T206 backs in 1978-80
 

In the July 1978 issue of The Trader Speaks, Bill Heitman wrote a column about T206. He opened it by mentioning the huge number of front-back combinations, and how he would get snickers at shows for looking at the backs of the cards and checking them against his master list, because few people paid attention to that then. At the end of the article he lists the 16 T206 brands in order of his estimate of their difficulty, from Ty Cobb down to Piedmont and Sweet Caporal. That's the first two pages below.

In the November 1979 Trader Speaks, Heitman wrote a followup column in which he said there had been an explosion of interest in T206 since his first column, especially in the backs. He gives his estimate of the premium each brand commanded over Piedmont/Sweet Caporal. That's the third page below.

Around the same time, Heitman was finishing up his booklet on T206, "The Monster", which was the most exhaustive study of the set up to that time. It was published in early 1980. The last seven pages below are the ones in that booklet devoted to the backs, to give an idea of the state of hobby knowledge at that time. Heitman was way ahead of his time in paying attention to factory numbers and the different series of fronts that went with each back. He didn't know about brown Lenox or brown Old Mill (I don't think anybody did then), but he knew about red Hindu, and that it had only been found with 460-series cards.

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Thanks for sharing this. I had not read it before.

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Forgive me as I did not make it through all the articles (reading on my phone and my 44 year old eyes got fatigued).

It speaks to 523 cards with Plank, Wagner and Magee being the 1000+ (oh... To have a time machine...)

I didn't see a mention of Doyle. Isn't that the 524th? Was that found later?

I am a post war guy but getting close to getting them complete and moving to pre war soon. I have about 10-15 T206's and will tackle some smaller sets like the Delongs and T205s before I take on the monster - but I am interested in learning as much as I can sling the way

The Doyle wasn't made public until 1987 or 88 I believe. Before then, only the guy who found the first one (Larry Fritsch) knew about it.

Yes, the Doyle was first found in 1981 by Larry Frisch, but not made public until 1987 when somebody else found one. Before that Sweeney with no B on his cap was often considered a separate card, thus making 524 in the set, but that is now considered a printing error and not a distinct card. Heitman was writing after the Sweeney card was relegated to a printing error, but before the Doyle was discovered.

"The Monster" was coined by Bill and he copyrighted the term. He threatened to sue me (:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:) for copyright infringement using the term in the Monster Number Thread, an obscure non-profit entity I might add. He was smiling when he made the threat though.(:D:D:D:D:D:D)

The careful reader will note the image of Farrah Fawcett in one of the scans in Post #1. For those of you that own the booklet you already know that there are several Fawcett images in the booklet. Bill did not have a Fawcett fetish though or so he claims, but rather the Fawcett pictures were added by the printer as a "practical" joke.:p

Now you know the rest of the story..........

Hey Frank, now tell us what the "aia" in that picture stands for. :D

What's most interesting to me about these articles is Heitman's estimation of the relative scarcity of the different back brands. Buck Barker's 1962 article in The Sport Hobbyist, which I posted here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=217680, is the earliest article I've seen that addresses the subject. Barker mentions Piedmont, Sweet Caporal, Polar Bear, and Old Mill as the most common brands; calls Sovereign, Cycle, American Beauty, Tolstoi, and Hindu "fairly common"; says EPDG is "not rare", but that Ty Cobb, Lenox, Uzit, and Carolina Brights are rare. He later singles out Ty Cobb as the back that one collector would pay $5 for, so he presumably considered it the rarest. This is not too far off from what we now know based on population reports, market prices, etc. It's obvious to anyone who has spent any time with T206s that Piedmont and Sweet Caporal are the most common backs by far, and Polar Bear and Old Mill are not too hard to find. I think Sovereign would now be considered more common than those two, especially if you combined the 150-350-460 series, and Hindu is tougher than the others in Barker's middle group (where EPDG belongs), but overall Barker wasn't too far off.

In the 1978 article, Heitman correctly says that Ty Cobb is the rarest back brand, followed by Uzit, Hindu, Drum, Lenox, Cycle, Broadleaf, Carolina Brights, American Beauty, EPDG, Tolstoi, Sovereign, Old Mill, Polar Bear, and Piedmont/Sweet Caporal. His four most common are the same as Barker's, and his estimate of Sovereign, Tolstoi, EPDG, and American Beauty as the next toughest is pretty good. But I have no idea why he has Hindu as being tougher than Drum and Lenox (!), or Cycle as being tougher than Broadleaf and Carolina Brights (!). In the 1979 article where he estimates the premium for each brand, he groups Cycle with AB, EPDG, Tolstoi, and Sovereign, which is closer to present reality (though Sovereign now commands much less of a premium than the others), but he still groups Hindu with Drum and Lenox at a 150% premium, more than Broadleaf and Carolina Brights, and less than only Uzit and Ty Cobb. The only thing I can think is that he was somehow thinking of red Hindu, which he mentioned in "The Monster", but in that book he distinguished clearly between brown and red Hindu, correctly recognizing the latter as much scarcer. It sounds like Frank knows Heitman, so maybe he can ask him.

Finally, here is Bill Heitman's first known appearance in a hobby publication, in the April 1961 issue of Card Comments (volume 3, no. 9), when he and his brother Jim, ages 11 and 15 respetively, were profiled as "Collectors of the Month".

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Ty Cobb Back
 

Interesting that he puts Ty Cobb back in as the 16th back. Thought he might toss in Coupon as the 17th back! I just broke the Coupon seal on this thread. :D

Thanks for sharing the Heitman letters. Great stuff!

I never knew that Sweeney was considered a separate card holy scnikies!

What's the story on that?

And how much a premium do those go for?

aia indeed
 

Finally, a chance to be Frank. Just as the 'b' in Crawford indicates the batting version, 'aia' probably means the 'ass in action' variation. Oops, I meant 'angel in action', a reference to Charlie's Angels.

Brian

Bill Huggins found the first publicly sold Doyle. He auctioned it off and Frisch was the winning bidder.

I don't think they really go for a significant premium, other than what other printing oddities might go for.

Here is a thread from last summer where I mentioned a little bit about the history of the Sweeney "no B" version:

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...+B#post1434376

And see the second-to-last paragraph on the first page of Heitman's 1978 article (the first scan in the first post of this thread), where he discusses why he doesn't consider "Sweeney no B" to be a separate card:

"The Sweeney, Boston National with no "B" on jersey, is really just a printing oddity. I have seen the card with about 10 different shades of the B, some of them very close to being plain. I have seen other T206s with the same problems, some with skin tones totally bleached out, but none have ever gained the notoriety of Sweeney. Unlike Magie, I do not consider the Sweeney, no B, to be a separate card. Although interesting, I leave collecting these cards to those who have the patience to look for the slightest error, variation, misprinting or oddity in the printing of cards. Printers are not perfect."

thanks for the great posts!

Note that he does weigh in on the Coupon type 1/T206 controversy in "The Monster" (on the second to last page that I posted), and explains why he thinks Burdick was right not to include T213-1s in T206:

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Thanks David it's reasons like this that I log in to this site everyday!!! Found something else to add about the Sweeney.

"For instance, the well-known Sweeney (Boston) “no B” variation resulted from the final printing stage, red, having been bypassed.8 Other subjects known to exist without red ink in at least one instance are Beck, Bowerman and Lindaman and Spencer, and when auctioned these ink-challenged specimens often sell for a substantial premium."

Source: Inside t206 Centennial Edition

In 1977 at the National convention in Detroit I purchased 100 t206s for $25.00 from a well known dealer. Backs were not even considered at that time I guess. I know I didn't consider them as anything other than interesting. In that group which were lower grade (most fair-vg) were three Uzits, 1 Drum, a couple of Carolina Brights, a few Tolstois etc. The next day I traded one of the Uzits (Doc Crandall I think) to a friend for a common card I needed. I already had Crandall. Just a dupe to me.