Posted By:
Frank WakefieldI agree with Bill and Jay.
When someone asks me about what books or guides are helpful, I encourage them to get the newest Standard Catalog, Mr. Lipset's 3 Encyclopedias, Bert Sugar's Sports Collector's Bible, and Mr. Burdick's American Card Catalog. The response I get is why would they need the old stuff, the last 2, or the last 3. And this thread shows a reason why.
If a fellow has one white border tobacco card, a T206, then he has ONE. Once he accumulates a couple of dozen, then he's likely to have one for each major league team, and some minor leaguers; at that point an alphabetical ordering makes sense to me, for simplicity's sake. Once an accumulation of T206s grows to 400 or so, then what seems sensible to me is to bunch them by team. That is how Bert Sugar lists them in the Sports Collector's Bible. He did it that way 'cause that's how the old guys grouped them. And when you see a set or near set grouped that way it becomes obvious that an alphabetical ordering is helpful for finding a single card, but that a team ordering is much more appealing. Within the teams I like to sort them by series, so the evolution of the poses and uniform types becomes apparent; "Cubs" across the jersey came before "Chicago" down the front. I think that the target group of folks who might most benefit from what I've said won't see this site... and most of the folks on this site care not about the red border Old Mill cards, so even they won't look at this thread. 'tis a shame.