Pin Me!

Not every tobacco premium was a baseball card.  In addition to cards, they sometimes inserted discs with pictures of baseball players on the front and domino pieces on the back.  Or if not a card, they would insert a pin into a package of cigarettes as the premium.

I happen to own a Domino Disc, which I bought at a local show a few years ago from a dealer who always has the strangest items and cards available, though I never did pick up a pin.  One, I was afraid of purchasing sharp, hundred year old piece of metal, since many of the pins I saw were rusty and I prefer my hobbies to be tetanus-free.  Two, I never knew how to store a pin of this nature safely.  Three, the only Orval Overall pin I saw for sale was greatly inflated in price. 

So, one morning a few weeks ago, I was checking my Orval Overall saved search results and I saw the pin with a respectable price.  So, I raced over to the computer, turned it on and saw the pin was still there, awaiting a purchase.  Which I finished prior to eating breakfast.



The pin has very few flaws on the face of the pin, but the back, which you cannot see is super clean and rust free.  Rust-free is everything on a pin, so when I stick myself, I limit the diseases I can contract from the most dangerous item in my collection.  And owning one pin is enough, as I do not need other faces on round pieces of metal affixed to a stick pin, just waiting to pierce my delicate skin, leaving me with a new hole in my hand and a trip to the doctor. 

Where to From Here?

I feel I am at a collecting cross roads.  I am waiting for the cards I need to finish my T206 set to arrive from various states of the union, which was brought me back into collecting about two and a half years ago.  In my youth, I always loved tobacco cards and the players of the deadball era, so it was a natural fit.  I started with an Orval Overall which had seen better years, like 1913 and 1982, missing some borders and likely overpriced for the card, but it evoked a joy in me and got me started down the path.  The card I am closing my set with is fantastic and will be here by the weekend and looks nothing like the Orval Overall seen below.



I thought the project would take me somewhere between five and ten years if everything went right.  Well, things went a lot better than right and now I need a new focus.  I thought about T205s like the McGraw seen below, but I find it hard to be captured by them.  The other major tobacco offering of the era is the T207 set with an odd list of players and off-putting brown backgrounds.  I suspect, aside from hunting down every last Orval Overall issue I can get my hands on (a new one is on the way for the none of you who care about Overalls), I will wander through a lot of different sets.  I might finish my 1973 Topps set, which will almost certainly take me longer than my T206 set.  Motivation is critical and while I love putting cards in albums, I don't necessarily love the 1973 Topps set the way I love the T206s.



I also want to finish my 1910 Hassan Animals set.  The first set I finished when returning to the hobby was a set of 1910 T59 Flags of the World.  It took about two months and you would be surprised how many people were spoiling to move these cards.  I found almost every difficult back and aside from one card, I had no trouble getting everything together.

I also think I will fill in some more cards of deadball era players on modern cards.  I bought two Christy Mathewsons to close out the year, including the one below and entered a group break solely to add to my Ty Cobb collection (almost unsuccessfully).



Beyond that, we will see Diamond Stars.  The set is small enough to complete in a year, has cards with great color and images and is the only set from the 1930s which interests me, especially as it doesn't have incredibly cost prohibitive Ruths, Gehrigs or DiMaggios to chase.  For example, below is a Hall of Famer I picked up as part of a lot of three about a month ago. I'll show the other two when I need something to fill up some column inches or internet white space.



So, in conclusion, you might see less T206s and more Diamond Stars, but most likely you will see a great deal of purchases which just kind of happened.  

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts (Part 1)

For Thanksgiving, I went down to Cape May with my wife.  One of the great joys of Cape May is the many antique stores in the area.  Having went only the month before, I was fairly certain there were some cards in the area that I was interested in adding to my collection.  More specifically, there were a couple of T206s which I already owned an example or three of and wanted to add another to my set.



From the front, the Overall above is not very different.  The orange is strong on the card, which is always good, but the front of the card is not as nice as the Overall Portrait which I purchased at the East Coast National in August.  Given that, there is no real reason for me to buy this card, since "own a better version."



As you can see, it is the reverse which led me to purchase this card.  Coloring the upper parts of the Piedmont back is orange ink.  Orange ink which is similar in shape to the front of the card.  This is what is known as a "Wet Sheet Transfer" or ghost image  T206 cards are lithographs, which were inked onto the card.  Should you overink the card, when the next sheet of cards was laid upon the cards, some of the ink would transfer from the wet sheet to the other side of the card.  In some instances, you will see an overinked reverse stained onto the front of the card. 

So, with this I added my first ghost image to my collection, though given the title and my first hand knowledge of what I purchased, the story does not end here, but that is more of a tomorrow post. 

Overall, It Was a Good Mail Day

Last week, I was able to finally close on the card at the absolute top of my want list.  I was rejected many times on eBay with reasonable offers on this card and in fact, I was even rejected once on this card, since someone else was interested in it first.  However, last Friday night this card went up for sale and within ten minutes and one scan, it was on its way to my home, arriving in today's mail.



The card is a T3 Turkey Red Orval Overall.  Turkey Red was a tobacco company around 100 years ago and offered the card as a premium.  If you sent in enough coupons, you were able to select one of the cards on offer at the time.  And by card, I mean, premium-sized cabinet card, which is 5 3/4" by 8".  If you want to learn more about the set and see all of the cards, which include 100 baseball and 25 boxing cards, I highly recommend Craig's Turkey Red site, who conveniently enough sold me this card.

The design is one of the many Topps used in the past.  In a number of years, Topps used this design on a standard sized baseball card.  However, unless the pictures were painted by Dick Perez, the cards fail to resonate with me in the same way as the original T3s.  Also, the smaller card doesn't show the same detail in the card's image, though they are admittedly easier to store than the oversized cabinet. 

The card would sadly only grade a poor as there is a small pinhole near the top where the card would've been mounted on a wall 100 years ago.  Fortunately, the hole is in the border and the coloring and image on the picture suffer from minimal defects.  Perhaps it is all the times I was unable to close the deal on one of these cards, but I am quite pleased to call this T3 Orval Overall mine.  

Vacation Cards

Perhaps the best thing about a vacation is a chance to explore new environs.  There, you might see a new sight or gain a new experience while getting away from your life.  Or you might know every store in another area which could potentially sell sports cards and memorabilia and go there instead.  So, my time away led to an area I knew well filled with antique stores.

Try as I might, I was unable to find anything in the first store I went to.  I nearly purchased a box of 1993-94 Parkhurst cards, but the box had seen better years and was at best, slightly opened and worst, horribly mutilated.  I also saw an interesting baseball game from turn of the century, but it was quite large and would neither fit in my car nor store easily in my apartment. 

From there, we went to another antique store, where I had some luck in the past, adding a few T206 Cubs to my collection, including a Harry Steinfeldt.  Arriving, I took the slow walk around the store, stopping to look a the baseball memorabilia and the Statis Pro: Boxing game I never buy.  I arrive at the case containing the pre-war cards and get the store worker to open the case. 

Flipping through the stacks, I realize that I need none of these cards to complete my set.  There is a Rube Kroh with an overprint on the front (the Piedmont reverse from another card or strike was visible on the front) and there was a strange mass of color on the back.  You could make out a shape in the card, but I could not readily tell the player or if there was a highly collectable ghost image in the back.  I dither and think about it, before putting the card back, because it was either a great steal as a ghost image or a horrible overpay as a regular, low grade T206.

I also found an Orval Overall Hands Face Level.  It was the cheapest T206 card in the store, less than I pay for lunch most days and as one of my favorite players, I have a soft spot for all of his cards.  Even though I own a slightly better version of the card already in my collection, I picked up the below card, because I hate leaving the store without something.



Sadly, I found nothing else on my vacation, but had many a card waiting for me at my front door when I came home.

Redemption: SGC Saves the Day!

You go away for one day and a fancy USPS Priority Mail box is waiting in front of your door.  To be honest, I was stumped by what its contents could be, as I hadn't ordered anything coming by Priority Mail in the last couple of weeks.  Except for the below card, which I didn't order as much as drop off for servicing.



Picking up our saga where we left off on Wednesday, I drove to SGC headquarters after talking to the nice customer service representative.  From the phone, he could tell I was agitated and upset, which given how the Orval Overall Plowboy arrived to me was quite understandable.  He said, I could drop the card off at their offices and fill out the necessary paperwork there.

So, I took the card, wrapped in an acid-free comic book bag and board from my teenage years when I worked in a comic shop, placed it in the new Huggins & Scott auction catalog, put the item inside the original box and made the 45 minute trek to find adequate long-term housing for my card.

Having been there before, there was no trouble in finding the office and I was greeted promptly.  I was given a form and a seat at the table.  I was asked if I wanted to have the card processed for next day delivery, but I was aware that the card was oversized and belonged outside the size guidelines for the monthly promotion.  Despite this, I was told the card would ship out in two days and I paid the oversized grading fee price.  I finished filling out the information, agreed to ship the card back to my home by USPS, asking gently if they planned to ship the card by media mail, which elicted a hearty chuckle inside me. 

So, today, I came home and found the card graded and on my doorstep in two days.  I opened the exceptionally well packed box, removing a layer of protective materials and the enclosed form to allow me to make an additional grading request in the future.  Given that I felt a thick, lucite container inside, I was certain the card was at least authentic. 

Despite buying 100 year old cards for the last two years, I am still a little soft on grades.  By soft, I mean, I have a strong tendency to undergrade cards, often thinking cards are a grade or two lower than standard grading.  So, I opened slowly to see whether the card would be listed as Authentic or a SGC 10 Poor.  Maybe, just maybe the card might be a SGC 20 Fair.  Instead, I opened the card and found it was graded SGC 30 Good!  I was quite ecstatic about the grade, especially considering what I learned about the card during my initial research.  (To summarize, I ended up getting a really good deal, considering what I expect the card would go for in auction today.)

In all, SGC took one of my worst card experiences and replaced it with one of my best.  I'm really pleased with the card now and no longer associate the card with the horrible initial packaging of the card, but instead will always remember the tremendous customer service at SGC and how the provided me with a new joy on a card I desperately wanted to love. 

How Not to Ship a Card: A Primer

I would like to thank the fine folks running iSoldit in Elmhurst, Illinois for showing me what has to be the worst possible way to ship a card.  Especially, a rather expensive tobacco card, which I paid $7.50 to have shipped to me and significantly more to purchase.



Front



Reverse

Two weeks ago, I won an auction for a 1910 Plowboy Orval Overall.  After spending the better part of a week researching how much to spend, looking at closed auctions, running deep searches to find out when and where copies sold in the past, looking at population reports for both PSA and SGC, reading about the set for the first time in great detail, I determined what I thought an acceptable price would be and despite some last minute action, I won the card.

In my searches, I found there were three copies of the card which were graded, all by SGC.  I also found that Plowboys were fairly rare.  If there are more than 10 copies of the above card in existence, I would be surprised.  So, paying a fairly sizable fee to the seller on eBay that night, I awaited the arrival of the card.

Days passed with minimal movement on the track package section for the auction.  In fact, the card made it to Pennsylvania and New Jersey before heading back to Illinois to try again.  In all, 14 days pass from purchase to arrival, which is 8 more days than expected according to eBay.  I noticed the card arrived in New Jersey again on Monday and was optimistic the card would arrive yesterday or today.  I went out to a licensing class last night, knowing the mail had not arrived.

I came home and saw a pile of items for me, including what appeared to be a FedEx box.  Now, I knew I hadn't ordered anything I expected to arrive by FedEx and became concerned.  The concern was due to the shape of the box, which looked like it was dropped, beaten and generally all around hammered about, with many creases and dents in the packaging.  Deep in my heart, I knew the Plowboy Orval Overall was inside.  After two weeks and much waiting, I was convinced this was about to become an insurance claim, depriving me of the card for both today and likely forever, given that this version was significantly cheaper than two other copies sold in the last three years.

I pick up the box and see it is from iSoldit, the seller who listed the card.  My wife told me the package needed a signature, which I knew from the auction listing.  What I did not know was that you can send a package that requires signature confirmation through Media Mail.  That's right, a very valuable and rare card was shipped via media mail in an effort to save a few dollars.  Even worse, the seller chose to ship the item in a box from a competitor.

Fun facts you may or may not know about media mail:

1. Intended for educational use.
2. Does not guarantee delivery.
3. Cannot be used to ship advertisements.
4. Can be used with signature confirmation.
5. Can be inspected at any point in time by the post office if they so choose.
6. Limited to use for books, other forms of media and educational materials.

Judging from the advertising tobacco card, properly categorized as a collectable, I would say that media mail would be a highly inappropriate way to ship this item based on the rules, let alone my reasonable expectations.

So, amazingly, despite the horrific shipping choice, the package arrived.  Safely is not a word I would use in this instance to describe the arrival, but is usually a word which follows arrived in the above sentence.

I open the package, filled with fear and dread, as a terror even worse than I anticipated happened.  Inside was a large mass of bubble wrap, with a few snippets of paper.  The paper contained listings from auction houses for other Plowboy cards, prominently displaying the minimum bid required at auction, essentially proving the seller knew they had a valuable item.

Inside the bubblewrap was the scariest item I've ever pulled from a box.  Once unwrapped, there are two flimsy pieces of thin, grey cardboard, taped to a plastic bag.  Not necessarily a plastic bag you would put produce in today, but one of those plastic bags from the 80s, which were more translucent and made of an amazingly thin material.  I knew there was a thin plastic bag inside, as small pieces of it peaked out of the cardboard.  Given what I saw, part of me was scared one of those pieces of cardboard was the actual card itself.

I gently pry the tape free from one piece of the cardboard and slowly lift up the panel.  Inside, is the card, unprotected, inside a plastic bag.  I remove it from its likely tomb and begin to check the card for damage.   The card was not a high-grade card when it started its journey, so it was quite the affair to determine if it was damaged in transit.  I will gloss over the details of this particularly gruesome exercise, only to let you know that I took the card to SGC today in order to provide the card with a safe home and confirm the authenticity of the product, as doubt crept into my mind once I saw how amateur and poor the packaging job was.

Once freed, I did write to the seller to let them know how inappropriate their entire packaging and shipping of the card was.  The seller replied promptly, failing to take any responsibility for the whole affair.  The seller claimed that I was being saved additional cost by shipping through such a substandard and likely against postal regulation matter.  And that it was eBay's fault for requiring signature confirmation on items costing over a certain price.  No other customer had their cards damaged, so this was an effective way to ship.  Essentially, a strong pass the buck on responsibility after an insincere apology.

I read the E-Mail, logged into eBay and left negative feedback for the second time in my life.  Also, given the exorbitant shipping charge for a media mail package weighing about three ounces, I also filed a report item on the shipping charges provided by the vendor.  Finally, I am writing to let everyone know what happened, so they can make the decision as to whether they would choose to buy from or consign to iSoldit in Elmhurst, Illinois. 

Most importantly, let this all serve as a lesson to everyone on worst practices for shipping a baseball card through the mail.  

Reordering the Checklist: Different Back, Same Front

As I sit here for the next hour patiently waiting to make a fairly important snipe on a card which I may or may not see again in my lifetime, I'm reflecting on another purchase that I talked myself into which borders on excess.



A few weeks back, possibly even a month now, I found an E-91A "Orvill" Overall for sale.  The E91 is really one of the least desirable candy cards, since the images are more generic than most candy cards.  Looking at the card, the resemblance to Overall is minimal, but it is still an Orval Overall card.  The card was for sale with another card, an E91-A James Archer.  Occasionally purchasing an extra tobacco card is worth the risk of moving it elsewhere, but picking a mildly desirable James Archer to add our friend Orval to my collection was not worth the risk.

The seller initially resisted letting the card go alone, noting that "Archer was good friends with Overall and they really should be kept together".  Ignoring the fact both men are long dead, their friendship should have no influence on my card purchasing and I construed this as a cheap ploy to sell me a card I didn't want.  A week or so passed and I followed up.  Given the lack of interest in the pair, he let me make an offer on the Overall.  In retrospect, I should have not offered over half the price for both to get the card, even though the Overall was in better condition, but in the excitement of adding the Overall, I made what I would charitably call a "high" offer, which was accepted before I could even check my Blackberry.  So, payment goes out, card comes in and I say to myself, this should satisfy my need for E91 Orval Overalls.



You see, there are two E91 Orval Overalls, an A and a B.  The picture on the front is exactly the same, but the backs are slightly different.  As you can see on the A, the Athletics are the first team listed, while on the B, the Cubs are listed first.  There are also some minor variations on the checklist.  Only a real completist or someone with real problems would insist on having both in their collection.  But what is that you say, isn't that a picture of an Orval Overall E91-B listed above and don't you only post pictures of cards you actually own on your blog?



Yes, it is true.  I caved on the issue in less than a month.  The other day, I was checking my saved eBay searches for Orval, when I spotted an E91-A.  The card was only varied on the back, but the condition was nicer, as the raw Overall is not a VG-EX on its best day.  I looked at the card and I looked at the price and I even looked at the Make an Offer.  Sensing weakness, weakness in myself, I screwed up my courage and offered him half of what he wanted.  Half seemed fair based on some reading, writing and closed eBay auction searching.  Given the significant discount I demanded, I expected to receive a rejection and move on with my life, safe in the knowledge I did not overspend on another Overall. 

As you can surmise from the above, my bid was answered with an acceptance and for less than the E91-A, I owned an E91-B.  I am not bothered by either purchase and greatly enjoy owning both cards.  But man, I am a sucker for Orval.  Well, I still have 45 or so minutes to sweat out, so I will sit here, waiting, waiting impatiently, to snipe a card I suspect I have one shot at it, one shot to grossly overpay for the card.  So, in a week or so, if you see something really rare I didn't know existed until last week, you know I am winner.  And if I have nothing really tremendous to show, then I was saved from my own excess by someone else's incredibly gross largesse. 

Candy Cards and Foil Board

Coming home from work, I checked the mailbox and found packages...packages for me.  Below are the highlights of today's mailbox filling. 



I managed to get another Orval Overall card.  After posting some of my recent Orval Overall purchases on Net54 message board, I received an offer to pick up the above E90-1 Orval Overall, which is another American Caramel card from 1910.  From what I have read, the Overall in this set is quite difficult to get in any condition and was quite excited to add this card.  The card itself is beautiful and crease-free with a strong image, though it has one minor flaw.  If you look closely at the lower right hand corner of the card, you can see that some card magician decided to make some small alteration to the card in an attempt to "improve" the corners.  Doing so took what would have been a very valuable card and made it a very affordable card.

A great number of people are offended by trimmed or altered cards, refusing to purchase them.  I, on the other hand, look forward to a nicely butchered card.  Some of the best looking cards in my collection had a run-in with the old paper cutter, cutting the overall price by about 90% in some cases.  So, an unfortunate trim in a past life led to a very fortunate addition to my collection, which I am quite pleased with.  




The other great mailday show up with the autographed J.R. Richard card below.  Combining foil board and a signature on a sticker, I don't think you could intentionally make two cards less similar than the two I posted today.  I likely overpaid for the card, as unlike other bidders, I was unaware that J.R. Richard was still alive. 

My earliest memories of J.R. come from a 1981 MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia.  It was about six years old when I bought this as a child and remember reading the book from cover to cover.  As you might know, there were codes for all times a player missed time and J.R. Richard had a rare one, indicating he had a stroke.  As an Astro who wore the orange sunrise shirts while throwing strikeouts like candy, he is a player I would have been a fan of, but for the whole stroke thing.  Following up on wikipedia, I did learn that he had some hard times, but turned his life around, which is a lot better than the whole dead thing. 

Overall It Was a Good Day

I was able to cross a couple of Orval Overall cards off my list recently.  I managed to get the basics out of the way fairly quickly, the three T206s and the T205.  I also made a nice pick up at the National, which I'll share shortly as well.

Getting beyond this point was quite difficult, but to be expected.  The first card I made the plunge on is the E90-3 American Caramel Card.


In addition to cards provided in packages of cigarettes and loose tobacco, some cards were sold by candy companies as well.  The American Caramel company in Philadelphia sold some of the most iconic of these cards.  Included with candy, the cards were certainly aimed at children and offered in smaller sets, with most checking in around 30 cards.

The E90-3 shown above was a regional issue of 20 cards, only containing players from the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox.  The set contains a fairly decent number of Hall of Famers, such as Tinker, Evers, Chance, Mordecai Brown and Ed Walsh, as well as infamous Black Sox player Chick Gandil.  I am especially stricken by the image, with the strong blue background and Orval Overall in mid-throwing motion, with a certain photo like quality to the card.  I actually think the card is more aesthetically appealing than the T206 action poses, which appear more artful. 

So, after tracking the card for a week on eBay, I made the minimum bid on the card on the last day and took the auction down that afternoon.  After waiting everyday to come home to the mail, it finally arrived eight days after purchase, the same day as the below card. 


The pastel portrait you see above is from Sporting Life, a former competitor of the Sporting News in the early 1900s.  For some reason I have not figured out, many Sporting Life cards survived in high grade, which puts a cap on the prices.  Cards were issued in series and my understanding is the Overall is one of the tougher issues.  Although, there is another NM M116 Overall floating around on eBay that I looked at back and forth for quite some time, but really felt the price was way too high on the card. 

When this one hit my searches, I steeled myself to make a strong bid to bring it home.  I figured the card would go at a reasonable price for a card of this age and grade, as there were a fair number of these cards up for bid at once.  Waiting all week as the price slowly crept up was very difficult.  Finally, on Sunday, I tested the waters to see what the price would be and made my initial bid.  While it did take a second bid, I was so happy to take this card home, which arrived in three days, at the same time as the E90-3 Overall above. 

Given that this was one of my first forays outside my comfort zone, I am especially pleased with how everything turned out and to give these fine cards a home in my collection. 

What Do I Collect?

A simple question with an oft changing answer.  The oft changing answer is the bigger part of the problem, as I have a tendency to acquire items which are often neat in the moment, but not in the long term.  Nonetheless, I've tried to summarize my collecting goals, if for no other reason than to give me some additional structure in my acquisitions.

T206 Cards

This is where it all started for me again, with one Orval Overall leading to a tobacco collection of 457 unique T206 cards.  My goal is to collect the set to 518 and given the progress I've made in the last two+ years, I think this is a fairly attainable goal.  Most of my purchases are of the lower grade variety, in the trimmed/poor to good range.  To push me toward finishing the set, I've tried to pick up not only the commons when I find them, but to seek out the more difficult cards on the journey up front, since you never know when you will find them again at an affordable price.  I've picked up a substantial majority of the hall of famers, including the four Ty Cobb cards and managed to get most of the shorter print cards to 518 with the exception of the Elberfeld Portrait Washington card, which always manages to elude my grasp.  Now, collecting to 518 means no Wagner, Plank, Magee, Slow Joe Doyle NY National, O'Hara St. Louis or Demmitt St. Louis, but I can live with that.  The cards I own still have a sense of history and are stunning pieces of art, even though they are stunning pieces of art used to stiffen cigarette packs and encouraged people to smoke more.

Nonetheless, I am always happy with my T206 cards and they really are the core of my collection.

Orval Overall

Who is Orval Overall?  Well, in terms of sports greatness, he was a very good second or third starter for the Chicago Cubs around the last time they were viable World Series contenders.  His claim to baseball fame is that he won the last game of the 1908 World Series for the Cubs. 

My interest stems from some research about 10 to 12 years ago, when I wrote some of the biographies for Stars of the Deadball Era, National League.  While his life after baseball is what most people would call pedestrian, such as being a banker, I still find I have a strong connection to him.  Given the timeframe and the cards available, it became a natural for me that I would collect his cards beyond the T206 set.  There are a decent number of caramel and other tobacco cards, silks, discs, pins and even west coast candy cards to collect.  His popularity is not so great that his cards are prohibitively expensive, like chasing Ty Cobb or Christy Mathewson cards from their playing days.  That being said, the variety is nice, while not having too many exotic cards which I would have a slim chance of owning, due to the small populations available.  

Mike Scott

Growing up, my favorite player was Mike Scott.  There is something about a pitcher who comes out of nowhere, to dominate for a few seasons, which lures me in.  Especially once you put in the orange uniforms, split-finger fastball, false accusations of scuffing and complete and utter dominance of the 1986 Mets in the NLCS. 

Collecting Mike Scott cards gives me a great appreciation of how many oddball series were created in the 1980s.  I have heavy bronze cards, disc cards, bakery cards, fire prevention cards, coins and all sorts of other random cards which have crept into my boxes over time.  I am always on the lookout for a new Mike Scott card I've never seen before, so I can add it to the growing stack of orange and white cards containing an often bespectacled man. 

Other Collections

I also from time to time, pick up cards which fit into these categories.

Late 1980s and early 1990s Pittsburgh Penguins, such as Paul Coffey, Tom Barrasso, Ron Francis and other non-Lemieux and Jagr players as cards become available.  I'm especially a sucker for any relic cards for these players.

Non-Sports Tobacco cards.  I have a fairly decent sized collection of non-sports tobacco cards.  I especially enjoy cards containing pictures of flags and animals.  I managed to complete the entire T59 Flags of the World set, which makes is likely the only time I can mention Saxe-Coberg-Gotha and card collecting in the same sentence.  T29 Hassan Animal cards are my set in progress, as I have about 45 of the 80 cards in a binder directly behind the Flags of the World.  I also have my strays which I pick up at card shows and antique stores, which include Silk Flags, World War I picture cards and Franz Liszt. 

Deadball Era players on Post-1960 Cards.  Topps has done a great job in putting out cards containing Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb over the last few years.  They even put out cards for less famous members of the Deadball Era, such as Kid Elberfeld, Willie Keeler, Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown and even George Davis (who is both a Hall of Famer and possesses quite possibly the coolest, most apocalyptic background found on a T206.).  I am such a sucker for these newer cards, that I almost always buy up these cards at shows when I see the guy who has the "new" Topps cards for sale.  Quite possibly, the card from this era at the top of my list is the 2011 Topps Ty Cobb driving a car card.  I'm sure you've seen the picture and somehow a Hall of Famer driving an open top car in 1910 or 1911 is begging to be in my modern collection. 

I probably also pick up cards of Astros in technicolor orange uniforms and I am working on a low grade 1973 Topps set which has fallen by the wayside, but left me with about 250 duplicates sitting in various boxes near the binders.

So, I think that covers what I collect, which is far broader than I hoped it was.  I'm sure more of these cards will be showing up on this blog soon.  

An Upgrade for An Upblog

The first card I bought for my T206 Set was a T206 Orval Overall portrait, like the one found above, but not nearly as nice.

A few weeks ago, I was able to go to the East Coast National. I planned on trying to fill in some holes in my T206 set and was not very successful. I purchased four cards, one upgrade, one "oops" I already own it and two cards I actually needed for my set, pushing my set that much closer.

The upgraded card is the Orval Overall portrait seen above. I stopped by bbcards at his table in the back of the show and saw his stack upon stack of higher grade T206s. If there was one card in the case, there were 800 graded T206 cards in case.  I was sorely tempted by the very rare Bill O'Hara St. Louis variation, but could not bring myself to commit moving to collecting up to 520 T206 cards for my set instead of 518. (Nor could I stomach spending such a large amount of money on a single piece of cardboard, no matter how nice a Fair it was.)

I did, however, browse for a T206 Orval Overall portrait, as it is one of my favorite cards in the set and the only Deadball era player whose cards I collect beyond the T206 set. At first, he showed me a PSA 5 EX Orval Overall portrait, which I liked, but was not blown away by the color, which to me is the selling point of a higher grade card. I walked away and continued my tour of the show, which last about two hours.

I returned and looked at the PSA 3 VG T206s and found the above card.  Looking at the card, I was drawn in by the great color and strong registration. I also picked out a T206 Carl Lundgren KC in VG, but wasn't prepared to pay a strong premium for that particular card.  I was however, enamored with upgrading my Orval Overall and happily paid the price I was quoted.  Like all show purchases, was slightly higher than I would pay online, but you can easily talk yourself into buying something for a higher price with the card in hand. That tactile sensation makes it yours and once it is yours...you pay the man the money he wants.

With that being said, this is now one of the nicest grade tobacco cards in my collection and one of my favorite cards that I own.