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.
Note: Much of the background detail in this story is stuff I learned from reading T206resource.com. Most of my readers will probably be familiar with the site, but if not, make sure to check it out.
In August 1909, Hindu Cigarettes ads featuring T206 images began appearing in the Times-Picayune Daily and Evening newspapers in New Orleans*. The ads ran for six weeks from August 2nd to September 10th. There were 12 ads in total.
The first five ads featured only major-leaguers. The sixth ad featured both Major Leaguers and Southern Leaguers. The final six ads featured only Southern Leaguers.
If you collect T206 cards with Hindu backs, you may notice something odd about the ads above and below. The following four poses appear in the advertisements, but were not actually printed with Brown Hindu backs:
Dooin
Lobert
Nicholls (Hands on Knees)
Waddell (Throwing)
It’s not known why these players were advertised but then omitted from the print run. A similar omission occurred with the Southern Leaguers. The ad below features Southern Leaguers Breitenstein, Hickman and Jordan, who were all printed with Brown Hindu backs. The text in the box at the bottom of the ad reads, “This collection consists of a large assortment of colored lithographs of baseball players in the Southern, South Atlantic, Texas, and Virginia Leagues.”
Players from the Southern, South Atlantic, and Virginia Leagues were indeed printed with Hindu backs, but none of the Texas Leaguers were.
*It is believed that the T206 Hindu Ads were published exclusively in the New Orleans Times-Picayune
George McBride was the epitome of the “good-field, no-hit” shortstop. In fact, he owns the record for lowest career Batting Average for an player with more than 5,000 At Bats (.218). Because of his lack of hitting ability, it took a while for him to secure a starting job. Once he did so, he took the job and ran with it. From 1901 to 1907, he bounced around between 6 different Minor League teams, along with the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates.
In 1908 as a twenty-seven-year-old, McBride was finally given a chance to play full-time by the Washington Senators. He played 155 games at shortstop and turned in a Defensive WAR of 2.6, which was good for 2nd in the American League. Of course, WAR wasn’t a stat in use by any teams back then. However, McBride’s defensive prowess was such that the team didn’t need stats to recognize it. In 1909, he was named Captain of the Senators, a position he held for his entire tenure with the club*.
1908 was the beginning of a decade of unprecedented defensive wizardry from McBride. From 1908 to 1916, there was only one season in which he wasn’t in the Top 3 on the American League Defensive WAR leaderboard**. He placed 2nd in 1908 as well as 1910-11, then 1st in 1912-15. In 1916, his last season as a full-time player, he finished 3rd in the A.L. in Defensive WAR.
McBride’s glove was so valuable that it catapulted him into the Top Ten in WAR for Position Players in the A.L. twice, in spite of his bat. In 1908, his 4.5 WAR was good for 8th in the A.L. despite his paltry .232 Batting Average and .566 OPS. In 1910, his 4.9 WAR placed 7th in the A.L. His offensive output was similarly uninspiring in that season, a .230 Batting Average to go with a .609 OPS.
In 1917, he was replaced at shortstop by Howard Shanks and skipper Clark Griffith began to groom McBride as his successor. McBride played 50 games in 1917, and then less than 20 in 1918-20. In 1921, Griffith stepped away from his on-field duties and named McBride the new manager of the Washington Senators.
Sadly, he only managed one season (1921). He was injured when a baseball thrown by Earl Smith hit him in the head during pre-game warmups on July 27th. He wasn’t able to leave his bed for a week and continued to feel the effects of the injury. At the time, it wasn’t diagnosed as such, but he likely suffered a severe concussion. On December 6th 1921, he resigned as manager. Griffith offered him a job as a scout, but McBride turned it down for health reasons.
In 1925, he returned to baseball and served as Ty Cobb’s bench coach with the Detroit Tigers. In 1929, he retired from baseball at the relatively young age of 48. He made a complete recovery from the head injury and eventually passed away at the age of 92 in 1973.
*McBride played his final game with the Senators in 1920
**1909 was a bit of down year defensively for McBride. He didn’t even crack the Top 10 of Defensive WAR.
This trio of Piedmont 350s from the same sheet was sold recently by Huggins & Scott Auctions. Seeing them got me thinking about other cards that we know came from the same sheet. In his fantastic book, Inside T206, Scot Reader surmises that the total number of T206s produced could be over 100 million. Given this staggering estimate, it makes sense that finding two or more T206s that were printed on a single sheet is no easy task.
One of my favorite things about this set is that it lends itself very well to research. If you learn something about a certain pose or front/back combo, there is often a logical pattern to be followed, which will lead you to more discoveries. The same cannot really be said for today’s topic. Finding T206 sheet mates is very cool, but it usually is the result of random happenstance rather than a larger pattern. In that same vein, there will be little structure to this article. I mainly just wanted to post some of the coolest T206 sheet mates.
Most of the times that we’re able to trace multiple T206s back to the same sheet, they will be of the printer’s scrap variety. The reason for this is pretty simple. In order to make connections between two or more cards, there has to be something that makes them unique.
Take these Hoblitzell and Oakes Piedmont 350s. They showed up on eBay one day in a group of offerings from the same seller. I wasn’t able to find out anything about where they came from, but it doesn’t take much of a logical leap to assume they were cut from the same sheet and kept together all this time. Their large, hand-cut borders and darker-than-normal colors are a dead giveaway. I’m not sure there’s anything to be learned from them, but they sure are cool.
These three Blank Backs share a similar cut as well as adhesive residue on all four corners of the backs. They were clearly kept together in an album or frame for many years. They made their way to market via SCP auctions, where I was able to buy them and keep them together.
The “Lash’s Bitters” T206s are another example of printer’s scrap that work as puzzle pieces that help us to re-construct a sheet of T206 cards. I have an article in the works featuring these awesome scraps, so I’ll keep this description short. The back of these T206s was used as a test sheet for trade cards featuring “Lash’s Bitters”. The fronts look a little odd as well. They appear to be missing a layer of red.
T206 collector John Dreker was kind enough to send me scans of these four upside-down and mis-cut Piedmont 150s that he owns. He found Davis in a group of 40 cards he bought in 2000, then bought Tannehill, Doolin, and Cicotte together in the same group in 2002.
This group of cards has been dubbed the “Test Print Sheet”. As you can see, the backs have a lot going on.
Much like the Lash’s Bitters sheet above, the back of the sheet that Griffith, Lake, and O’Leary were on was used as a test sheet for a Twin Oaks Tobacco advertisement.
This quartet of Blank Backs are very likely to have originated from the same sheet.
Lena Blackburne appears in the T206 set with the Providence Grays, with whom he played in 1909 as a 22 year-old. He spent parts of the next five seasons with the Chicago White Sox before bouncing around the National League with Cincinnati, Boston, and Philadelphia in 1918-19. He is credited with playing one game with the White Sox in 1927, and another single game with the Sox in 1929, when he was the manager of the club. Blackburne managed the White Sox in 1928-29, to a 99-133 record over that span.
Clearly this article is not going to be about his playing days, though he was a baseball lifer who had a lengthy career as a coach and manager in both the Major and Minor Leagues. In addition to his managerial record shown below, he served as a coach on Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics ball clubs for the better part of 16 years between 1933 and 1948 (1933 through 1938, as well as 1940, 1942, 1943, 1947, and 1948).
Though his playing career was fairly nondescript, Blackburne left a lasting imprint on the game of baseball.
It all began in 1938 when an umpire complained to Lena Blackburne, a third base coach for the old Philadelphia Athletics, about the sorry condition of the baseballs used by the American League. Back then a ball was prepped simply with mud made of water and dirt from the playing field. The result? The ball’s cover was too soft, leaving it open for tampering. Something was needed to take off the shine but not soften the cover.
-http://baseballrubbingmud.com
Blackburne decided to try to tackle the problem. He returned to New Jersey and combed the tributaries of the Delaware River, looking for the perfect consistency of mud to rub down a baseball without making it wet. After some searching, he found just what he was looking for. He brought some of the mud to the ballpark and found that it worked perfectly. It took the sheen off the ball and allowed for an easier grip without adding water weight. It also had no odor, and didn’t turn the balls black.
Thus, Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud was born. By the end of 1938, every American League team was using his Rubbing Mud to prepare baseballs for use in games. Though the A.L. was using the mud in 1938, it wasn’t until the mid 1950’s that the National League began to use it. It wasn’t that the N.L. was slow to adopt the product though. Blackburne was a staunch American League supporter, and refused to sell his product to the National League for almost two decades.
The business still exists today, supplying Rubbing Mud to all MLB and MiLB teams. Small containers are available for sale to the general public. Upon Blackburne’s death in 1968, the company was willed to his close friend John Haas. Haas eventually turned the business over to his son-in-law Burns Bintliff. The company is currently run by Burns’ son Jim.
The exact spot where the mud is sourced remains a closely guarded secret.
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.
