The Raw Card Collection

I received another 7 raw T206 cards in the mail yesterday, bringing my total of unique raw T206 cards up to 100 even. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but having amassed nearly a full quarter of the Monster in beautiful raw and mostly beater form, I have to say I am curious about how far I can go here. The though of sticking them in sleeves in a binder has crossed my mind. Heck, I almost feel like going really old school and pasting them into a scrapbook. Talk about cool!

I really like having a stack of T206 cards around to sift through. It's a ton of fun and really is a different experience from sorting through a pile of slabbed cards. Don't get me wrong, I do still have a couple dozen slabbed goodies that I'll never crack out of their cases. But it's just another way of collecting. Perhaps I'll make some scans and start discussing this raw set in more detail...

The Trading Continues

I added a significant piece to my signed T206 collection today in what for all intents and purposes was probably the biggest blockbuster trade I've ever been a part of. I traded a huge collection of signed pre-war cards in order to acquire Jeff Morey's autographed T206 Sam Crawford (Batting) card. The good news is that they were all duplicates. But it was a significant chunk of my collection nonetheless. Still I am extremely excited about the opportunity to continue to add to my signed T206 collection and, as important, put back together some of the highlights of Morey's old collection. Nothing will compare to Morey's Cobb collection, but putting Clarke and Crawford back next to each other is a significant feat. And the process will continue!

From Autographed T206

More T201s - Doyle and Wheat

These have eluded me for a little while. The seller had them on ebay for what seems like a few months, but with BINs that were, frankly, a little too high for me. Obviously, the prices were a little too high for the other collectors, too. Fortunately, the seller decided to relist them last week, and just let the market set the price -- and I won them both. I can't wait to get them!

From Autographed T201

From Autographed T201

Very happy about adding all these in one lot at the last White Plains show. At some point I'll update my website to include all this stuff, but for the time being wanted to share here. I believe John Wagner was one of the pioneers of by-mail autograph seeking, along with, e.g., Jeff Morey. Nice little lot and, of course, the reason I nabbed it was it came with a signed T206 of Sno. At some point I'll probably pick up a signed 3x5 so I can complete the list of items referenced in the letter.

From Misc. Pre-War

From Misc. Pre-War

From Autographed T206

Back of photo:

From Misc. Pre-War

Fred Snodgrass Collection

I am putting together a nice collection of Snodgrass material. I recently acquired a signed letter, personal envelope, signed T206 card and signed b&w photo all from the same collection -- and the best part is the letter references the T206 card that he signed. Pretty neat stuff.

I'll post a scan and some other minutiae when I get the chance.

T206 Biography Book in the Works

Received an exciting email today about a project to publish the personal histories of the players featured in the T206 set. The book, entitled The T206 Collection: The Players and Their Stories, is scheduled for release in April 2010. From the email:

"Along with beautiful pictorials and card images, the reader will have information on the personal and professional stats on each player, as well as a little narrative on the players' contribution to our National Pastime. Players like Lena Blackburne and Freddy Parent made huge contributions to the game of baseball, and now their story is being told."

The book was created by Tom Zappala of ATS Communications along with Joe Orlando, President of PSA and Peter Randall Publishing.

Look for it soon!

Nap Rucker Finally Comes Home To Roost

I've had a few different chances at this card -- when it sold on ebay for under $100, I passed on it because I didn't see the signature very well. When it turned out to be authentic, I passed on it again from a different collector, who opted to list it in Huggins and Scott. When it sold there, it sold to a higher bidder than me, when it's price tag seemed, well, unreasonable to me. But I finally came up with the right trade bait and NOW IT IS MINE! Hoorah!

From Autographed T206

Signed T206 Clarke

Originally from the Jeff Morey collection, by way of a trade with a very generous collector.

From Autographed T206

Jeff Morey's "Lost" Cards -- Help Me Find Them!

I received a wonderful package in the mail from Jeff Morey. It was a four page photo copy of a large portion of his signed pre-war card collection, representing many of the cards he consigned to Mastro Auctions circa 2001. I have cut and pasted the cards into the various appropriate sections on my website, and invite you to view the entire package on the Morey Interview page, towards the bottom.

Spectacular cards -- even in black and white. If you know of the whereabouts of any of these, you simply must let me know.

Big Trade In The Works

After months and months of negotiating and false starts, I am on the precipice of a really big trade for a signed T206 card that I do not already have. It has proven to be quite the challenge. Even just finding the owner of the card that I knew was out there somewhere is somewhat of a miracle. But to finally compile a collection of cards that was worthy of a trade took a lot of time and effort. And it will not be without its victims. If the trade goes through as planned, I will have to give up my signed T202 of Zach Wheat. I really do not want to do this, but when I had an opportunity to pick up another signed T206 card, I had to take that leap. For while I really loved my signed T202, I am not a T202 collector. I am a T206 collector. And one cannot lose collecting focus.

When the card is safely in hand, I will share more details and, of course, a scan of this beautiful card. Stay tuned.....

White Plains Show

Headed over the East Coast National at the Westchester County Center over the weekend and picked up 29 T206 cards for a reasonable price. Now I'm back over the century mark in my renewed pursuit of the Monster.

I have found that I really enjoy collecting the set in raw, low grade, but presentable, form. Sifting through a 100 deep stack of T206 cards is really a pleasure, regardless of condition. And I'd rather have 100 T206 cards in any condition than 10 SGC 60 commons. So, for the time being, I'll keep accruing them that way.

I also made a couple of leads on signed pre-war cards. Stay tuned....

Need To Sell The Unsigned To Pay For The Signed

I need to fund some recent signed T206 purchases and so am selling this beauty on ebay.

X is for Ty Xobb?

I've often thought it too bad that T206 does not have a single player whose last name begins with the letter X. Oh, there are a million and one Bs and Ms in the T206 set -- but nary an X. But here's a quick T206 trivia question -- how many T206 Players do not share a last name beginning with the same letter as another T206'er? The answer is 4. The next question is -- can you name them without checking?

I'll give you a few more lines of text so as to give you a chance to think about it without seeing the answer -- at least not so obviously. Here, I'll give you a hint -- they begin with the letter I, U, V and Z. There you have it -- which 4 players of the T206 set have last names beginning with I, U, V and Z? If you're reading this blog, I'm sure you have figured it out by now. If not -- well, then here are the answers: Isbell, Unglaub, Violat and Zimmerman.

Like I've said before, I enjoy playing alphabet games with T206. And if and when you do, just remember those 4 guys. And if you really want to stump them, then you should know that the only player in T206 with an X anywhere in his name is Jeff Pfeffer, whose real name was Francis Xavier Pfeffer.

Went to Maine for My Annual Family Vacation

...and during a rainy day headed over to Don's Sports Cards in Portland. As luck would have it, he had 3 T206 cards -- all beaters -- and I bought two of them for $25.00 total. Pretty cool. Wasn't expecting to add to my raw T206 set during my vacation, but I'll take 'em -- a Doc White throwing and an Ed Hahn.

Also managed to score a new signed T206 of Rube Marquard (portrait). Yes, I already have that one, but when there are no new ones hitting the market, I still get a substantial charge out of acquiring doubles. So if you've got any I have and want to part with, please let me know about it. And thanks to everyone that keeps me up to speed on the existence of signed pre-WWI cards in auctions and on B/S/T threads on Net54.

Authentic & Pretty vs Beater & Unaltered

Would you prefer to have an authentic, but trimmed T206 card with sharp corners and no creases; or the same card with multiple creases but no alterations? I will always side with the creased card. For me, the card should reflect its natural state of progression from the factory. It should not have been prettied up by someone.

Don't get me wrong, I will permit some cleaning -- e.g., removing glue or gunk from the back of a card, or erasing a pencil mark -- but I draw the line at someone intentionally trying to pretty up a card. Light cleaning with water or an art eraser, on the other hand, is undoing, to some degree, the ugly alterations of gluing a card into a scrap book or writing in pencil on a card. It is not altering the factory issued card in any way, and it is not trying to improve the natural age of the card. The intent is not to remove creases or restore factory condition. The intent is to remove the subsequently added junk.

What about restored cards? In that case I'll also take the beater every time. Otherwise, all you have is a semi-reprint; a recycled paper card. Though it is interesting to note that restoration is common and accepted practice in the art world. How did we wind up with this dichotomy? Why are the Rembrandt collectors less "puritanical" than the Wagner collectors? Perhaps the answer lies in the condition factor of a multi-issued set. While each Rembrandt is an original single-print 1-of-1, there are usually many multiples of the same baseball card -- condition provides the scale by which to value the multi-prints.

If you've got any beater T206s to sell, feel free to drop me an email -- SignedT206@gmail.com. I'm making a low-condition / collector-grade run at the Monster.

Signed Cracker Jacks

I recently had the pleasure of adding a couple more signed Cracker Jacks to my website. While I do not own any of them, it is still rather exciting for me to unearth these treasures for the better enjoyment of the collecting public. Once upon a time, I only knew of Amos Strunk. But now I've got dupes of Marquard, a Rousch and a Hooper. Only time will tell how many more of these are out there. And in the meantime, I will continue to try to pry one example away from one of these lucky owners to add to my collection.

A is for Abbaticchio

Sometimes, when I am lying in bed at night and I can't sleep, I do the T206 version of counting sheep -- I go alphabetically through the set, one player per letter. With A, I always start with Abbaticchio. Without pondering too long you might think he comes first in all of Baseball with an AB beginning -- but let's not forget Hank Aaron. And, to be fair, current player David Aardsma deserves to be credited with the first name in the baseball alphabet -- beating Aaron by a "D" to an "O" in letter 4 of the name.

Anyway, back to Mr. Abbaticchio. No -- he does not share a nickname with a Swedish Rock Group (ABBA). His nickname was Batty. And not because he was a particularly good hitter (lifetime .254). He was probably just a bit loony. But Abbaticchio deserves some historical mention for the following reasons:

- He was the first Major League Baseball player and first professional football player of Italian ancestry.
- He played for Pittsburgh Pirates on their 1909 World Series team (though he struck out in his only at-bat).
- In 1895 he was a member of the first professional football team in the United States -- the Latrobe Athletic Association football team -- where he starred as a fullback and kicker. In this regard, he is often credited with developing the first spiral punt.

So everytime you organize your T206 cards with Mr. Abbaticchio on top, you'll have a little historic ammunition to enhance your appreciation.

The Thrill of the Hunt

I have noticed an interesting collecting phenomenon that I will refer to as the "Thrill of the Hunt." Basically, this applies to the feeling you get when you see -- maybe in an on-line auction or at a show or wherever -- a card you have been searching for. It refers to the moment in time between discovering the card is available and the actual moment of potential purchase. I have found that I enjoy card collecting quite a bit more than an average day during that period.

Since I began searching for signed T206 cards, the availability of ones I don't have has gotten to basically nil. So in the rare instance I see one come available, I really enjoy the process of putting together an offer or trade proposal and seeing if the card can be mine. But it is also a time of struggle, because I usually have to give up more money or cards than I really feel comfortable with. Still, the thrill is there and it is really one of the main reasons I collect.

Yard Sale

I had a yard sale over the weekend. I put out a table filled with boxes and boxes of new (1980-present) shiny baseball cards. I even had some 70's stuff and, for fun, a beat up 1940 Play Ball common. While my yard sale did rather well, I sold more beat up old comic books than baseball cards. But I did manage to sell a 1987 Donruss PSA 9 McGwire for $5.00; a 1996 Score Yankees Team Set for $5.00; and a 1994 Emotion Rookies ARod for $2.00. That was it -- $12.00 in baseball card sales. Even though I had a box of 3,000 commons priced for $15.00 -- nobody even made an offer on that. Anybody got any bright ideas of where to unload commons by the penny or even nano-penny?

I had a couple of T206 reprints on my table (Cobb Red Back and Young Throwing), which drew some eyes. One guy said he loved old tobacco cards, and so I showed him my autographed T201 Nap Rucker and T202 Davy Jones cards, which I had inside and easy to access (most of my "good stuff" resides in a safety deposit box). He was really impressed by those, but I ain't parting with them anytime soon -- let alone at a Yard Sale!

I know sometimes people talk about great Yard Sale finds. Anyone ever have any luck (or fun) selling pre-war cards at a Yard Sale? I'm not talking about setting up at the local flea market or church attic sale. I'm talking about a solo table in front of your house.

Raw Cards and Signed Cards

I am steadily adding to my raw T206 collection, with about 25 or so new examples over the past few months. It is refreshing to hold a pile of T206 cards, free to thumb through them over and over again -- as opposed to a clunky, heavy slab. Don't get be entirely wrong, I still love my slabbed cards -- hey, that's why I have held on to them. But the joy of quickly sifting or shuffling through a deck of T206 cards with one hand is hard to match with slabs.

I am also considering parting with some of my non-T206 signed cards in order to acquire a signed T206 signed card I own. This will be a hard decision, but my ultimate view may be that no stone should be left unturned when it comes to adding to a signed T206 card collection -- even if it means parting with a T201 or T202 of a favorite player. But I really don't know. I'm still mulling that one over. Stay tuned.....

The "Raw" Appeal of T206 Cards

I have started to amass a somewhat substantial lot of raw T206 cards in varying degrees of low-grade-ness. And I have to say, I really enjoy flipping through them as a stack. Having been relegated in my prior T206 set to thumbing through columns of SGC slabs -- some of which I still, happily, own -- I had started to miss the feel of quickly flipping through a stack of 30 or 40 T206 cards, piled on top of each other in thin sleeved holders.

Every couple of weeks, I pick up a few more and and to the pile. It's been really enjoyable and especially affordable. I don't like thinking how long it would take to reconstitute an entire run of 520 of them, but if I could average 10 or so a month for 5 years, well, then I'd be there, I suppose. But a lot can happen in that time!

Monogamously T206

I am basically a monogamous T206 collectors. Sure, sometimes I will read general pre-war card discussion because it broadens my perspective on T206. And, I have occasionally moved outside of T206, but it is always a brief sojourn. I keep getting pulled back, so to speak. Though, full disclaimer, I do have a few non-T206 autographed pre-war cards. I guess that means I have two different collecting interests -- T206 and signed pre-WWI cards.

I have often thought of why I am so faithfully devoted to just T206. To be honest I am not sure I can put it into words. Though I have noticed that one of the reasons I collect that way is because the Monster is so huge that any attempts to collect other cards are really only distracting from the ultimate goal -- which is completeness (however possible) of the set.

Still, I do love my signed T201s. I can't ever really imagine parting with them unless a trade for another signed T206 card I don't have was on the table.

T206 Injustice -- Fiene Gets Two; Mack Gets None?

Born on December 22, 1862 in East Brookfield, MA, Cornelius Alexander McGillicuddy, a.k.a. Connie Mack, would have been 145 years old if he were alive today. One of the greatest managers of all time, it is hard to understand why so many of Mack's contemporary managers were featured on T206 -- e.g., John McGraw (3 cards), Hughie Jennings (3 cards) and Hugh Duffy (1 card), to name a few -- but Mack got no T206 card. Some have suggested that the reason for this is similar to the reason that Plank has such a short lifespan in T206, i.e., that there was a Philadelphia Athletics licensing issue of some sort. For whatever reason, Mack fans need to look beyond T206 (to E96 or Cracker Jack, for example) to find a baseball card rendition of the "The Tall Tactician."

On this same date in 1964, Lou Fiene passed away. Known as “Big Finn,” Fiene had a very short career as a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox, from 1906-1909. Having recorded just 26 games and 138.0 innings pitched over his brief Major League career, Fiene was out of Major League Baseball before his 25th birthday. He played his final game on August 15, 1909. Given the brevity of his career, it is surprising that the manufacturers of T206 cards decided to include two poses of Fiene.

That Lou Fiene gets two T206 cards and Connie Mack gets none may be one of the greatest injustices done by the manufacturers of T206 cards. (Obviously, if the T206 publishers were facing lawsuits from Philadelphia then the injustice is certainly justified.) Coincidentally, Fiene died on Mack's birthday -- December 22 -- just three days prior to Christmas.

Okay, I have now linked...

....my website to www.blogger.com to hopefully create a more comfortable blogging atmosphere. Stay tuned....

I am going to try to bring my blog into the 21st Century, with the ability to "comment" on my blogs. Hopefully this will create a nice dialogue about all things T206, and prompt me to post to my T206 blog a little bit more frequently. Let me know what you think!