Tag: T206

The Highest Graded T206 Set Sells for Over $8 Million Dollars!

On September 20, 2018 the highest graded T206 set in existence sold via Heritage Auctions.  Each card was offered as a stand-alone lot.  The combined sales price was staggering.  I couldn’t find the exact figure, but PSA CEO Joe Orlando posted that total was over $8,000,000.  The set boasted an unheard of thirteen PSA 10s, McGraw (Finger in Air) being the lone Hall of Fame PSA 10.  Twenty-four of the Hall Of Famers were graded PSA 9.

You can check out the auction in it’s entirety by following the link below.  In order to see the realized sale prices, you’ll have to log in, or create an account if you haven’t yet.

2018 September 20 1909-11 T206 PSA Set Registry Catalog Auction

There were dozens of cards in this auction that would have headlined most other auctions.  The cards were below were the highlights of the auction in terms of realized sale price, but I urge to to follow the link above and check out the rest of the auction.

Plank PSA 7 – $690,000

Magie PSA 8 – $660,000

Cobb Greeb Portrait Old Mill PSA 8 – $360,000

Mathewson White Cap PSA 9 – $264,000

Cobb Red Portrait PSA 8 – $192,000

McGraw Finger in Air PSA 10 – $192,000

Young Bare Hand Shows PSA 9 – $168,000

Johnson Hands at Chest PSA 9 – $156,000

Cobb Bat on Shoulder PSA 8 – $144,000

Mathewson Dark Cap PSA 8.5 – $120,000

Johnson Portrait PSA 9 – $114,000

Young Portrait PSA 8 – $114,000

Cobb Bat off Shoulder PSA 8 – $102,000

O’Hara St. Louis PSA 7 – $96,000

Monthly Mailbag #2: How do Back and Grade Effect T206 Pricing?

A question I had on pricing is: How do you take backs into account for pricing?  I know there are multipliers out there for mid-tier and rare backs.  But, when a card has a low population (5 or less 10 or less ect.) How do you determine prices for those?  How do the prices move as grade goes up?

Im my opinion, there is no easy answer to this question.  While helpful, the back multipliers will almost always be off in one direction or the other in practice.  If you’re trying to price a mid-tier back in order to sell it and you use one of the back multipliers, typically one of two things will happen:  Either it will sell right away because you had it a little too low, or it will just sit there because the back multiplier estimate was too high.

Personally, I have never paid any attention to the multipliers that people have come up with.  Even years ago when I was just getting into buying the tougher backs, I always tried to base values/prices on actual sales.  These days I have seen so much price data over the years that I just kind of know values instinctively.  It took quite a lot of price research and buying/selling to get to where I am now, but anyone can do it.

If you want to get more precise with your value estimates for T206 mid-tier and rare backs, I have a couple of things I would recommend.  First, follow the tougher backs that get listed in auction format on eBay.  Make a guess as to what you think the card will sell for, and then when the auction ends, see how close you got.  I’d recommend keeping notes of all the cards you observe so that you can review them in the future.  You can do the same with any cards that sell via an Auction House.  The second bit of advice is a pay service.  You can pay $4 for 24 hours of access to vintagecardprices.com (VCP).  When I was learning this stuff, I would pay for the 24 hours of access a few times a year, and spend a few hours searching tons of data and taking notes.

Obviously, doing this type of price research is only appealing if you’re really passionate about the mid-tier and rare backs.  If you mainly just collect the T206 set based on fronts, but want a quick way to estimate values, I wish I could be more helpful.  If you find yourself in that situation, I do have a couple bits of advice.  First, you can always ask me for my opinion.  I can be reached here via the “Contact” button on the site, or via net54 (Luke) or Facebook.  Alternatively, it might be worth the $4 to log into vintagecardprices.com (VCP).

Let’s look at an example:  Let’s say you have a Ed Killian Portrait with Cycle 350 back in a PSA 3 holder, and you have no idea what it’s worth.  Here’s what I would suggest you do.  Look up the PSA and SGC Population Reports for Killian.  Then look up a few other players’ Cycle 350 Pop Reports.  This will give you an idea of the relative scarcity of Killian versus other poses in the Cycle 350 subset.  The more poses you can look up, the better.  Then, log on to VCP, and look up sales data on Killian, and all the other poses that you checked Pop Report data for.  While you’re there, I would also check sales data for all the other Cycle 350s.  You’ve already paid for 24 hours of access to VCP, so why not get your money’s worth?  While browsing VCP, make sure to make note of the date that cards sold for.  If you see a card that sold in 2009, I wouldn’t use that piece of data to help you price your card.  Sales from the past couple years will obviously be the most helpful.

One more bit of information to keep in mind is if you happen to be trying to buy or sell the highest graded copy of a given front/back combo, you can expect that card to command a premium.  There’s no magic formula to figuring out the value of the highest graded copy, but it’s something that can be learned in the same way you would learn the value of the Killian Cycle 350 in a PSA 3 holder.

Is Eddie Collins finally getting the respect he deserves from T206 collectors?

When I got into collecting T206s in 2010, I remember thinking Eddie Collins and Nap Lajoie were priced lower than I would have expected based on their status as all-time greats.  It didn’t take too long for me to get acclimated to “the way it is” in the T206 marketplace, and I kind of forgot about that notion for a number of years.

It seems something interesting is happening with Collins’ T206 lately, at least in higher grade.  Back in June, a PSA 5 Old Mill Eddie Collins sold for $1,302 in a PWCC auction.  It caught my attention because I owned the same card not too long ago.  I sold it back in December 2017, for $689.  That’s a pretty big price jump in just six months.  My price wasn’t crazy low either.  I think the card sat in my eBay store for three or four months before it sold.  A similar (and arguably nicer) PSA 5 Old Mill sold for $700 on eBay in February 2017.

A similar thing happened with a Collins Sovereign 350.  On August 12, 2018 a PSA 5 sold for $1,327, also via PWCC auction.  Back in November of 2016, Heritage sold a different PSA 5 Sovereign 350 for just $454.  In my opinion both cards are equally nice.

Obviously, two cards selling for surprisingly high prices doesn’t necessarily indicate a trend.  However, it does appear that some Piedmont and Sweet Caporal backed examples have followed, at least to some extent.  Back in April 2018, a PSA 5 Piedmont 350 sold via Buy It Now on eBay for $850, which is $183 more than the closest sale I could find on VCP.  A PSA 3.5 Piedmont 350 sold for $390 on eBay three weeks ago.  There’s no recorded sale on VCP that comes close.

So, is this a legitimate trend, or something else?  I’m skeptical of the recent PSA 5 Sovereign 350 and Old Mill sale prices, but I do think we’re seeing an increase in value that is long overdue and likely to become the new “way it is” for Collins.

 

Jimmy Williams: The Most Overlooked Player in the 150-350 Series?

Despite being an excellent ballplayer, Jimmy Williams is one of the most overlooked players in the 150-350 Series by T206 collectors.  Not too long ago, I was talking with my friend Scott Gross, and shared a scan of a new Jimmy Williams card I had added to my collection.  Scott mentioned that he considered Williams’ T206 card to be one of the most ignored/forgotten cards in the set.  I had to agree.  Once he mentioned it, I realized that I was guilty of it myself.  It’s obviously debatable whether he is in fact the most overlooked player in the 150-350 Series, or just one of the most.  But when you take into consideration how good he was, it makes our collective oversight of him all the more egregious.

Let’s take a look at why Williams has been so overlooked by collectors.  For one thing, the pose used for his card is not particularly exciting.  I happen to find the artwork and colors extremely appealing, but the same can be said for just about any other card in the 150-350 Series.  Aesthetically, Williams’ card just doesn’t stand out.

Another contributing factor is that Williams was not printed with some of the more desirable 150-350 Series backs.  Williams was printed with the following 8 backs:

  • Old Mill
  • Piedmont 150
  • Piedmont 350
  • Sovereign 150
  • Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 25
  • Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 30
  • Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 25
  • Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 30

He was not printed with these 4 backs:

  • Brown Hindu
  • El Principe de Gales
  • Sovereign 350
  • Sweet Caporal 150 Factory 649

Most 150-350 Series poses* were printed with 9 or more of the possible 12 backs.  A few poses, such as Bresnahan (Portrait),  Griffith (Portrait), and Johnson (Portrait) were printed with all 12 backs.  In fact, Williams’ 8 backs is the lowest of any 150-350 Series pose that was printed for the entire production run*.

To the best of my knowledge, there are only three other poses in the 150-350 Series that were printed with just 8 different backs**.  Wid Conroy (Fielding) and Ed Hahn were printed with the exact same 8 backs that Williams was printed with.  Jiggs Donahue was also printed with 8 different backs, but with a slightly different mix.  Rather than an Old Mill back, Donahue was printed with a Sovereign 350 back.

On the field, Williams was a stud.  Three of his first four seasons were nothing short of incredible, and the other seven seasons were very solid.  In 1899, as a 22 year-old rookie for Pittsburgh, he had his best season.  In 153 games, he had 220 hits, a .354 Batting Average, and a .946 OPS.  He led the league in Triples with 27, and placed 3rd in the National League in WAR for Position Players with a 6.9 mark.

Limited to just 106 games in his second Major League season due to an ankle injury, Williams had a disappointing season.  He hit just .264 with an OPS of .712.

In 1901, he was back to full strength and put together another tremendous season.  This was his first season with the Baltimore Orioles.  He played in 130 games and had 159 hits.  21 of those hits were triples, which led the American League.  He hit .317 with a .883 OPS, which ranked 5th in the American League.

In 1902, he put up a remarkably similar season to his 1901 output.  For the third time, Williams led his league in triples, again hitting 21 of them.  In 125 games, he hit .313 to go with an OPS of .861, which was good for 6th in the A.L.

After those first four seasons, Williams came down to earth.  He played seven more years in the bigs, but never again hit .300.  He did however, continue to produce at a very high level.  Throughout his short 11-year career, he was extremely consistent.  If you ignore his second season (1900), in which he played only 106 games, and his final season (1909) when he played just 110 games,  that leaves nine seasons in which he played more or less full-time.  In seven of those nine seasons, he finished in the Top Ten in RBI for his league.  That’s pretty incredible!

In addition to being a very productive hitter, Williams provided value at a premium defensive position.  Williams spent his first three seasons at third base and shortstop.  In sharp contrast to his offensive statistics, he began his career as a subpar defensive player.  He made 67 errors as a rookie in 1899 and followed it up with 54 in just 104 games in 1900.  In 1901, his first season as a full-time second baseman, he committed another 52 errors, this time in 130 games.  He settled in a second baseman and his defense steadily improved.  From 1903 to 1909, his fielding percentage was never below .951.

As a testament to his improvement, in 1903, Williams was 4th in Defensive War in the A.L. with a mark of 1.7.  In 1904, he followed it up with a 1.2 dWar, which was good for 10th in the American League.  All in all, he had a fantastic career, albeit a short one.

One of my favorite things about collecting the T206 set is you can buy a card of an extremely good player like Jimmy Williams for the same price as a card of an obscure player who only played a few seasons in the minors.  If you’re the type of collector who likes to look for tough backs, you’ll want to find either an Old Mill, which is the toughest, or a Sovereign 150, which is also pretty hard-to-find.  If you don’t care too much about backs, a Piedmont or Sweet Caporal should be pretty easy to find.  Whatever you decide, you can’t go wrong.  I think an argument could be made that Jimmy Williams is the most underrated player in the entire set.

* Poses that were pulled from production early, or put into production late will be printed with less than 8 backs.  Examples of these poses are:  All of the 150 Only Subjects, All of the Elite 11 Subjects, as well as Crawford (Throwing) and Jennings (Portrait)

**I am pretty sure this group of 4 players is the full list, but it’s possible that I’m missing a player or two.  As far as I know, there aren’t any reliable checklists to look this up, so I had to go off the top of my head and check my memory against the individual back checklists on t206resource.com.  If I forgot any pose, please let me know in the comments section.

George McBride and the “Blue Flame”

Take a look at the scans above.  Just below McBride’s belt is a little blue print mark that Pat Romolo has dubbed the “blue flame”.  Pat and I talked about this print mark a year or so ago and I had planned to write an article about it.  It was one of the (many) topics that I intended to write about, but never got around to.

Recently, I was very excited to pick up the McBride Tolstoi below.  When I got it in hand, I noticed the blue mark on his left shoulder.  I remembered the “blue flame” that Pat and I had discussed, but I thought this one might be slightly different.  I went through our old emails to see if I had just found another example of the “blue flame”, or if this was a mark we hadn’t seen before.  To my surprise, this blue mark was in a completely different place.

Excited about this new discovery, I sent an email to Pat.  As usual, he noticed something that I had failed to see.  It’s pretty rare to find one pose with two separate and distinct print marks.  But what makes this even more interesting is that both my Tolstoi and the five cards at the top of this article all share another print mark in common.  It’s hard to see (at least it was for me) but there’s a blue dot just to the right of his left elbow.  On my card it’s pretty faint, but it’s a lot more noticeable on the “blue flame” cards.

I wanted to understand more about these three different print marks, so I went through all of the recorded sales of McBride T206s on cardtarget.com.  I found two things that surprised me, and one that didn’t.  I was not surprised to confirm that every card that exhibits the “blue flame” print mark also displays the “blue dot”.  On the other hand, I was surprised to not find another McBride card that has the same print mark that my Tolstoi backed copy has.

Perhaps the most interesting discovery I made is that the “blue dot” appears on more cards that just those with the “blue flame” and my Tolstoi.  However, it does not appear on all McBride cards.

Card Target has four recorded sales of American Beauty backs.  One has both the blue flame and the blue dot.  Another has just the blue dot, and the other two cards don’t have any print marks.

Of the eight recorded sales of Cycle 350 backs, two have both the blue flame and the blue dot, five others have just the blue dot, and just one of them has no print marks at all.

The Sweet Caporal backs carry roughly the same ratios.  Of the nine recorded SC 350/25 backs, one displays the blue flame/blue dot combo, 6 others have just the blue dot, and three cards exhibit neither print mark.  Of the 28 SC 350/30 backs, two have the blue flame/blue dot combo, 16 have just the blue dot, and ten have no print mark.

Things got a little interesting when I looked through the Piedmont 350 backs however.  The vast majority of them display no print marks, while a small minority have just the blue dot, and an even smaller percentage exhitbit the blue flame/blue dot combo.

The reason I find print marks so interesting is that I think there is a potential for them to teach us some things about the printing process.  The fact that multiple cards can be found with the same recurring print mark tells us that many sheets were printed with the same layout.  That the “blue flame” is found with American Beauty 350 Frame, Broad Leaf 350, Cycle 350, Piedmont 350, and both Sweet Caporal 350/25 and Sweet Caporal 350/30 backs means that the layout of the sheet remained the same as each subsequent back was printed.

Having said that, I’m not sure I am any more knowledgeable about the printing process now than I was before I started to research these print marks.  It’s definitely interesting that so many of McBride’s cards have at least one print mark, but if there’s a pattern, I’m not seeing it.

My hope is that by studying these print marks and others like it, we may be able to shed some light on how these cards were printed.  Pat and I are working on a set of future articles where we will catalog all of the known print marks, and examine many of them in more detail.  We don’t have a timeline for when we expect to finish, but I am hoping it will be completed before the end of the year.

McBride Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 30 with just the “blue dot” print mark

T206 Budget Series: If You Had $500 To Spend (3/4)

In last week’s article, I wrote about what I would do if I was starting a T206 collection with $100.  Today, we’ll take a look at the same scenario, but this time with $500.  If you read the first two, you know that I’ve settled on a grade range of right about GOOD. If you want to collect higher or lower grades, just adjust the numbers up or down a little and use the same general approach.  Last week, I broke it up into two different sections for raw cards v.s. graded cards.  The reason is that with a budget of $100, it makes a pretty big difference in terms of how far your money will go.  With $500, I don’t think it makes as big of a difference, so for this one, I won’t distinguish between graded or raw cards.

Here are three different ways that I might approach starting a T206 collection with $500:

Start with one major centerpiece Hall of Famer:

Making a big splash can be a fun way to kick off your collection.  There are a bunch of different ways you could go.  A nice lower grade Johnson, Mathewson, Speaker, or Young would fit the bill.  A nicer (Vg-Ex or so) copy of Eddie Collins, Keeler, Lajoie, or Tinker would also be a great option.

Buy a few Hall of Famers:

$500 can also get you a group of Hall of Famers.  You could specifically target certain players, or just be patient and wait for some nice deals to come along.  Another option would be to knock out all the poses of a given player.  You could buy both Joss poses, both Keeler or Waddell poses, or all three Bender or Chance poses.

Start with a big group of commons:

Putting the entire amount toward a stack of commons is also a nice way to get started and build some momentum.  $500 should get you somewhere between 20 and 30 cards depending on condition and whether you’re buying raw or graded.

Mix and Match

Of course, you can also add some Hall of Famers, and some commons.  This method has some appeal because it allows you to get one or two big name players, but also assemble a nice stack of cards.

Be an opportunist

This approach focuses less on which cards you’d ideally like to buy and more on which cards come to market.  If you’re patient, and don’t have a strong preference for any of the above strategies, this method can build your collection faster because you’ll be finding bargains you otherwise might have missed.  If you prefer to start with just Hall of Famers, or just players from a certain team or city, then obviously this approach won’t work for you, but it’s something to consider for most people.

Among the above options, my preference would be to tackle a small group of Hall of Famers first.  I still remember the feeling of awe I had when I bought my first few T206 Hall of Famers.  It’s hard to describe the feeling of flipping through your first handful of T206 Hall of Famers.  While commons are extremely cool in their own right, there’s just something special about holding 100 year-old cards of the legendary players I read about as a kid.

In practice, most people will probably go with a mixture of these approaches.  It’s good to plan out how you’d like to attack the set, but when you start shopping, you can only buy the cards that are actually available at the time.  Also, in practice, people don’t usually start with a $500 chuck on money to spend.  Usually it’s $40 here, $160 there, take a little from this paycheck, etc.  All that being said, I think it’s smart to spend some time thinking about how you’d ideally like to build your collection before you get started.

T206 Budget Series: If You Had $100 To Spend (2/4)

 

The first decision you’ll need to make is what condition you’d like your cards to be in, which I alluded to in Part 1.  The main consideration in choosing a condition range is how much of a budget you’re going to allocate to your T206 collection.  If you have a very large budget, you can afford to collect mid and high grades.  If you’re like most of us, your budget will be more modest, and lower grades will make more sense.

For the purposes of this series of articles, I’m going to focus on lower grades, in the Fair-to-VG range.  The reason for this is twofold.  For one thing, in my experience, most people that decide to start collecting T206s begin with lower grade cards.  It makes sense to test the waters when you’re trying something new, and lower grade cards are a great place to start.  Secondly, these articles would be a lot less helpful if I used mid-grades as our benchmark.  This article would just be about buying one PSA common for example.

If You’re Starting with Raw T206s:

Buy one Hall of Famer and two nice looking commons:

I would start by targeting a nice looking George Davis, Vic Willis, or Fred Clarke.  These Hall of Famers are under-valued in my opinion, and offer a great bang for the buck.  With some patience, you should be able to find one for $60 or less.  Then I’d go get a couple nice looking lower grade commons as well.

Buy four nice looking commons in GD+/VG condition:

These days a GD/VG T206 common can be had for $25-30.  I would imagine $100 would buy a nice group of 4 pretty easily.  As I mentioned in the first installment of this series, I think it’s smart to buy some raw T206s as soon as you can.  Take them out of their top-loader or card saver and examine them closely.  Feel the paper, look at how the ink sits on the paper, notice how a wrinkle or crease looks on an authentic T206, etc.  This next bit of advice may seem odd, but you should also smell your raw cards.  They tend to have a distinct old and musty smell.  All of these things will help you get comfortable with handling T206s.  At some point in the future it will pay off when you have a chance to buy a raw T206 (or more often a group of raw T206s) at a good price and you have the confidence to pull the trigger because you feel confident the card is legit.

 

If You’re Starting with Graded T206s:

Buy one Hall of Famer in a “1.5”, “2”, or “2.5” graded holder:

When buying graded cards, your money won’t go quite as far as it does when buying raw, so I would probably just try and spend the entire $100 on a single nice looking Hall of Famer that can be the centerpiece to your new collection.  The players mentioned above should be available in a “2.5” or “3” if you spend a little time looking.  Below is a list of Hall of Famers that are typically available in a graded “2” at $100 or less:

  • Beckley
  • Bender
  • Bresnahan
  • Chance (Yellow Portrait)
  • Clarke
  • Collins, Jimmy
  • Davis
  • Duffy
  • Flick
  • Griffith
  • Huggins
  • Jennings
  • Kelley
  • Marquard
  • McGinnity
  • McGraw (Finger in Air and Glove at Hip)
  • Wallace
  • Willis

Here is a handy checklist of the Hall of Famers in the T206 set, courtesy of T206resource.com:

T206 Hall of Fame Checklist

Buy three graded commons:

If you spend a little time looking, you can find three nice graded commons in the GOOD/VG range for $100 or less.  Buying a group from a forum or Facebook group is probably the most efficient option as it will allow you to save on shipping charges, which is always nice when you’re trying to build a T206 collection on a budget.

T206 Budget Series: Introduction (1/4)

1 Comment on T206 Budget Series: Introduction (1/4)

I’ve spent a lot of time lately delving into some pretty deep and obscure T206 topics.  So when a friend suggested I get back to basics, it sounded like a good idea.  In this series, I’ll give some advice to T206 collectors who are just getting started.  With this article, I’ll start by taking a look at some different approaches you can take when building a collection.  In the next article I will tackle the question, “If you had $100 to start a T206 collection, what would you buy?”  Parts three and four will address the same question, but with the $100 replaced by $500 and $1000.

Some Different Ways to Get Started:

  • Start with the Hall of Famers

This was advice I got when I first started to collect the set, and it served me well.  The idea is that when you get started, you don’t really know where the journey will take you.  You might get hooked, stay hooked for years, and complete the set.  Or you might lose interest at some point.  By buying Hall of Famers first, you make it easier to sell your cards and move on to something else if you decide to go that route.

  • Start with commons

Starting with commons has merit too.  You can build up a little stack of them quicker than if you were paying more for Hall of Famers.  Seeing your collection grow can give you some momentum to keep at it.

  • Start with one team, or city

In my opinion this is the ideal way to get your feet wet with the T206 set.  It also makes a ton of sense if you happen to be from (or have ties to) a city or town that is featured in the set.

  • Be an opportunist

This approach requires patience and a lot of research to make sure you understand the market.  If you wait for good deals and bid in a lot of auctions, you’ll eventually add some cards to your collection at great prices.  The downside is it will take longer to build the collection this way.

  • Buy some cards from a friend or trusted seller

Buying a group from a friend or someone you trust is probably the easiest way to get started these days (shout out to net54 and Tobacco Row as a couple of great places to buy).  The biggest benefit to doing it this way is that you can buy raw cards and feel comfortable that you are getting authentic T206s.  In my opinion, handling raw cards is imperative if you want to learn how to identify fakes, reprints, and altered cards as you progress in your journey with the set.  The only drawback to buying in this manner is that it kind of limits your ability to select which players and poses you’d most like to acquire, simply because you’ll only be able to choose from the cards that your friends or fellow forum members have for sale.

Some Important Decisions to Make Before Buying Anything:

  • What condition do you want your cards to be in?

This is among the most important things to figure out.  It’s not the end of the world if you buy a bunch of cards and then decide you wish they were in nicer (or worse) condition, but you’ll probably end up spending some time selling or trading them.  When I started my collection, I wanted cards in Fair/Good condition.  I got about 150 cards into my set before realizing that I preferred cards with a higher level of eye appeal.  Luckily for me, I enjoy selling and trading, so it didn’t bother me when I decided I wanted upgrade some of my initial purchases.  However, if selling a big stack of T206 commons doesn’t sound like fun to you, it’s smart to spend some time making sure you know what you want before you start buying.

I recommend choosing a condition range that works well with your budget.  I’d love to build a T206 set in EX and above, but I don’t have an extra $300,000 laying around, so attempting such a project would be an exercise in frustration.  It doesn’t hurt to do a little math before you get started.  Try and figure out how much you want to be spending on T206s each month, then look at roughly how much much it will cost to reach your collecting goals, and see how long it will take.  The right approach will be different for everyone, but as with any goal, you want to make sure yours is attainable.  If it’s too difficult, or it will take too long, you’re likely to get frustrated and lose interest.

  • Buy graded cards, raw cards, or a mix?

This is something you’ll want to consider before you make any purchases.  My advice would be to try and get comfortable with raw cards as quickly as you can.  Some collectors strictly buy graded cards, and that’s a perfectly fine approach if it feels right, but you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities if you’re not willing to buy raw cards.  I’d estimate that around 25% of the cards in my collection were raw when I acquired them.

Stay tuned for the next three installments of this series:

Part 2 Sunday June 17th

Part 3 Sunday June 24th

Part 4 Sunday July 1st

T206 Piedmont Factory 42: Light Blue v.s. Dark Blue Backs

Charley O’Leary with dark blue Piedmont Factory 42 back

This is an article I’ve had in the works for quite a while.  Almost a year ago, I began writing and researching, but then ran into a bit of a snag.

If you look at enough Piedmont Factory 42 backs, you’ll notice that the blue ink tends to be either very light or very dark.  I’d read a few threads on the subject on net54, but beyond the observation that the ink level varied, I didn’t recall seeing any conclusions drawn.  It’s a minor variation, and maybe not worth spending too much time on.  But then again, at one point Sovereign 350 Green Apple backs were thought to be just a slight color variant of the Forest Green Subset.

So, a few months ago I decided to look into the Piedmont Factory 42 subset to see if I could find any patterns with regard to the dark ink v.s. light ink phenomenon.  I asked a couple friends to help me research.  Adam Goldenberg was nice enough to send me scans of his collection of Piedmont 42s, and Pat Romolo offered to dig through scans on Card Target for me.  Going into the research phase, I was hoping there might be some sort of pattern we’d be able to discern.  Specifically, I was wondering if certain players were printed with only one of the two back types.

The graphic below shows the difference between the light blue and dark blue backs.

The “research phase” was over almost before it started.  I got an email from Pat saying that he had begun to look at scans and he didn’t think there was a pattern.  I meant to take a look for myself, but never got around to it.  Some time passed, and I completely forgot I had started working on this article.  A few weeks back I found it while cleaning up the drafts on my site and decided I should finish it.  After all, even if there is no pattern, that still answers some questions.

So, I delved into the scans that Adam had sent me and past sales on cardtarget.com.  What I was looking for was simple.  I wanted to find one pose that was printed with both a light blue and dark blue back.  I did find that, but I found something else as well.  I went into the project thinking that the backs were almost always either dark blue or light blue.  However, after scrolling through dozens of these backs, I realized that the intensity of the blue actually varies quite a bit.

Below is the “smoking gun” of my research.  One Reulbach with a dark blue back and one with a light blue back (and another that’s somewhere in the middle).  This proves there is no easy pattern where one pose always has either a light blue or a dark blue back.

Reulbach PSA 5 with dark blue Piedmont Factory 42 back

After looking at a bunch of scans, I’m left with a couple thoughts.  First, the darkness v.s. lightness of ink varies quite a bit more than I expected (and more than you’d think from reading the net54 threads).  In my opinion, there are light blue Piedmont Factory 42 backs, dark blue backs, and every shade and variant of blue in between.  Secondly, the fact that I never found any consensus online about the dark blue backs v.s. light blue backs makes a lot of sense.  I’m sure other collectors have looked into this topic in the past, and just never posted anything about it, because they didn’t find any interesting patterns.

Reulbach PSA 5 (mk) with light blue Piedmont Factory 42 back
Ruelbach PSA 5 with a Piedmont Factory 42 back that is neither light blue nor dark blue, but rather somewhere in the middle

Despite the fact that I don’t have any exciting news to report, I figured this topic was still worth posting.  I’m sure I won’t be the last person to notice the differences between the light blue and dark blue backs and wonder if there is a pattern.  Hopefully, I can save some of those people some time.

Sources:
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=137166
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=128227

The Incredible T206 Lash’s Bitters Printer’s Scrap Sheet

Recently I wrote an article about T206 sheet mates.  This group of cards was the subject of a fun Net54 thread a few years back where members worked together to figure out what was going on the backs of these T206s.  Besides being incredibly cool, they also offer a unique look into other types of jobs the American Lithographic Company was working on at the time.  The backs of these cards were used to test a run of Lash’s Bitters Tonic Laxative trade cards.

If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend checking out the original thread on Net54baseball.com.

First, this Lash’s Bitters trade card was found by Net54 member Jantz:

Then Erick Summers posted this graphic, which lines up some of the cards against a grid of the Lash’s Bitters trade cards:

The graphic overlays below were created by T206 sleuth Chris Browne.  The image below looks like it could have been the front of the Lash’s Bitters trade card from above, but it ended up being the front of a different trade card.  If you take a close look at the image at the top of this article you’ll notice that “LASH’S BITTERS” is printed in red ink with two separate layouts.  One version is printed on just one line, while the other has “LASH’S” printed above “BITTERS”.  Chris’s discovery below shed some light on where the single line of red “LASH’S BITTERS” came from, but the double line version remained a mystery.

Then, Chris found the missing piece to the puzzle:

In my opinion, the T206 Lash’s Bitters are among the coolest cards in the set.  From a purely aesthetic standpoint, they are beautiful cards, and the connection with another commercial product from the same time period only adds to their significance.  The Net54 thread was fun and collaborative and epitomized what can happen when collectors work together on a project they are passionate about.