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Cycle 460: Overlooked and Undervalued (Part Four): Cycle 460 v.s. American Beauty 460

For the last installment of this series, we’re going to take a look at how the the Cycle 460 Subset compares to the American Beauty 460 Subset in terms of scarcity.  There are 75* poses in the American Beauty 460 Subset and 109 in the Cycle 460 Subset.  All 75* poses in the American Beauty 460 Subset were also printed with Cycle 460 backs.  Because of this, we have a nice large sample of poses to use for comparison.

Checklists for each back, courtesy of T206resource.com:

Cycle 460

American Beauty 460

My Hypothesis:

Before beginning to research the Pop Reports, I had the following expectation:  I thought that overall, there would be more American Beauty 460s in the PSA Pop Report than Cycle 460s.  The main reason for this is the “Exclusive 12”.  These 12 poses are quite plentiful with American Beauty 460, in stark contrast to the other poses in the subset.  Part of the reason I wanted to publish this series of articles was to show people how Cycle 460s are definitively scarcer than American Beauty 460 in an aggregate sense.  However, I knew certain American Beauty 460 poses are near impossible to find, while the average Cycle 460 pose is scarce, but not bordering on unique.  I was expecting to find if I removed the Exclusive 12 poses from the data, the remaining American Beauty 460s would have a lower Pop than the Cycle 460s.  Let’s take a look at the data I compiled below.

Explanation of Research**:

19 of the 75 poses in the American Beauty 460 Subset were also printed with an American Beauty 350 No Frame back.  Because PSA used a generic “American Beauty” label for a number of years, there’s no way to differentiate between American Beauty 350 No Frame and American Beauty 460 for those 19 poses.  Which that left me with 56 poses to research.  I began by creating a table with all 56 poses, located below.  The “Exclusive 12” poses are highlighted in yellow.

As you can see, American Beauty 460 backs outnumber Cycle 460s by a fairly large margin.  But take a look at the highlighted entries.  The “Exclusive 12” have skewed the data so much that it looks like Cycle 460 is the scarcer back.  And it doesn’t look close.  In an aggregate sense, Cycle 460 is the scarcer back.  Cycle 460 should be ranked above American Beauty 460 on a Back Scarcity Ranking list.  But, if we remove the outliers (the Exclusive 12 poses) from the data, is Cycle 460 still the scarcer back?

This table consists of 44 poses (the 56 poses above, minus the Exclusive 12 poses).  It gives us a much clearer picture of the situation.  It appears from this set of data that the remaining American Beauty 460 poses are scarcer than the remaining Cycle 460 poses.  Because the totals are so close, these results don’t necessarily prove anything.  However, I think it’s safe to conclude that Exclusive 12 poses aside, American Beauty 460 and Cycle 460 poses exist in very similar quantities.

*At the moment, there is some question as to whether Ames Hands Above Head actually exists with American Beauty 460 back.  For now, it is in the checklist, and I included the pose in the research.  In the future I could see it being removed from the checklist if no collectors are able to find one.

**Throughout this series of articles, I have used only the PSA Pop Reports to test the hypothesis.  I chose to do this for a couple different reasons.  First, the PSA Pop Report is a little easier (and quicker) to use when checking a number of different players with the same back.  Secondly, there can be some confusion on the SGC Pop Reports when a player has one pose that was printed with a Brown Hindu back and another pose that was printed with a Red Hindu back.  The same holds true for American Beauty 350 With Frame & American Beauty 350 No Frame.  I wanted to have data that was completely uniform and I didn’t want to use any entry that included any ambiguity.

Cycle 460: Overlooked and Undervalued (Part Three): Cycle 460 v.s. American Beauty 350 No Frame

This week I’m going to be taking a look at how the Cycle 460 subset compares to the American Beauty 350 No Frame subset.  T206resource.com has American Beauty 350 No Frame as the 15th scarcest back in the T206 set, and Cycle 460 as the 17th.  It’s important to remember that back scarcity lists such as the one posted on T206resource.com are an attempt to list the backs in order of aggregate scarcity.  In other words, this list is simply saying less American Beauty 350 No Frame backs exist than Cycle 460 backs.

Attempting to compare the overall populations of these two backs is a little bit tricky because the checklists are of such dissimliar size.  As mentioned in Part Two of this series, the Cycle 460 Subset consists of 109 different poses, while there are only 37 poses in the American Beauty 350 No Frame checklist.  What this means is that there are 2.95 times (but I’ll round it up to 3x for simplicity’s sake) more poses in the Cycle 460 subset than in the American Beauty 350 No Frame Subset.  So, in order for these two backs to have a similar total population, the average individual American Beauty 350 No Frame pose would have to be about 3 times as plentiful as the average Cycle 460 pose.

My Hypothesis:

That 3:1 ratio actually sounded about right to me before I began to research the Pop Report.  I expecting to find a ratio at or around 3:1 and it wouldn’t have surprised me to find that it was even higher (meaning that Cycle 460 backs are scarcer than American Beauty 350 No Frame).  Let’s take a look at the table below to see what the actual results look like.

Links to checklists, courtesy of t206resource.com:

Cycle 460

American Beauty 350 No Frame

Explanation of Research*:

In Part Two of this series, when comparing Brown Hindu Populations to Cycle 460 Populations, I had to use two different poses of the same player.  This is because there is no crossover between poses in the Brown Hindu and Cycle 460 subsets.  Brown Hindu backs were printed exclusively on 150-350 Series subjects in 1909 while Cycle 460 backs were printed in 1911 and feature only poses from the 350-460 Series, 460 Only Series, and the Super Prints.

The research for this article is a bit more straightforward, because we can look at a single pose rather than two different poses featuring the same player.  36 of the 37 poses in the American Beauty 350 No Frame Subset were also printed with a Cycle 460 back**.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use PSA Pop Report data for all 36 poses.  Most of the poses that were printed with an American Beauty 350 No Frame back were also printed with an American Beauty 460 back.  Because PSA used a generic “American Beauty” label for a number of years, it’s impossible to get reliable Pop Report data for the players who were printed with both backs***.  This meant I had to use just the poses in the American Beauty 350 No Frame Subset that were not also printed with an American Beauty 460 back.  That left me with the 15 poses in the table below.

As you can see, the PSA Population of American Beauty 350 No Frames outnumber Cycle 460s 148 to 65, for a ratio of 2.28:1.  This falls short of the 3:1 ratio required for the total Populations of each back to be roughly equal.  I was expecting to find the Cycle 460 Population marginally scarcer than American Beauty 350 No Frame. However, the results strongly indicate that American Beauty 350 No Frame backs are indeed scarcer than Cycle 460 backs.

*Throughout this series of articles, I have used only the PSA Pop Reports to test the hypothesis.  I chose to do this for a couple different reasons.  First, the PSA Pop Report is a little easier (and quicker) to use when checking a number of different players with the same back.  Secondly, there can be some confusion on the SGC Pop Reports when a player has one pose that was printed with a Brown Hindu back and another pose that was printed with a Red Hindu back.  The same holds true for American Beauty 350 With Frame & American Beauty 350 No Frame.  I wanted to have data that was completely uniform and I didn’t want to use any entry that included any ambiguity.

**The lone exception is Simon Nichols batting, which was pulled from production before Cycle 460 backs were printed.

***In a previous article entitled “Understanding the American Beauty backs: T206 American Beauty 350 no frame (Part 3/4)“, I used both the PSA and SGC Pop Reports in order to make an educated guess at the total graded population of each pose in the American Beauty 350 No Frame subset.

Cycle 460: Overlooked and Undervalued (Part One)

It seems to me that Cycle 460s don’t get the respect they deserve.  Over the last few years, I’ve felt that I was seeing Cycle 460s less often than the other “mid-tier” backs such as Hindu, Piedmont Factory 42, and American Beauty 350 No Frame.  So I decided to do some research to see if my observations were supported by the Pop Reports.

In this series, I’ll be focusing on the scarcest of the “Mid-Tier Backs”, that is:

Tier 1 Backs:
  • American Beauty 460
  • Cycle 460
  • Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42*
Tier 2 Backs:
  • American Beauty 350 No Frame
  • Brown Hindu

In my opinion, there is a clear divide between these 5 backs** and the backs above and below them in terms of scarcity.  There is a large gap in scarcity and value between any of these 5 backs and Carolina Brights, which is significantly scarcer and more valuable.  Likewise, I feel there is a gap below these 5 backs before you get to Tolstoi and Sovereign 460.

A couple of weeks back, I published a two-part article which gave an overview of the “Mid-Tier” Backs, which can be read by clicking the links below:

A Look at the “Mid-Tier” T206 Backs: Tier 1

A Look at the “Mid-Tier” T206 Backs: Tiers 2 & 3

Here are the back scarcity rankings from T206resource.com.  This is a really well put together list, and it’s a great place to start.  I think collectors as a whole have overlooked Cycle 460 and it’s my contention that it needs to move up four or five rungs on this list (and others like it).  I’d also move Sovereign 460 down a couple rungs, but I agree with the vast majority of this list.

Before I get into the research, there are a couple of points I want to address:

First, not all of the mid-tier backs are easy to analyze.  American Beauty 460 is an odd subset because there are 12 poses that are quite easy to find, while the rest of the poses range from tough-to-find to near impossible.  This makes is hard to compare American Beauty 460 to Cycle 460 backs, which have a much more even distribution.  American Beauty 350 No Frame offers a different challenge in terms of comparison.  The AB 350nf subset contains only 37 cards, which is 34% the size of the Cycle 460 checklist (109 cards).

In an aggregate sense, the two backs may have similar scarcity.   However, when looking at specific poses, there will typically be two or three times as many cards with AB350nf backs in the Pop Report than Cycle 460s of the same pose.  This makes it tough to compare Cycle 460 and AB350nf, but I tackle that challenge anyway in Part Three of this series.  In addition, Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42 backs have not been catalogued very well by PSA or SGC over the years, so neither Pop Report is of much use in researching this back.

Secondly, the way the PSA and SGC Pop Reports are set up makes it easy to research certain things but difficult to research others.  For instance it’s difficult to get accurate PSA Pop numbers for a Cycle 460 Chance Yellow Portrait, because PSA used a generic “Cycle” label for a few years, so it’s impossible to know which of those are Cycle 350 and which are Cycle 460.  You run into the same problem for all the poses that have both AB350nf and AB460 backs.  The SGC Pop Report presents a different challenge.  It is easy to tell an AB350nf from an AB460 because the former will be labeled “1910” and the latter “1911”.  However, if a player has two different poses and one was printed with American Beauty 350 With Frame and the other was printed with American Beauty 350 No Frame, it will often be impossible to differentiate between the two in the SGC Pop Report.

Using Pop Reports in an attempt to prove hypotheses can be a little problematic because not all cards in existence have been slabbed, and not all slabbed cards correctly indicate the back.  However, I feel that if you compare two like subject groups and the sample size is large enough, Pop Report data can be very accurate and useful.  You’ll see in Part Two of this series how I use just PSA Pop Report Data and I am able to prove my hypothesis without any doubt due to the sample size and the results of my research.

In this series, I am attempting to answer the following questions:

  • “Which of the Mid-Tier backs is the scarcest?”
  • “What is the order of scarcity for these 5 Mid-Tier backs we are looking at?”

Please stay tuned for the rest of this series:

  • Part Two:  Cycle 460 v.s. Brown Hindu
  • Part Three:  Cycle 460 v.s. American Beauty 350 no frame
  • Part Four:  Cycle 460 v.s. American Beauty 460

*Ideally there would be a Part Five, where I compare Cycle 460 to Piedmont Factory 42, but the lack of Pop Report Data available for Piedmont Factory 42 means I have no way to present any meaningful findings with regard to that back.

**I also think Sweet Caporal 350-460 Factory 25 belongs somewhere in this conversation, but the lack of data available makes that impossible.  Additionally, the fact that collectors don’t care too much about this back makes them fly under the radar even more.

T206 Misspelled Names: Sorry Pal, We Got Your Name Wrong!

I’m pleased to bring you another fun guest article from my friend Scott Gross.  Thanks Scott!  Enjoy!

If you’re lucky enough to get a Baseball card, you would like to think the producers would get your name spelled correctly. Well, with T206s, that was not always the case. Of the 524 cards in the set, there are 24 misspelled names. Maybe that isn’t so bad considering that T206s were one of the first, and certainly biggest issues of the day. Also, these were cheap advertising, so getting them into circulation could easily have been more important than 100% correctness. Have to cut them some slack.

The list below was taken from the grand website t206resource.com (as well as Print Group information). I did exclude three names off their list. Two McGraws and LaPorte. In my opinion the gaps between McGraw and Mc Graw, and LaPorte and La Porte are not significant misspellings.

Of course, the most famous misspelling is that of Magie. This mistake was corrected very early on in Print Group 1(to the correct Magee). So early that the Magie card is much rarer, and sought after by many T206 collectors. My first thought when thinking about this article was Magie/Magee was done just because he was the only Print Group 1 card. Figuring that the producers wanted everything done right in this initial printing. This is not correct. In fact, there are eight other misspellings in Group 1.

Now, arguably most of these are not household names. Good, decent players, but maybe not good enough to double check them in production. The one that jumps out at me the most is Brown/Browne. He was about the same level of player as Magee. Both were everyday outfielders for non-pennant winning teams, and had similar stats between 1904-09 (Browne, NY National, 275 BA; Magee, Philadelphia National, 291 BA). So why was Magie corrected and not Brown ? Who knows !!!

Another oddity is the trio of Goode, Livingstone, and Violat. Where the correct names are, in general, more popular spellings. Almost had to go out of their way to be wrong. However, with most others, the different ways of spelling are probably close to even. I wish I had an old phone book (remember those ??!!) to verify that.

The ones I find the most interesting are those who have multiple cards, and yet have both correct and incorrect spellings:

Doolin is misspelled on his Portrait from the 150-350 Series. However, was corrected in his later Bat and Fielding cards. Same with Magee Fielding, and Meyers Portrait. Being misspelled initially, and then corrected.

Then, there are my favorites. The ones where the player’s name was originally correct, yet later poses were changed to incorrect !!!!!

Nicholls hands on knees is correct in his first printing, then incorrect (Nichols), on the subsequent batting pose. The same for the initially correct Willett batting, which was followed by the incorrectly spelled Willetts (throwing). Just couldn’t leave well enough alone. The most bizarre, is Mullen/Mullin. Who goes from correct (Mullin throwing) in Print Group 1, to incorrect (Mullen portrait) in Group 2, then back to correct (Mullin with bat) in Group 3.

Finally, let us not for get good old Harry Lentz, who’s correct name is Sentz. At least the others are recognizable …………….. “Sorry, buddy, we misspelled your name!!!!!”

Written by Scott Gross

George Stone’s Monster 1906 Season

T206 George Stone Old Mill

George Stone came out of nowhere in 1905 as a 28 year-old rookie.  Well, not exactly nowhere.  He spent the entire 1904 season in Milwaukee, dominating the American Association.  It’s hard to believe he stayed in the Minors all year given the stats he was putting up.  He hit .406 with a .558 Slugging Percentage to go with 36 Doubles, 19 Triples, and 7 Home Runs.  Prior the the 1905 season, he had played just 2 games in the Major Leagues, both with the Boston Red Sox in 1903.

In 1905, he played in every single game for the St. Louis Browns.  That in itself is pretty impressive, but more importantly, he played at an extremely high level.  A rundown of his achievements in 1905 is enough to make your head spin.  He led the AL in Plate Appearances (691), Hits (187) and Total Bases (259).  His .296 Batting Average ranked 6th and his .756 On Base Plus Slugging Percentage ranked 4th among American Leaguers.  A rookie in the truest sense of the word, George Stone posted the 4th highest Offensive WAR (4.8) in the AL.

Stone’s T3 Turkey Red Cabinet

Following Stone’s stellar 1905 campaign, expectations were no doubt high for him in 1906.  However, I can’t imagine that anyone expected what came next.

In less Plate Appearances (658 v.s. 691 in 1905) George Stone put up one of the most impressive offensive displays of the Deadball Era.  He led the AL in Batting Average (.358), On Base Percentage (.417), Slugging Percentage (.501) and OPS (.918).

George Stone E92 Nadja Caramel

His 91 Runs Scored were 5th in the AL and his 71 Runs Batted in were good for 6th.  He again led the league in Total Bases. this time with an astounding 291.  His 208 Hits were 2nd only to Lajoie’s 214.  Stone’s 20 triples trailed only Elmer Flick among American Leaguers.  He finished third in the AL in Home Runs with 6, which trailed Harry Davis’ 12 and Charlie Hickman’s 9.

George Stone’s historic 1906 season was worth 8.7 Wins Above Replacement, which ranked 3rd in the AL behind only Nap Lajoie’s 10.0 and Terry Turner’s 9.4.  Take only offensive metrics into consideration, and Stone’s year at the plate looks even better.  His Offensive Wins Above Replacement of 7.9 ranked 1st in the American League.  This time he edged out Lajoie’s 7.6.  Flick was a distant 3rd at 6.2 and Harry Davis and Turner tied for 4th at 5.2.

Stone had another great year with the Browns in 1907.  He hit .320 and put up an OPS of .787.  In 1908 he took a step back, but still posted a solid campaign with a .281 Batting Average and .714 OPS.  He played his final major league game in 1910 at the age of 33.  Stone is one of many Deadball Era stars who had short careers.  He only played 6 season of Major League ball (7 if you count the two games he played in 1903) but he definitely left his mark on the sport.

Today, many T206 collectors look at a George Stone card and think “common”.  But the truth is he was anything but.

T206 Donie Bush With Interesting Print Mark – But Only On the Rarest Backs?

High resolution scan of the Broad Leaf 350

Monday 4/17/2017:

Continuing with the recent theme of examining print oddities and errors, here is a Donie Bush with rare Broad Leaf 350 back that has a unique print error.  The area directly to the left of his glove appears to be missing the gray ink for his uniform, and as a result it looks pink to the naked eye.  As of now, this is the only known copy of Bush with a Broad Leaf 350 back, so there aren’t any others to compare this one to.

However, I was chatting with a friend about this card, and he sent me this scan, of a Donie Bush Carolina Brights that he once owned.  Note the the print defect in exactly the same spot.  I had examined a high resolution scan of the Broad Leaf and was convinced that the spot was missing ink, rather than altered in some way.  Often, when you see mark that looks like this, it will have been created by a eraser.  This Carolina Brights scan serves as a nice confirmation that both cards were printed with the pink spot at the factory.

Upon being alerted as to the existence of this Carolina Brights card, I began to scour the internet looking for other examples with the same “pink spot”.  What I found was quite surprising.  So far, I have not found a single copy of Bush with a common back that exhibits the flaw.  No Piedmont, Sweet Caporal, Polar Bear, Old Mill, or Sovereign backs that I found had the “pink spot”.  However, the lone Cycle 350 that I found did have it:

Wednesday 4/19/2017:

After finding the Cycle 350 scan, I spent the next couple days looking for other examples of the “pink spot”.  I posted a thread on net54 asking for scans and reached out to a few friends.  The net54 query paid off immediately when long-time back collector Brian Weisner reached out to me with scans of the Carolina Brights above, and an American Beauty below, which does not have the print flaw.  Brian told me that the “pink spot” appears on 2 of the 5 Donie Bush Carolina Brights that are known to exist.

This American Beauty does not exhibit the “pink spot” print anomaly

At that point, I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t find any common backs with the print flaw, but that changed when Pat Romolo joined the search.  Pat is the foremost expert in T206 Print Oddities/Anomalies.  Many of you are probably familiar with Pat’s Piedmont 150 Plate Scratch Project (ironically the thread was started by Steve Birmingham, who is the foremost expert on the printing process(es) used to create T206s) .  If not, you should definitely check it out.

Pat noted that Bush shares the same back profile as George McBride.  McBride has a print anomaly that Pat has been following, which he he has dubbed the “blue flame”.  McBride’s print anomaly has been found on the following backs:

So, theoretically with enough searching we may be able to find the “pink spot” anomaly on these same five backs above.  Later in the afternoon, Pat emailed me with the following scan:

At that point, my theory that the “pink spot” would only be found with the rarest backs was proven incorrect.  I’ll keep my eye out for more copies with this anomaly, and possibly post an update sometime in the future.  As of now, I have not seen a scan of a Piedmont 350 with the “pink spot” but based on the existence of the SC 350/30 above, I imagine there are some out there.

The T206 George Gibson with Ghost Image That Sold Last Weekend

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.