T215 Pirate's in Mastro Auction

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Posted By: <b>Rand</b><p>Can someone please educate me on this group. i thought T215 were Red Cross Tobacco, how many cards are in this set, why are the names so close to the bottom edge, what are the key cards? please show scans of cards if you have any and lastly....What is the set or individual cards worth? thx

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Posted By: <b>leon</b><p>Hi Rand,<br />Not too many board members have a Pirates back. I know Scott B has one, another board member won the one in Verkman's auction, and I am sure a few lurkers probably have one..I am sure other collectors know more than I do about this rare set.......Otherwise, can you email me please?......thanks much

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Posted By: <b>Cobby33</b><p>The ACC lists the Pirate backs as T215, as they are believed to possess the same poses, etc. as the T215 Red Cross variety.<br /><br />I believe SCD lists somewhere between 92-94 as a complete set, though in the past 3 years, I only know of 3 in existence.<br /><br />I would say that at this juncture, any one you can find would be "key."<br /><br />Mastro's hoard is in the 90-range, as far as quantity and I do not know whether it is considered a "complete set." It is quite possible that there exists only 1 example of each player, but I cannot confirm this.<br /><br />As for value, tough to tell. I think one in Mastro a year or two ago went for close to $7K w/ buyer's premium. Verkman's went for close to $10K. If Mastro auctions the whole hoard as one lot, I don't even want to hazard a guess as to what it will close for.

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Posted By: <b>JimB</b><p>Do you know who it was on the Verkman example? Condition?<br />Thanks,<br />JimB

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Posted By: <b>Rand</b><p>hello Doug, can you tell the story of how you acquired the cards and where they came from, also did you have them graded? thx

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Posted By: <b>steve yawitz</b><p>I think it was a Doolan (Fielding) slabbed PSA Authentic. It was either trimmed or handcut, if I recall correctly.<br><br><a href="http://imageevent.com/yawie99" target="_new" rel="nofollow">http://imageevent.com/yawie99</a>

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Posted By: <b>Cobby33</b><p>The Doolan in Verkman's auction was graded "Auth" by PSA because in their infinite wisdom, they adjudged it as trimmed. Actually, these Pirate-backed cards were in fact hand cut. It appears that it should have been graded at least a 6, IMO.<br /><br />Last I heard, the Mastro hoard was at SGC being graded...

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Posted By: <b>leon</b><p>I heard this new big group Mastro has are in fact not hand cut. I believe that is what I was told...not positive but pretty sure......regards

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Posted By: <b>Doug Allen</b><p>The collection we are offering has 91 of 92 cataloged examples missing only Danny Muphy for completion(we are keeping an eye out for that one on eBay) and the collection also contains 5 uncataloged examples including a Mathewson!<br /><br />The overall condition is spectacular. Over half the set grades ExMt or better and the average is better than ExMt.

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Posted By: <b>steve yawitz</b><p>Thanks for clearing that up. Obviously I didn't remember correctly, which isn't too surprising.<br /><br />But how dare you intimate that PSA is fallible!

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Posted By: <b>scott brockelman</b><p>many appoears to have a slight tilt cut top and bottom and they have been trimmed to eliminate such, a few of these have been in majo auctions in the last few years and indicated as such, but T215 pirates were very much factory cut. anything else is trimmed not hand cut.

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Posted By: <b>scott hassel</b><p>I had sent my one and only Pirate Baseball card in to PSA to have it graded and it came back slabbed as T206. Nice to see this premium grading company working so hard to be up on the hobby. I mean this is their business right? BTW , I admit that I had bought the card from Hager at the national in St Louis about 10 years back.... no laughing please.

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Posted By: <b>brian</b><p>don't worry about me laughing at you. every card i got from Hagar (about 500) ended up in PSA slabs with no problems

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Posted By: <b>boxingcardman</b><p>Pirate was a Wills brand. Wills also did a lot of tobacco cards of boxers and other subjects. They did a set very similar in layout and approach to T206 for boxers. There are also pretty readily located Pirate back cards of Chinese scenes. The ones I've seen of those are not hand cut. In fact, I have never heard of any Wills cards from sets of other subjects being hand cut so it doesn't seem very logical that the Pirate cards would be solely hand-cut. <br /><br />Hey Doug: where the heck did these 90+ cards come from? New to the hobby or oldtime collector?

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Posted By: <b>Cobby33</b><p>Scott obviously knows much more about this hobby than I, but the Pirate backs are definitely a different size than most cards of this era, given the size of the packaging, etc. And as Scott pointed out, they do have some other peculiarities. <br /><br />Perhaps they are not ALL hand-cut, but I believe many are and there is sufficient evidence to support this.