Back in June, two T206 Uzit backs turned up at the Morningstar market in York, Pennsylvania. These two cards, Steinfeldt (with Bat), and Latham were previously unknown to the hobby. A savvy buyer recognized their value and got a great deal on them. He then brought them to the National Convention in Cleveland in August and got them graded by PSA. About a week after the National, they appeared on eBay one night, where they quickly sold.
This article is a little different than most hobby news stories I write. Typically I am just summarizing something that has happened, or re-telling an old hobby story. In this case, however, I am part of the story because I was the eBay buyer! Once I received the cards in the mail, I asked the seller a few follow-up questions. I wanted to know the backstory, as it’s not everyday that a random eBay account (he hadn’t sold anything in the past year on eBay, though he did have a feedback rating in the 3000s) lists two rare T206s and nothing else.
I was excited to learn that the two cards came from the same place, and that the seller at the flea market did not realize the significance of the Uzit backs. The fact that these cards were found together, and sold for the price of a common-backed T206 made me think it was likely Latham and Steinfeldt had been together for a very long time. Perhaps ever since they were pulled from packs of Uzit Cigarettes.
At that point, I felt pretty strongly about my hypothesis but didn’t expect any additional supporting evidence to surface. To my surprise, in September, I got an email from the eBay seller asking me if I knew anything about the value of the three cards below:
I had seen scans of cards from this set on net54 a few times in the past, but I had no idea what they were worth. My first thought when I saw the pictures he sent was, these three have to be from the same find as my Steinfeldt and Latham. I told him I didn’t know what they were worth, but if they came from the same place as my T206 Uzits, I wanted to buy them. He confirmed that he’d them from the same flea market booth as the T206s.
I couldn’t remember what the set was called, so I did a quick google search and found that the set is referred to as the 1910 T80 Military Series. I suggested that I could post the pictures on net54 and ask for help with their values. He was happy with that, so I went ahead and posted. I also got a couple emails from friends about their potential value. Later in the day, the seller reached out to me via email with a very fair price, and a deal was struck.
Besides being super stoked to re-unite them with the T206s, I was excited about the implications of five Uzit backs being found together out in the wild. In my opinion, it’s a virtual certainty that these five cards were pulled from Uzit packs and put away somewhere, where they remained together for over 100 years. Obviously there’s no way of proving that, but it’s the narrative that makes the most sense (at least to me).
Before I was aware of the T80 Uzits, I was hoping to keep both Latham and Steinfeldt, but there was a chance I was going to sell one of them for the simple reason that they were expensive, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to sell enough other cards from my collection to be able to afford them. However, after acquiring the T80s, I decided there was no way I was parting with either of the T206s. Besides being a really cool hobby story, these five Uzit backs are now a centerpiece of my collection.
