The T206 set is where the famous Honus Wagner card comes from.
Several decades ago, my friend Ray and I went to a card collector's house in our Vermont hometown and the guy ended up giving me a handful of T206s. They were in average shape at best, as though someone had carried them around in his back pocket for a weekend or two. I picked up a few more along the way and ended up with 36 of them (including the Three-Finger Brown pictured here).
Why we went to this card guy's house, I do not recall. He worked at IBM and lived out by the middle school we were likely still attending. When I went to Vermont two months ago, I asked Ray about it, hoping he might remember some details (this was when I thought I might include some of my own card history in my review of Cardboard Gods). But Ray started asking me the same questions I wanted answers to. He thought we were in the eighth grade or so, which would have been the fall of 1976. I guess we were there to maybe fill some gaps in our burgeoning collections (but how we found out about this guy or how we arranged to go over there, I have no idea). It was a Sunday, there was football on the television, and stacks of cards everywhere.
Ray was interested in the 1971 Topps series, with the black border.
Several decades ago, my friend Ray and I went to a card collector's house in our Vermont hometown and the guy ended up giving me a handful of T206s. They were in average shape at best, as though someone had carried them around in his back pocket for a weekend or two. I picked up a few more along the way and ended up with 36 of them (including the Three-Finger Brown pictured here).
Why we went to this card guy's house, I do not recall. He worked at IBM and lived out by the middle school we were likely still attending. When I went to Vermont two months ago, I asked Ray about it, hoping he might remember some details (this was when I thought I might include some of my own card history in my review of Cardboard Gods). But Ray started asking me the same questions I wanted answers to. He thought we were in the eighth grade or so, which would have been the fall of 1976. I guess we were there to maybe fill some gaps in our burgeoning collections (but how we found out about this guy or how we arranged to go over there, I have no idea). It was a Sunday, there was football on the television, and stacks of cards everywhere.
Ray was interested in the 1971 Topps series, with the black border.
I ended up selling my cards (baseball, football, basketball, hockey, everything) in 1983. This was right before the card business took off like a rocket, so that was some fine fucking timing on my part. But I had not been buying cards for a couple of years and I desperately needed the money. I have a vague idea of what I got for the cards and the whole episode annoys me to this day. Not because of what I could have sold them for had I waited a few years, but because the money was gone in a relative eye-blink and I wish I still had a lot of the cards.
I'm very happy I hung onto my tobacco cards.
5 comments:
I love that 73 set myself, mainly because it's so similar to my favorite - the 63. Just a big fan of the insert profile, espcially when set over an action shot
I love your tobacco cards, too.
I also wish you still had your cards, but I rationalize that if you hadn't sold them then, you would have sold them later - albeit for more money, but that money would have disappeared just as quickly.
I'm pretty sure the tobacco cards were the ones to keep. I did like the 71' cards a lot. My favorite has to be 74' which was my first full year collecting. I loved card #1, Hank Arron All Time HR King. It was also done in landscape style. It's crazy now, you can still buy late 80's and early 90's cards for $10- a box. They must have over produced to the tenth.
I also loved that Aaron card. You can see it here.
Someone produced a replica set of the T206 years ago. I saw it somewhere for $50.
T206.org!!!
Five of the cards I thought were T206 are not. The backs of these are not a tobacco company ad, but a list of the 25 cards in the set made by the Philadelphia Caramel Co. in Camden, NJ, and issued with candy.
Honus Wagner is card #1, but it's not the same card as the rare one. I have Morgan (#4), Krause (#6), Devlin (#7), Crawford (#11), and Leach (#15). Some searching tells me it is the E95 set, issued in 1909.
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