[T206Jim]

Here is the story behind two of the rarest of Ty Cobb's 1907 rookie postcards. I'll start with what is the least well known of Cobb's 1907 postcards, the H.M. Taylor Wild Bill Donovan Floral Horseshoe Lafond version.

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It depicts Donovan receiving a floral horseshoe during the September 30, 1907 Tigers game at Philadelphia when his Philadelphia fans presented him with this token of their appreciation. A youthfully exuberant Cobb is at the far right. The regular version does not contain "By permission of M.A. Lafond & Co...." overprint. So how did this Lafond version come to be and how was it distributed?

Lafond was a cigar store in Detroit. They advertised on the Bennett Park wall as shown below.

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The Lafonds were related by marriage to Wild Bill Donovan and as the October 23 edition of The Tobacco Leaf (a tobacco trade magazine) shows they displayed the Donovan Floral Horseshoe in their shop window in Detroit.

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The floral horseshoe game was September 30th and by October 5th the Horseshoe was on display at LaFonds as shown in the Detroit Free Press of October 6th.

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This October 11 LaFond ad in the Detroit Free Press shows the exhibition from the window was already gone.

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This ad for the H.M. Taylor set was advertised in the October 16th Detroit Free Press.

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Here is the front cover of the Detroit Free Press from October 6th when the Tigers clinched the A.L. pennant. It is the first use of this famous photo I can find and variations of the photo were used on numerous 1907 Tigers postcards.

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The earliest postmark I can find on any H.M. Taylor Tiger postcard is about October 10, 1907 when the World Series against the Cubs was being played. A shot of Chance in the Tigers dugout before the World Series commenced is a part of the set. Thus it stands to reason that the H.M. Taylor set was issued during the 1907 World Series and that the Lafond version of the Floral Horseshoe postcard was overprinted especially for the LaFond store and only distributed by them at their store the week of the display or for a short time afterward. This would explain extreme scarcity of this variation.

Now for the second half of the story. Look at the LaFond window image at the extreme right. We see what looks to be an uncut sheet of the 1907 Dietsche Tigers. Look closer, we can see the rare Fielding Cobb on the bottom row second from the left, but there is no Cobb batting version on the sheet. Remember, this was on display October 5th.

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Here are October 6th Detroit Free Press ads showing the Dietsche poses, including the Cobb Fielding.

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Now look at these pages from the October 11th Detroit Free Press advertising the Dietsche set. The uncut sheet here shows the Cobb batting, but not Cobb Fielding. it stands to reason the Batting replaced the Fielding early in the print run, probably in a matter of a week. This would explain the relative scarcity of the Cobb Fielding as opposed to the Cobb Batting.

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If anyone has any information to add about any of these rare 1907 Cobb postcards I'd love to hear from you!