In November 2014, Erick Summers made an amazing discovery. In a large lot being offered by Heritage Auctions, hiding in plain sight, was a true T206 gem. Unlike the typical “find” story, luck had nothing to do with this one. I hadn’t talked to Erick for awhile and I always liked the way he approached collecting T206s. I wanted to write an article about this find of his, so I decided to reach out to him and see if he wanted to collaborate on it with me. What follows is Erick’s recollection of the series of events that led to this important T206 discovery:
Written by Erick Summers
I’ve always been on the hunt for hidden T206 treasures, hence my net 54 moniker of T206Hound. I thought I had found an “uppy” (as my good friend Johnny calls them) in July 2013 in a Joe’s Vintage Auction:
That disappointment didn’t deter me as I continued hunting… trolling the auction sites and eBay daily looking for what others might overlook. I checked out the November 2014 Heritage auction as soon as it opened. It had several large T206 lots and as usual I poured over the images of each and every one. One particular lot immediately grabbed my attention as I could quickly tell that had some graded HOFers, a green Cobb, an over-sized Pattee and two cards with a partial name at top. Always looking for two namers, I zoomed in but immediately saw that they were double names.
The next scan showed the backs and one of the cards showed a mis-cut back that I knew I had seen before. While the back of the card was shown right-side-up, I knew that there was a upside down Doc White with an identical “miscut.” Was this really what I thought it was? For it to be an upside-down back, that means that the photographer would have had to place the cards face up, take the photo and then turn them all over. Then the card wouldn’t be aligned and the photographer would have to rotate it 180 degrees to match the others. Did this person not realize that the card was unique, or was my hypothesis incorrect?
It didn’t take me long to find an image of the card I remembered seeing on Net54:
Having to keep this discovery to myself for three weeks was going to be tough. I also knew that a lot of this size with a Cobb and several HOF was going to bring in a pretty hefty price even with the prospect of this hidden gem being included. I really don’t recall the bidding process on this, but I was ecstatic when I won. But then I started to question whether the card was what I thought it was. If I was wrong, I likely overpaid for the lot.
The next few days were nerve-racking. I wired money to Heritage and waited for the package to ship. When it finally arrived I called Johnny as I opened the box. The top card in the package was the White. I turned the card over and hunch had paid off. I was holding an “uppy!”
As with most of my discoveries, the hunt was the exciting part. I needed to sell this unique card to pay for the lot. The Philly Show was soon after and I consigned it to Al Crisafulli who had it graded by SGC at the show. I had nearly as much fun watching the bidding on my consignment. While it didn’t reach the price I was hoping, I can still recall the joy I had in the discovery.
Here is a good look at two mirrored poses from Sheet 2a/2b. Notice the identical Plate Scratch on each back. Brown is a Sheet 2a pose and Kling is located on Sheet 2b.
In the first three articles of this series, we’ve mostly looked at what the layout of Pat’s recreated Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch sheets can teach us. This article will be no different in that respect. However, we’ll also take a look at the relative scarcity of Plate Scratches on individual poses and the surprising connection between Piedmont 150 Plate Scratches and Sovereign 150 populations (for poses on one particular Piedmont 150 sheet).
Today we’re going to take a closer look at Sheet #2, which consists of two mirrored sets of poses that have identical Plate Scratches. Pat has dubbed them Sheets 2a and 2b. Sheets 2a and 2b are very interesting for a couple of reasons. First, all of the “150 Only” subjects with the exception of Powers are located on Sheet 2a. If you read Part One of this series, you already know the significance of that discovery. The second reason concerns the Plate Scratches themselves in a way that we haven’t delved into in the first three parts of this series.
This is the partial layout for Sheet 2a/2b. As you can see, there are still many missing pieces of the puzzle.
You would expect the population of Plate Scratches to be roughly equal for each mirrored pair of poses on each sheet. For Sheet #2, that expectation doesn’t hold. The poses on Sheet 2a are far easier to find with a Plate Scratch than the poses on Sheet 2b. Hold that thought for a moment, while we turn our attention in a completely different direction.
Flick (Sheet 2a) and Clarke Portrait (Sheet 2b) are a matched pair on Sheet 2a/2b
Recently, I found myself thinking about the Sovereign 150 subset. If you’ve collected this subset for a while, you know some poses are much more difficult to find than others. It’s relatively common knowledge that the “150 Only” poses are harder to find with Sovereign 150 backs than the typical 150-350 Series pose. I’ve accepted this as fact for a while, but it bothered me a little that I couldn’t explain why. Sovereign 150 backs were printed fairly early in the 150-350 Series, so it doesn’t really make sense that these poses would have been pulled from production during the Sovereign 150 print run. In addition, there are other poses that are extremely difficult to locate with a Sovereign 150 back. So, I got to thinking: Perhaps Pat’s recreated Piedmont 150 sheets could shed some light on the matter? I reached out to him with a list of the toughest Sovereign 150 front/back combos and asked him if by chance any of these poses might be located on the same sheet.
Before we get to his answer, let’s take a quick detour in order to prove that Sheets 2a and 2b were used to print both Piedmont 150 and Sovereign 150 backs. Check out the pink mark on the left border of the Piedmont 150 Cicotte above. This is a print mark that can be found on some (but not all) Cicotte Piedmont 150s. If you take a look at the Sovereign 150 example below, you’ll see the pink mark was printed on it as well. As a result, we can safely conclude that Sheets 2a & 2b were used to print both Piedmont 150 and Sovereign 150 backs with the exact same sheet layout.
As it turned out, Pat was way ahead of me. He already knew the poses on Sheet 2a were easier to find with Plate Scratches than the poses on Sheet 2b. And he had already found the connection I was looking for. The poses on Sheet 2a are easier to find with Piedmont 150 Plate Scratches than the poses on Sheet 2b. Conversely, Sheet 2a poses are much scarcer with Sovereign 150 backs than their Sheet 2b counterparts. Pat’s theory (which I agree with) is that Sheets 2a and 2b were printed in similar quantities, but Sheet 2a was printed with more Piedmont 150 backs than was Sheet 2b. As a result, Sheet 2b was printed with more Sovereign 150 backs than was Sheet 2a. This is the reason why the “150 Only” poses are scarce with Sovereign 150 backs (with the exception of Powers*). It has nothing to do with the fact that they were pulled from production early.
Still, there’s more to the story. The 11 “150 Only” poses are not alone on Sheet 2a. Other notoriously scarce Sovereign 150 poses such as Joe Birmingham, Fred Clarke (With Bat), Ty Cobb (Green Portrait), Elmer Flick, and Frank Isbell also reside on Sheet 2a. As you can see from the recreated sheet above, Pat has already found where Cobb and Isbell fit. However, there are a number of Plate Scratches that Pat hasn’t found yet, so for now the puzzle remains unfinished. As for the other three poses I just mentioned (Birmingham, Clarke (bat), and Flick), they belong on this sheet, but as of now it’s unclear where they fit.
You might be wondering how we know they belong on Sheet 2a if their Plate Scratches don’t fit neatly into the layout above. To discover the answer takes a complete understanding of how Sheets 1a/1b, 2a/2b, and 3 are laid out. Sheets 1a and 1b are similar to Sheets 2a and 2b in that they are also a set of matched pairs. However, there is one big difference. Sheet 1b was also used to print Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 backs. So, if we find a matched pair of Plate Scratches, and neither pose was printed with a Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 back, we know that pair of Plate Scratches doesn’t belong on Sheet 1a or 1b. The Plate Scratches that comprise Sheet 3 do not have a matched pair.
In other words, any matched pair of Plate Scratches that doesn’t include a SC 649 pose is a virtual lock to belong on Sheets 2a and 2b. The connection between Piedmont 150 Plate Scratches and Sovereign 150 populations is perhaps the most exciting of Pat’s discoveries, at least in my opinion. As someone who has been collecting Sovereign 150s for a while, I know that some of them are fairly common, while others are like ghosts. It’s not unusual to find variances in populations within a given back subset, but it’s very rare that we’re able to definitively prove why they exist.
Another reason this discovery is exciting is that the research is ongoing. There are still a bunch of holes that need to be filled on Sheet 2a/2b. I have my suspicions of which poses belong on Sheet 2a (based on which as-of-yet uncatalogued poses have the lowest Sovereign 150 populations), but hopefully in time, Pat will be able to find the missing Plate Scratches and put the full sheet back together.
If you find any Piedmont 150s with a Plate Scratch on the back, please either post scans in this net54 thread, or email them to me at luke@thatt206life.com and I will get the scans to Pat.
* The reason that “150-Only” poses are scarce with Sovereign 150 backs is because they are located on Sheet 2a. Because Powers was printed on Sheet 1a/1b rather than Sheet 2a, he shouldn’t be considered a tough Sovereign 150 pose just because he is a “150-Only” subject. However, population reports indicate that Powers is only slightly easier to find with a Sovereign 150 back than say, Pattee. There are a number of SC 649 poses that are quite tough to find with a Sovereign 150 back (Goode, O’Leary and Wilhelm come to mind).
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. I also want to thank Steve Birmingham for noticing the Plate Scratches and commencing the research years ago.
For years T206 collectors have attempted to pinpoint the exact number of cards that were printed on a sheet at American Lithographic Company. In particular, the width of a sheet has been hotly contested. Pat’s research shows us that there is more than one answer to the question, “How many poses wide was a T206 sheet?”
Most of the discussions I have read or been a part of have centered on the numbers 34 and 17. There are multiple subsets that are divisible by 17 and 34, but the two most compelling pieces of evidence are the Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 subset and the Brown Old Mill subset.
Of the 48 Southern Leaguers in the T206 set, only 34 of them were printed with Brown Hindu backs. This same group of 34 poses can also be found with the rare and coveted Brown Old Mill Southern League reverse. The fact that those 34 poses comprise the only known cards to exist with Brown Old Mill backs proves that they were printed on a sheet by themselves. T206 historian Tim Cathey explained this proof in a post on net54baseball.com in 2010, which can be read here. Because 34 cards placed side-by-side would require a pretty massive printing press, collectors theorized that a 17-card wide sheet was more likely.
Pat’s research supports the “Theory of 17”. The recreated Piedmont 150 sheet (above) was first printed with Piedmont 150 backs, and then used for the Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 subset as well. As you can see, it’s 17 cards wide.
This is the layout of Sheets 1a & 1b
The above information isn’t likely to shock any T206 collectors who have been paying attention to the sheet-size discussions that have taken place over the past decade or so. However, Pat made another discovery that I don’t think anyone saw coming.
A couple months ago Pat was working on three partial sheets that he had dubbed the “E”, “F” and “G” sheets. He had thought for some time that two of the three, or possibly all three partial sheets might fit together to form a larger sheet, but hadn’t been able to fit the pieces together.
The breakthrough came when he realized these Wallace plate scratches, which had previously been in a pile of unassigned scratches actually connected the “E” and “F” sheets to form one larger sheet.
The result is a new, larger sheet that Pat has dubbed “Sheet #3”. There are still a number of missing pieces to fill out the entire sheet, but what stands out is this quote from the net54 thread in which Pat announced the discovery:
This creates a sheet that is at least 24 wide by 11 high based on the scratches. But it could possibly be larger.
This is a pretty cool discovery. It shows that American Lithographic Company used more than one sheet size (and probably more than one size of printing press) to produce T206s. Much of the “T206 sheet-size” discussions have centered on collectors trying to prove or disprove a certain sheet size. Now we know there were some sheets that were 17-cards wide and others that were 24-cards wide. That opens the door for the possibility that other sheet sizes were used as well.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Pat Romolo’s research on the Piedmont 150 Plate Scratches has produced a number of interesting findings. It’s really cool to be able to look at a recreated sheet and see how the cards were laid out when printed. Pat’s initial goal was to put the cards together like a puzzle, but in doing so, he unearthed numerous nuggets of information.
I believe some of the questions I have about the set have been answered by Pat’s work. In this four-part series, we’ll take a look at a few of the head-scratchers I have noticed over the years and how they can be explained by Pat’s research:
Why were a number of the “150 Only” players pulled from production before being printed with 350 backs, only to be featured on a new pose in the 350-460 Series or 460 Only Series?
This is a question I didn’t ever expect to be answered to my satisfaction. There are 14 poses from the 150 series that were discontinued prior to printing of 350 backs. Among them are Honus Wagner and the Sherry Magie error. These two were pulled from production early on and exist in very small numbers. The remaining 12 are generally referred to as “The 150-Only Subjects”. They are as follows:
Ames, Red (Hands At Chest)
Brown, Mordecai (Cubs On Shirt)
Browne, George (Chicago)
Burch, Al (Batting)
Donlin, Mike (Fielding)
Doyle, Larry (Throwing)
Evers, Johnny (Cubs On Shirt – Blue Sky)
Pattee, Harry
Pelty, Barney (Horizontal)
Powers, Mike*
Reulbach, Ed (Glove Showing)
Schulte, Wildfire (Front View)
You’ll notice I have decided to include Schulte (Front View) in the 150 Only group. There have long been discussions among collectors as to whether Schulte belongs in this group. He would be a shoe-in if not for the find of a single Piedmont 350-backed specimen. To read more about that find, check out the article I wrote about it here.
There are obvious reasons why some of the above players were pulled from production, but most didn’t make much sense. George Browne was selected off waivers by Washington on April 21, 1909. Donlin left baseball for Vaudeville following the 1908 season and didn’t return until 1911. On one hand, that might seem like a good reason for his card to be pulled. On the other hand, his other 150-350 Series pose, Donlin (Seated)was not pulled from production. It can be found with EPDG, Old Mill and the entire slate of 350 backs. Harry Pattee played his final game in the Majors in 1908, so it makes sense that he was pulled from future printings. Mike Powers passed away two weeks into the 1909 season. His sad and untimely death was likely the reason he was removed from the set early.
There are rational explanations for why Browne, Pattee and Powers were pulled from production. The same can’t be said of the remaining nine players (although we have a possible rationale for Donlin). Each of those nine players were pulled, only to be released again with a new pose later in T206 production. I have read the theory that perhaps a number of the Cubs players were pulled because ATC wanted to quit using “Cubs” on the players’ jerseys, instead replacing it with the “Chicago” that we see on subsequent poses. That seemed as good a guess as any but didn’t necessarily make complete sense.
This is where the Plate Scratch research comes in. Pat wrote the following on net54baseball.com on September 9, 2017 (to read the thread, click the link below under Sources:
Another interesting thing about this sheet is most of the 150 only subjects are all together in a horizontal row, they include Evers(Cubs), Doyle (Throwing), Donlin (Fielding), M.Brown (Cubs), Pattee, Reulbach, Burch, Ames, and Schulte who I consider a 150 only subject.
The other 150 only subjects that don’t have confirmed scratches on this sheet are Wagner, Magie (fixed name), G.Browne (team change) and Powers who is the only 150 only subject in the SC150/649 subset and he has confirmed scratches on another plate scratch sheet (the A-B sheet).
This shows clearly that all of these poses were together on a sheet. While this doesn’t prove anything with 100 percent certainty, I feel very comfortable drawing a conclusion based on this data. To me, it seems likely that the printers at ALC wanted to remove Pattee from production, and in the name of convenience, chose to pull an entire row of cards rather than do the work it would have taken to replace Pattee with a different pose. This is why stars such as Brown, Evers and Reulbach were pulled from production: because it was the easiest way to pull Pattee from production. If you think about it, it makes sense that the reason would be something like this. It clearly wasn’t a conscious decision. There’s just no reason to pull Ames (Hands at Chest) but not Ames (Portrait) and likewise Donlin (Fielding) but not Donlin (Seated). There’s also no apparent reason to have pulled Brown, Doyle, Evers, Reulbach and Schulte, stars who were soon chosen to be featured again.
*Powers is the only member of the “150-Only” group who does not reside on Sheet 2a2b. Powers is on Sheet 1a/1b with the other poses that were printed with Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 backs.
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.
Carl Lundgren’s Chicago T206 is one of the more sought-after cards in the set. Lundgren was a very good starting pitcher for the Cubs from 1904 to 1907 (he also turned in solid seasons in 1902 and ’03), but that doesn’t have anything to do with the popularity of his Cubs card.
Here’s What We Know:
Lundgren (Chicago) was pulled early in the 350 portion of 150-350 Series Production. It was printed with El Principe de Gales and Piedmont 350 backs before being pulled from production. Lundgren (Chicago) fits nicely in the “Elite Eleven*” group with other poses that were pulled after being printed with EPDG backs and a small amount of Piedmont 350 backs.
The decision to discontinue the pose makes a lot of sense. In 1907, he went 18-7 with a 1.17 ERA. It was his fourth straight standout campaign. However, in 1908, his innings pitched dropped to 138.2 and he posted a record of just 6-9 to go with an ERA of 4.42. In 1909, when Lundgren (Chi) was printed with Piedmont 150 backs, he appeared in just 2 games before being sold to Toronto of the Eastern League.
We also know Lundgren was not printed with Hindu, Sovereign 150, or Sweet Caporal 150 backs. His is the only pose in the 150-350 Series that was not printed with any Sweet Caporal backs. Let that sink in for a second. That’s just weird. In fact, the only other non Southern Leaguers that weren’t printed with any Sweet Caporal backs are the Demmitt and O’Hara St. Louis cards, which were printed only with Polar Bear backs*.
And Here’s What We Don’t Know:
It’s not known why Lundgren (Chicago) was left off the Hindu, Sovereign 150 and Sweet Caporal print-runs. I do have a theory, but it doesn’t explain everything. Awhile back, I wrote an article about Hughie Jennings (Portrait) and Sam Crawford (Throwing) (which can be read here). Those two poses were also left off the Hindu and Sovereign 150 print-runs. In fact, there are only five poses in the 150-350 Series that appear with Piedmont 150 backs but not with Brown Hindu or Sovereign 150 backs:
I theorize that Lundgren is somehow related to Jennings (Portrait) and Crawford (Throwing), both of which were added to the Piedmont 150 and Sweet Caporal 150/30 print runs after production of the 150-350 Series had already started. Both Crawford and Jennings were left off the Brown Hindu and Sovereign 150 print runs (like Lundgren). Both Crawford and Jennings were printed with SC 150/30 backs, but left off the SC 150/25 print run.** The fact that Lundgren was not printed with an SC 150/30 back makes the connection somewhat tenuous, but the three poses do have a lot in common.
Like Lundgren, Jennings was printed with an EPDG back, although Crawford was not. All three poses were printed with Piedmont 350 backs, although Lundgren was pulled early and the others were not. Jennings and Crawford went on to be printed with Old Mill, Sovereign 350, Sweet Caporal 350/25, and Sweet Caporal 350/30 backs.
In my earlier article about Jennings (Portrait) and Crawford (Throwing), I put forth the idea that those two poses could have replaced Plank and Wagner when they were pulled from further production. There’s no way to know for sure, but it does make some sense given the late arrivals of Jennings and Crawford. Where Lundgren might fit into that scenario is not immediately clear.
The biggest unanswered question surrounding this pose is why Lundgren (Chicago) was not printed with Sweet Caporal 150 backs. That he wasn’t is one of the more interesting T206 mysteries. I don’t imagine that question will ever be answered to my satisfaction, but if I come up with the answer, or even a crazy theory, I’ll be sure to let you guys know.
*Southern Leaguers were printed with Old Mill Southern League backs, Piedmont 350 backs, and 34/48 players were printed with a Brown Hindu back.
**Crawford is listed as confirmed with SC 150/25 back on T206resource.com, but I know of a few people who have been looking for one for a few years (if not longer). It either exists in extremely low quantities, or does not exist at all. If one surfaces, it will add a very interesting wrinkle to this puzzle, but for now I am going to assume it was not printed.
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:
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
On February 6th 2016, Pat posted a thread on net54 titled “I Believe This Could Be A Complete Horizontal Layout For This T206 Sheet”. In it, he goes into great detail about how he re-created a Piedmont 150 sheet by connecting the Plate Scratches on the backs of the cards.
In Part One of this article, I posted a Cliffs Notes version of Pat’s net54 thread. You can read Part One by clicking the link below:
Piedmont 150 Bull Durham with dark plate scratch on the back
For Part Two, I wanted to dive in a little deeper. Pat was kind enough to work with me by providing scans and answering all the questions I had. Our conversation is below:
Q: How long have you been collecting T206?
A: I purchased my first T206s at the 2003 National in Atlantic City. I don’t remember exactly how many, but it was around ten raw Fair-to-VG commons that included a couple of Sovereigns and a Jennings (One Hand) in a PSA 5 holder.
Q: Before beginning to collect the P150 Plate Scratches, how did you collect the set?
A: I never really had a strategy, but early on I did have a phase when I was collecting non-Piedmonts and Sweet Caporals (like many T206 collectors, I wish I had stayed with that longer).
Q: How did you first become interested in the plate scratches?
A: When Steve Birmingham started the thread on Net54 about the plate scratches, he was looking for scans. So I checked my collection and found that I had one. I started tracking ebay and past sales looking for scans to send Steve. Each one I found motivated me to search for more, hoping he would be able to come up with a sheet layout from them.
Q: Do you remember the first card you owned that had a plate scratch?
A: It was a Shipke scratch that I had in my collection and, coincidentally it matched up next to one of the Cobb scans that Steve had.
Q: What gave you the idea to try and re-create an entire sheet of Piedmont 150s using the plate scratches?
A: Once again, all the credit goes to Steve. Steve and I were emailing back and forth. I was sending him scans of the scratches I found and he was working on trying to piece a sheet together. At the time it seemed like he was gaining the most traction around the Cobb, but in a couple of our emails he stated he didn’t have much free time to work on it. I don’t think anyone was sure if there was more than one sheet involved, but I decided to try and see what I could come up with from a Seymour I had with a double scratch on it.
The circled pink mark offers more evidence that Seymour and Cicotte were neighbors on this Piedmont 150 sheet
Q: Can you share any breakthroughs that you have had while working on it?
A: There have been several, but I would say three of the main ones are:
The first time I found an unconfirmed scratch using a template I made off the Seymour scratch.
Finding a Seymour with a print mark on the front that connected to a mark on the front of a Cicotte (Seymour and Cicotte have several different scratches on the back that link them together).
Filling the last missing slot on what I call the “A-B sheet”.
Q: Have you had any missing pieces to the puzzle that have taken you a very long time to find?
A: There are still a few that I think should exist and probably a lot more I don’t know about. I think the A-B Sheet is complete minus a second subject that matches O’Leary, but I can’t say for sure. It took me four years to find a Gibson that filled the Gibson/Bresnahan slot in the A-B Sheet. A month or two later, I found the Bresnahan. Also, Steve had sent me a scan of a Powell scratch that I could never find another scan of until one was listed on ebay about a month ago. Coincidentally, another one popped up a couple weeks later. So it took me almost five years to find one, and then two showed up within weeks of each other.
Q: Do you try to own a copy of each scratch, or are you generally happy to just save scans?
A: In the very beginning I was just saving scans, but I purchased a couple of the cheaper ones when I saw them on ebay. I found when I had them in hand I could glean more information from them. I have a few that had a second scratch on them that I didn’t notice until I had them. I have also picked up a few that only had front scans in the listing but I knew they were plate scratches because of a flaw on the front. I have at least one copy of the majority of them, but I do lack most of the expensive ones. There are four different Cobb (Bat on) scratches, two Cobb (Green Portrait), three Johnson (Portrait), three Mathewson (White Cap) and one Mathewson (Portrait). I do have one of the Cobb (Bat On), but the rest are too expensive for me.
Q: Is there anything I didn’t think to ask that you have learned from your work on this project?
A: On a side note, the mystery surrounding the Plank continues over to the Plate Scratches. There are only a few (all hand-cut) Piedmont 150 Planks, but two of them have the same Plate Scratch. The Plate Scratch on the Plank goes almost straight across. All of the other Plate Scratches are on a few different angles, so the Plank doesn’t match up with any of them.
I do have a theory about why this might be. Awhile back someone mentioned that the scratches could have been caused by a nail or something on a shelf they were stored on. I have seen pictures of the stones on shelves and also on pallets.
If a worker taking one of the stones off the shelf or pallet slid it back and turned it to grab one of the corners, it would create a straight scratch for a couple of inches and an angled scratch across the rest of the stones. If Plank was on the end of a sheet, that would cause the straight scratch that’s seen on the two examples.
On February 6th, 2016, Pat Romolo posted a thread on net54 titled “I Believe This Could Be A Complete Horizontal Layout For This T206 Sheet”. In it, he goes into great detail on how he put together a complete Piedmont 150 sheet, using Plate Scratches on the backs of the cards. I asked Pat to explain his Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch project, and this is what he said,
At some point, damage occurred to a few of the stones used for the Piedmont 150 back plates. The damage might have been caused by something between the stones or something on a shelf or pallet that they were stored on. It’s also possible that it could have been caused by cracks in the limestone, but I’m leaning more towards the scratches.
This two part series is meant to be a companion piece to Pat’s net54 thread. Think of them as a Cliffs Notes of sorts. I’ve done my best to summarize the most significant discoveries Pat has made, but I strongly urge you to follow this link and read the net54 thread in its entirety:
In Part One, we’ll take a look at some of the most important posts from the thread:
Post #2
Pat unveils the complete sheet, which he has re-created. This particular sheet is composed of 17 different poses from left to right and each pose is repeated 12 times vertically (the image at the top of this article).
Post #13
Erick Summers responds to an earlier question by pointing out that to date, no Piedmont 150 backed “two-namer” card has been found with a plate scratch. The sheet that Pat re-created has the same subjects repeated vertically. We know that some sheets had more than one player in a vertical column because a number of “two-namer” cards like the Hinchman-Stovall below have been found. The fact that no “two-namers” have been found with a plate scratch means the sheet layouts were changed over time. Before Pat put this sheet together, I think most T206 collectors (at least the ones who are really into the minutiae) believed that most sheets were 17 poses wide and featured at least 2 subjects repeated vertically.*
T206 Hinchman/Stovall Piedmont 150 “two namer”
Post #34
In response to a comment made by a member who was having trouble understanding the significance of the project, Pat posted an additional bit of supporting evidence. Seymour (Batting) and Cicotte appear next to each other on the re-created sheet because the Plate Scratches on the back show that they were neighbors. Pat posted front scans of each pose sharing a pink mark on the front that confirms they were right next to each other.
Post #45
Pat posts a scan of a mis-cut Sheckard (No Glove Showing) with Goode showing on the right side with a Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 30 back. One of the missing spots in Pat’s template was next to Goode. Pat had looked for a Sheckard with Plate Scratch for awhile with no luck until finding one that fit the template the day he made this post.
T206 Sheckard Goode SW Cap 150 Fact 30
Post #47
Pat posts:
I was pretty sure before but now I’m positive this sheet mirrors a SC150/649
sheet and I think this is one of two 649 sheets that were printed.
This is a huge discovery. I had wondered in the past how the 34 poses in the Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649 subset were chosen. The players chosen never made much sense to me. Pat has proven they were selected pretty much at random. The printers just used two sheets that they had handy.
Post #50
Pat posts a summary of what he has learned up to that point.
This 3 card section shows the scratches up close
*The 460 Only series is an exception to this loose rule of thumb. To date, we haven’t found any “two-namers” from the 460 Only Series, leading us to believe that vertical rows most likely featured only one pose.
This little gem was sold last weekend via PWCC Auctions. The auction boasted an impressive array of T206s, and this one was kind of buried among the offerings. It was listed as “Ghost Image” due to the dark rectangle that appears over the front of the bottom 90% of the card. When I first saw it, I was pretty sure I knew what the faint lighter image on the on the ghost overprint was, but I needed to verify. I am not particularly good with Photo Shop, but I thought it might be fun to show the process I used to figure out who the ghost was anyway
I thought it looked like the ghost overprint was upside down, so first I turned the image upside down:
In this particular case, I had a hunch of who the ghost might be right when I first saw the card. However, there have been plenty of times when I haven’t been so sure when looking at a T206 with a ghost image. In those cases, the first step in the sleuthing process is to identify any distinguishing marks (or in this case, the spots on the ghost overprint which are lighter than the rest of the ghost).
Once you’ve found some spots to look for, you need to go through other cards that were printed in the same series. In this case, Gibson is a 150-350 subject and this card has a Piedmont 150 back. So, if the ghost overprint features another T206 pose, it will be one of the other 155 poses from the Piedmont 150 checklist. When I am searching for a possible match, I like to use the checklists at T206resource.com and click on the scan links at the right side of the page. You can scroll through the entire 150-350 Series checklist on this page.
Like I mentioned earlier, I had a hunch right away. I pulled up this pose, and found an immediate match:
I wish I had the Photo Shop skills of Chris Browne or Erick Summers, but unfortunately this is the best I can do. If you look closely, you can see that the previously identified lighter spots on Gibson line up perfectly with Eddie Cicotte’s right arm and the creases in his pants. How this card might have come to exist is a mystery to me. I suppose the lighter ghost print could have come first, with the printer’s realizing that the sheet was placed upside down and then turning it around and printing the entire card again. This fun error card sold for $249.83. I imagine most bidders were not sure what they were looking at, but the winner most likely knew that the ghost was Cicotte.
