina over the Christmas Holiday to visit with the collector and peruse his collection.  It was amazing.
Did you make any fun trades along the way?
Yes, my trades for the signed T206 Clarke and T206 Young both came from the same pre-war autographed card collector.  I had some rare signed Goudeys, T201s, T202s, and T205s I was able to trade him.
 With all the amazing stuff in your collection, is there anything else left to search for?  Are there any “white whales” you are still after?
I need a signed T206 Cobb.  That’s the “white whale” and I have gotten pretty close a few times.
 Because your collection is so advanced, do you find yourself getting bored in periods of time when you aren’t able to add anything new?
Yes, that does happen.  It’s during those down periods that I find interest in different unsigned sets for a period of time.  That rarely lasts more than a year or two, before I am selling everything to make a run at a new signed T206 that I just have to have!
 If so, do you have any other things you collect to pass the time?
Unsigned T206s and some caramel cards.
 Do you have any big plans for the future with your collection such as showing it in a museum or anything like that?
That would be cool, but I do not think there are too many museums that would be interested in showcasing it.  Instead, I’m happy to keep the collection in my bank’s safe deposit box, and share the scans online with anyone who is interested!
That meeting with the collector in NC sounds amazing.  Is there any more you can tell us about that meeting?  Like what kinds of stuff he had, or stories he might’ve told you?  I know you may not want to say too much in the interest of keeping his anonymity, but if you can tell any stories, I’d love to hear them.

It was crazy from a travel perspective – flying from NYC to Charlotte to have him (a complete stranger) pick me up at the airport and take me to his house to look at baseball cards.  Ever since I started speaking with Jeff Morey in 2007, I have had a tiny little want ad in his  “The Autograph Review” or “TAR” mailing.  In December, a guy who also subscribes to TAR found out about the NC guy’s collection and connected me for a finder’s fee.  The NC guy is maybe in his mid 60s, a dentist, with a passion for baseball and music autographs.  Most of his stuff he bought at auction or in old baseball card catalogs over the past 30 years.  Most of his signed pre-war (he had Cobb, Cy Young, Tris Speaker) were obvious fakes, but he had struck a little gold now and again — he had bought the M116 Wagner from a memorabilia shop in Texas in the early 90s.  What he didn’t sell to me, and what was authentic, he consigned to Robert Edward Auctions.  He made over $100,000 in the April 2017 REA, mostly driven by some sick early, pre-Ringo Beatles autographs.  He has a bunch of lesser items still being listed in the October REA.  And a few smaller lots were listed in Sterling Sports Auctions.

From that collection I got the M116 Wagner, and signed T206s of Baker, Lajoie and Crawford Batting.  Many of the other cards in my collection come from Jeff Morey’s collection – a dozen or so signed pre-war cards he didn’t consign with Mastro in 2001.  The great balance came out of the 2007 Great Pittsburgh Find of Signed T206 Cards and a Hunt Auction that November.
Sorry, no stories of getting the signatures myself.  I was not even 8 when the last T206er died (Marquard)!  I wouldn’t own an unsigned T206 for another 17 years, or a signed T206 Marquard for 24 years!
 Is there anything that I didn’t think to ask, but you think people would be interested to know?
On our wedding day, after the ceremony, but before the dinner/toasts, my wife pulled me aside and gave me a T206 Groom card – as I was the groom that day.  Now that was awesome!
Please take a couple minutes to view the complete collection below in the Gallery!
*All of the scans used in this article and the Gallery below are courtesy of T206collector.com.  Please check out the site!