Collecting Obscure/Scarce/Under-appreciated sets - Does it affect your enjoyment?
 

In almost 40 years of collecting I've only owned 20 or so T206. Just never been interested in them. I enjoy other issues much more, but I'm not a set collector. I'm more of a player/team collector so maybe that's the difference.

No, not at all.
Also no. It helps me savor what I acquire.

Ditto, in 50 or so years.

I collect pretty much everything. Not actively of course, but if I come across a decent deal on a card I won't pass it up as something I don't collect.

I love the unique sets
 

I collect both mainstream and esoteric sets. I’m at 511 in my T206 set and have a complete T203 set. I also have TWO 1941 Goudey master sets. And to be honest I enjoy picking up an upgrade to my T203 set or 41 Goudey set far more than I enjoy adding to my Monster number. Probably because the only deterrent to getting MN512 is money. The cards are available every day. It’s not often you find a T203 for sale.

I find a common set like T206 to be boring. If all that stands between me and the cards is money, it isn't fun for me. I prefer cards that rarely come up for sale, the sort of card that I am fortunate to own in any condition. That's where the fun is for me.

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I collect signed lineup cards by HOF managers. It's not a set, but has a lot of similarities to what you mention: the focus is obscure and it can be months between finding something relevant.

I think there is a trade-off here. There's an excitement and communal aspect to collecting things that others are also chasing. At the same time, it is a lot of fun sharing what I collect and educating people who are curious.

Great idea for a thread, Luke. While they are not necessarily obscure (certainly much less discussed), I have fallen in love with prewar minor league issues such as the T212 Obaks as well as the T210s. I also think the T211 Red Suns are amazing. It has only been a year or so since I started down this road, but I really enjoy it. I only have close to 60 T212 -2s thus far. When I do branch out to the T210s, I think Series 3 will be my first target because they are a little closer to home geographically.

The cards of these minor leaguers from long ago really tune me into my love and enjoyment of baseball history. While some of the minor leaguers in these sets did make it to the majors, many of them were just boys and young men from the west coast and south who liked to play ball and represent their towns and perhaps put off settling into less pleasant occupations the other locals and/or family members had to do. And, especially in the case of the Obaks, they are beautiful cards and works of art from a period of time when America was very different.

I dabbled in T206 two or three times but just couldn't get into it.

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Thanks for the replies so far everyone.

I probably should have elaborated a little on collecting T206s. A couple people have mentioned that the only obstacle to completing that set is money. That's true if you just collect by fronts, but that's only one way to collect the set.

I collect rare and mid-tier backs in a manner that's pretty similar to the way other people collect e92 rare backs, rare T-card issues, and the tough front/back combos from the 1916 (m101), 1917 (e135 and family), and 1921/1922 (e121 family) sets.

The biggest difference between adding a Holsum Bread back to my collection, and adding a Cycle 460 to my collection is that a lot more people care about the Cycle. Just because it's a T206 and they are a T206 collector, even though they may not really collect backs themselves.

Great thread. I collect mostly obscure cards or cards outside the big four sports. I have written on here before that there is not anything at all wrong with collecting T206 or '33 Goudey or '52 Topps, but I love cards that might only come up for sale once every five years or something like that.

The extreme patience required does not make things less fun; it makes collecting more fun for me. I probably have 50 cards on my bucket list that I could realistically afford, but it is just a matter of them showing up at auction or at a reasonable price. About a month ago, I received an eBay e-mail alert that there was an Amelia Earhart Heinz Aviator card newly listed on eBay. My heart instantly began beating quickly, since I had never seen one for sale on eBay before. I can't imagine the same kind of excitement exists when a new WaJo T206 or Jackie Robinson '52 Topps card hits eBay.

Some of my favorite cards I own are $200-300 cards that I have not ever seen for sale other than when I purchased my example. The card in my avatar was a little over $100 at Sterling Auctions, but A.J. Foyt Marhoefer Meats cards are tough to find.

I'm working on a master set of the Providence players from the T206 set. Once I got the common backs of all of the players, it really has become a slog finding even the mid-tier backs. Can get very depressing at times.

I've started working on a low-grade Sport Kings set for fun to fill the gaps between T206 finds.

My guess is that no one collects anything they don't enjoy. Some people enjoy the long, hard hunt, while others enjoy having their pick from the abundance. There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's.

Hey Conor. I know what you mean, but isn't there a point where the scarcity of something affects how much you enjoy collecting it?

For instance, I love the e107 set. I can only afford lower grade copies, and let's say 30 of those sell publicly each year. I get a few packages per week that contain rare/tough T206 front/back combos. I like the e107 and t206 sets just about the same amount, but I get a lot more enjoyment out of t206s, because I am able to constantly search for and acquire them.

Another example is if you like watching baseball and football equally, you'd get more enjoyment from a baseball season because there are about 10x more games to watch.

i love knowing how few there are of a given card I may have as opposed to being in the Titus club!:D

Or you enjoy the football season more because each game is more important. For me, some of the reasons you collect T206 is exactly why I don't. The scarcity of other issues make them more exciting when you acquire something you've been searching for. There's no right answer. Collect whatever you like. It's all good.

Luke, as you know, like you, my first love is rare-back T206s, especially with HOF fronts. But over the last year I have branched out into caramel, confectionary, rare T cards, and the M101-4/5 and E121(ish) cards as well. And I have grown to love many of these; not as much as I love t206s, but I find collecting them very satisfying. And I have made good friends in the process.

For me, my journey into these other sets are because of players, not the sets themselves. I want to collect Joe Jackson and Honus Wagner -- that means T206 is a non-starter, so I started looking at E-90 & M101-4/5 for Jax and all the E and confectionary cards for Wags. Turns out, many of these cards have the same hallmarks I love with T206 -- front/back combos! I am currently attempting a back run of the Wagner throwing pose, which has introduced me to American Caramel, Nadja, Crofts Cocoa and Candy (blue and black (and red?)) Dockman, blank backs, E101 & E102, General Baking, Managerie, Mothers Bread, Mello Mint, E106s and the T216 variations. And the M101-4/5 and E121(ish) cards are similarly awesome with all the various backs.

In some cases, I find the E card backs even cooler than T206. I mean, I love that the card below was only given out to customers who shopped at 11 South 15th street, Philadelphia. Think about how rare that is and/or how few must have been given out and still remain today.

Back to players -- my T206 Tinker bat off, and Evers yellow sky, back runs lead me to T213, T214, and T215. I now own a handful of T213's, including a Fact 8 overprint, I own Two (2) T215 pirate backs, and I have a very rare T214 Speaker, which I love.

But the best part.... there are plenty of people, on this Board and elsewhere, who collect these cards! Not as many as T206, but I have made a number of recent connections/friendships with guys who have deep knowledge and love of E cards and rare T cards )just look at the T213-3 Fact 8 overprint thread that was popular a few days ago). Indeed, two board members helped me assemble a complete, 11-card E104-II Nadja Pirates set (I cant imagine there are more maybe 2-3 complete sets out there - and after I bought the Wagner at REA, with the help of the Board I was able to get the other 10 cards in 2-3 days, and these are RARE cards); BTW, the E104-I Nadjas Phillies are cool, and who doesnt then love the Williams and Rochester Baking, Cullivans Fireside, etc.

So, in my experience, I have found great pleasure collecting E, Confectionary, rare T, etc cards. I have made new friends and contacts doing so, and I do not find it boring, or even that hard to find what I want. I know you have branched into some other rarer T sets. I encourage you to take that deeper dive. Maybe pick a player, rather than a set, and try a back run -- its a great way to get a feel for all the different great HOF poses out there, but even better, all the cool, Americana-backs that are out there, which show firsthand the amazing history of the cards we collect.

The scarcer the better.....I like to find things that aren't common and many/most T206 seem common compared to other esoteric cards.

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There are cards that just attract me, while others don't. I don't have the deep pockets of some other collectors, so I don't even bother trying to attempt sets from before 1933 or so. I just grab cards that grab me. No, I don't care if it is obscure. Often, the obscurity is what appeals to me. It isn't that it is rare or hard to get. It is that I don't see it all the time. I think this is why exhibits and other old black and white cards appeal to me so much. The cards are simple and I don't see them on every dealer's table or site.

Several people have commented how easy T206's are to collect but
that actually depends on how/what you collect. I have been putting
together a (partial) back run of Conroy batting for 7/8 years now.
It is confirmed with a SC350/25 back but I haven't seen
a single copy come up for sale during that period yet there have been
two different Drums and a Brown Lenox (I bid on them but they were out
of my budget) sold during that time. There are no recorded sales in the
past twelve years and I have never seen a scan of a SC factory 25 Conroy.

The same thing can be claimed on other confirmed combos with semi common
backs It would be pretty easy to come up with a big list that have only single
sales over a 10 year period of subjects with Tolstoi, EPDG, Old Mill ect...
backs.

I don't collect sets, except for a couple of very small, obscure sets, namely E222 A.W.H. Caramels & 1925 Holland Creameries, and a few subsets. I mostly focus on type cards and cards of all the players on the 1924 Senators Championship Team. I get the most collecting thrill from obtaining cards that are very scarce/rare, especially 1-of-1s. And, I am just as thrilled to obtain a rare card of Joe Nobody as a rare card of a HOFer.

For example, Byron "By" Speece appeared in 21 games (54.1 innings) for the 1924 Senators, achieving a 2-1 W-L record and a 2.65 ERA. He appeared in one game of the 1924 World Series and pitched 1 inning, with no decision. Speece subsequently had cups of coffee with the 1925-26 Indians and the 1930 Phillies. He also pitched in 632 minor league games from 1922 through 1945 (age 48!). He pitched for the Seattle Rainiers his last 3 years, 1943-45, and he appears in the Centennial Flour card sets for each of these years. Below are his 1943 (1 in the pop reports) and 1944 (0 in the pop reports) cards - I'm still searching for Speece's 1945 card (0 in the pop reports).

Thanks for the replies everyone. Kind of made me realize that I had a preconceived notion of what people's answers would be, and not surprisingly that turned out to be an error on my part.

Ryan, I really liked your post. Your collection is incredible. And, it makes perfect sense that there are a bunch of other collectors out there doing the same thing. Just because I haven't met them doesn't mean they aren't out there.

For some weird reason, it seems like I can't just buy one card from one set and move on. I'd be a terrible type collector because I feel this need to accumulate a bunch of cards from sets I like, rather than just picking up random things that catch my eye. So branching out for me will be a pretty slow process.

I guess I just wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way. I buy and/or sell T206s everyday, so I get a constant "collecting buzz" (for lack of a better term). I'm sure if you collect all or most of the scarcest pre-war sets, you'd be able to find something to buy pretty often, but since I'm just starting with a couple non t205/t206/t207 sets, it's pretty quiet out there. One obvious solution is to keep adding to the scope of my collection so that I'm not having to be quite so patient.

This is a good thread, sorry I didn't read it earlier...

My conundrum now is around my T206 team set for the Red Sox and the fact that I'm looking for a different back for each player. I've got the money to pull the trigger on a rare back Speaker, but I'm beginning to wonder how long it will be until the right card becomes available. It could be tomorrow, of course, but it might also be a year, two years or even more (based on what I've seen on CardTarget.com and the sales history). I've got other collecting goals and am wondering if I save all my funds for when the Speaker does pop up, or get a little bit of gratification by acquiring other cards. I guess in the end, it's a good problem to have...

I have always collected rarities-- from cards to photos to others--, but not as sets. So when an item came up that I know was rare, I would try to get it, but it was never a matter of trying to assemble a set.

Same situation here. I'm working on a Providence set and can go months between finding a new card, so I'm always debating whether to save up or work on another set. I miss the buzz of buying something, so I'm gradually working on a Sport Kings set too since they are available and many of them are inexpensive.

Luke, I can only speak from the standpoint of postwar sports card collecting. If that disqualifies my remarks, please move on.

Since I began collecting at the age of 4, my life has been characterized by gravitating to the obscure, scarce, and while I would not say under-appreciated necessarily, as I later found out, the items I enjoyed were toys and things that one would not easily encounter as a child, and I suppose were marketed to those that wanted something a little better than a dime store toy.

My first toys were Tonka, but they were so large for me. Then, walking with my Mom during a shopping trip in Wilmette, Illinois at Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company, I happened upon a display of DINKY TOYS from Great Britain. Love at first sight.

I had regular dime store toy soldiers. Then, while stopping at an Oasis rest stop to eat, afterwards I wandered through their gift shop, looking for toys. I found them, among which were the Marx Warriors of the World. Again, love at first sight. I selected a Viking shooting an arrow---Haakon. A couple years later, I discovered a display of Britains soldiers. Wow. I was in love with the knights that were shooting an arrow from a crossbow. I begged to get 3 of them, and they ran 50 cents each! I still have them.

I loved my Topps, but the difficult to collect Post Cereal commanded more of my respect and admiration. I had to "work" to acquire them, gobbling down many bowls of, let us say, healthy and not very appetizing, gravelly cereal, such as 40% Bran Flakes. Sure, I could easily eat lots of Alpha Bits, but as some of you know, certain players only appeared on boxes of the less popular cereals. So, you want that player, Brian, ya gotta eat THAT cereal. To a kid, that was work. Also, I had to make sure I was ready to go with my Mom when she was doing her grocery shopping. I might have to miss the 3 Stooges, or Clutch Cargo, but it was worth it!

Fast forward to the early 70s, when I was extremely privileged to get in on the early card collector conventions. While I went for Topps and Bowman stars I wanted, THE CARDS AND COINS I PRIZED THE MOST WERE THE BAZOOKA, POST CEREAL, JELL-O, SALADA TEA COINS and DAN-DEE POTATO CHIPS. In a couple years I discovered other exotic scarcities and rarities----Glendale Meats Tigers, Johnston Cookies Braves, Old London coins, Wilson Wieners, and Stahl-Meyer Franks. Rarely were these for sale, when they were just as rarely seen. They were either highly-regarded trade bait, or auction material. The few for sale were smashed, creased, and often stained, and you didn't even consider the card's centering; they were too tough to find in the first place!

My eye was always discriminating. I kept my poor Dad waiting for half an hour while I scrutinized every piece of jewelry at the department store, picking out the piece I loved best, to give to my dear Mom for her Christmas present from me. I was 5 or 6 at the time.

My father enjoyed nice gadgets, and he was frugal and hard on himself to a point. However, the time came in 1959 when he bought a "very nice used car"----an over the top elegant 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing, the third one imported to America. I guess heads always turned whenever he drove the Gullwing. My family were members of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America. In our Chicago chapter, my Mom and Dad's 300SL was the centerpiece of the club. Now, I cannot say that I tried to copy my Dad's taste for something exotic, unusual, and attractive, but that's how it has turned out. I sure cannot afford a Bugatti Veyron, but my 1/43rd exotic model car collection definitely speaks loud and clear that I know what an important Le Mans and other historically significant racing sports car is.;)

All to answer your OP question, "Does it affect your enjoyment?":D

Mate, it IS my enjoyment. ---Brian Powell

I love the obscure stuff - the bulk of my collection is "non-mainstream" vintage cards.

My favorite set is a good example...

collecting
 

I have always enjoyed the unusual and off beat items. What fun is it to collect something everyone else already has or is easily available on line any time you want it? For this reason, I was never interested much in T 206 cards (from childhood on) and like many here have only owned maybe 20 or 30 in my life. I kinda looked at them as "commons" back in the day in the first part of my adult collecting in the late 1970s and on...... although I do understand that there are some tremendous rarities in backs and conditions...... if you want a real laugh, I always kind of looked at Old Judge cards in the same light!!!! To each his own, but I still get much more of a kick chasing down something Ive never seen before ...... if you an obscure set collector it almost goes without saying that you eventually branch out into other areas and pretty soon (like so many people here I am willing to bet) you've got your wife or mother or girlfriend saying.....WHY DONT YOU JUST OPEN UP A STORE???? Boxes of stuff everywhere!!!! but enjoying it!!

Virtually everything that I own...
 

... could be categorized as obscure. I think that in my entire negro league / Cuban card collection, there are just a handful of cards that have MORE than 20 copies grade and most have less than 10. For me, it has been a practice in patience and excitement when one of the cards that I have been looking for finally becomes available... or is seen for the first time. To each his own, but I love to try and find out where EVERY copy of a card that I owe is located, a task that would be nearly impossible for nearly any T206 card outside of, perhaps, the Wagners. While the tribes that I belong to in these small niches are small, they are extremely passionate, as am I.

But just think about picking up a (relatively) lot of cards from a super obscure set? It can feel pretty good to have a large accumulation of cards almost no one has (or cares about, sometimes :)) even one of.
.

That sounds like most everything I spend time collecting these days, hahahaha.

This hits my current collecting habits dead on. The longer i've collect, the more i've moved from more common to rarer cards, regardless of who else likes the set. I love the feeling of knowing I have 40% of the known cards from a set. It just stinks when you know where half the other cards are and know they won't be available for a long time.

DJ

+1000 (except “stinks” is an understatement).

So, the reason I started this thread is that I recently got into the "1917 set" (for lack of a better term). It's kind of a weird feeling to get all excited about a set, read everything you can find about it online, and then..........wait for something to show up that you can buy.........

On the bright side, it probably saves me money since there aren't a ton of cards out there on the market for me to overpay for before I know what I'm doing.

I'm working on the five different backs as if they are one set, because that's the way it feels to me. Still need my first Standard Biscuit back. Since I'm just starting, I'm probably not looking to set any new records for prices, but if anyone has any of these laying around that they would sell for a fair price, please let me know. Brian has already been a big help (thank you Brian).

Mello Mints
 

Well I’m 42 cards into the 50 card e105 Mello Mint set. It’s taken maybe 10 years but it’s a ton of fun. It started because I liked that it had Smith in the name and I was getting bored of the t206 set (which I completed this year without plank / Wagner). I’ve since completed a number of caramel and tobacco sets but this one is my ultimate chase.

I started when no one really cared about mellos and picked up 25 pretty easily. There are some other awesome Mello guys who have come and gone which has at times led to some crazy prices but spirited competition and strong collecting friendships. The cards are tough to come by now because they have grown in popularity as type cards and are just a mysterious set but I keep on trucking,

I get super pumped when they come up at auction or someone reaches out regardless of whether I need the card - and when one of the ones I need comes up it is beyond exciting. Most of the time I don’t win the last ones I need which totally sucks but man when I win it is just awesome - despite royally overpaying sadly. For better or worse there are 2 or 3 of us going hard for the same cards.

It’s a tough set. It’s getting pricey. But damn it I’m gonna finish it. And my kids will get them knowing how much of a bear it is to complete.

Luke, collecting the 1917 b & w cards with different backs should be a fun endeavor - good luck with it. I believe a sixth back, a blank back, also exists for these cards. Nice pickup re the Merchants Bakery - Rixey card; I almost picked up this same card a couple of years ago when it appeared in Heritage and LOTG auctions, but I decided to impatiently hold out for the re-appearance of the Merchants Bakery - WaJo card that sold in Heritage a few years ago.

Val, you're right. Shouldn't be that hard to count to six, but I am pretty tired, heh. I have 5 of the 6 so far and hopefully will end up with multiples of each back.

I also like regionals from the West, esp. CA. Zeenuts, Standard Biscuit, Atlantic Oil, Mothers Cookies, etc. But since I only collect stars and HOFers, not commons, it can be quite a while between cards I want. Which is nice, frankly, since having one pop up is special. And there is the added benefit of so many PCL sets having pre-rookies and only cards of some players.

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The Cubs at spring training on Catalina, doing the Seven Dwarves (HI Ho, It's Off To Work We Go).

Adam, over the years, I have greatly enjoyed seeing the eclectic cards from your collection that you have shared with us. And, the above group is no exception, my favorite of which being the Evers card, because the D350-3 Standard Biscuits are so tough to find.