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Originally Posted by Aaron Seefeldt
Hey Bob,
I’m not sure when it was graded but I acquired it in Hunt’s December auction and I am absolutely thrilled to have it! I collected white silks with backs many years ago…
A little story about Red Suns. About 25 to 27 years ago I was set up as a dealer at the Chicago Sun Times show (was held in the Rosemont Convention Center now known as the Donald Steven’s Center where the National is when in Rosemont, IL). The Sun Times show was 3 or 4 times a year. At one of the shows a guy approached my booth and saw that I had a bunch of white S74s w/ backs and he told me he had a bunch of them and would I care to look. He said he had a storefront and sold mostly modern cards but this group of silks came with a large purchase of other stuff… I forget exactly how many he had but it was more than 20 and they were all Red Suns! And most of them weren’t folded! Including the nicest Cobb I ever saw, now in an SGC 7. This was before grading services ruled the roost so they were unslabbed. There were several HOFers in there! I bought the whole group for $1500. I kept them for a couple years in my collection then sold them in a Mastro auction. I always regretted selling the Cobb.
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Great story Aaron, and what a pickup that was. Been collecting silks, especially the backed white version S74-1s myself, for quite a while now. That must have been a heck of a collection that guy you had bought them off had. The fact they all did not have the fold is interesting, I know there are some theories about the white ad-backed silks that exist with no folds. My belief has always been that someone working at the printers where these silks were made/put together, or at the factory where they were folded and then put into the cigarette packs, simply grabbed a bunch of these to take home, for whatever reason. I've never heard of someone coming across a batch of unfolded silks that large before, all in one collection. Wow! I've seen images of the graded 7 Red Sun Cobb , it is stunning. I'd be kicking myself to this day letting any of those Red Suns you once had get away, let alone the Cobb.
Didn't catch that it was in Hunt's recent auction, must have missed it somehow as I normally at least check out all their auctions. But that is a huge pickup none the less, and IMO you got it at a ridiculously cheap price. And I can guarantee you that it was only graded in the last year or so. I remember checking pop reports while talking with someone else in the past year or so, and there had only been the same two Red Sun backed Cobbs showing on their pop report as had been for years, the unfolded one you once had that was now graded a 7, and the other graded 2 version I have. And I know mine had been slabbed a while back as it shows the grade as 30, based on SGC's old grading scale of 1-100, instead of 1-10.
I've got a few other Red Sun backed silks, but of course Cobb is the ultimate prize from this set. Again, super pickup, and stunned you were able to get it at that price. Just goes to show once more how ridiculously underappreciated and undervalued these S74 silks still are. I keep waiting for the day that PSA finally starts grading them, like they recently in the past couple years started doing with the M101-2 Sporting News Supplements. Though I couldn't care less about having items from either of these issues that I own graded by PSA, the impact on some market prices of PSA graded M101-2s was unreal. If PSA ever does agree to start grading these S74 silks, I think we'll start to see a more accurate value finally being reflected on them in the marketplace.
Now all you have to do is find yourself a Helmar backed Cobb silk to go with your Red Sun one. And if you thought finding Red Sun backed S74 silks was hard..................