T207 Back Multipliers

[frohme]

Glad to see a T207 post ... I suspect the relative number of these vs ones on T206/5 directly correlates to the number of folks interested, collecting.

Originally Posted by KMayUSA6060

The player I collect (Grover Hartley) is in the Broadleaf/Cycle/Anonymous section. I learned this at National, and appreciate you confirming. Is the Red Cross a guaranteed back for that the Broadleaf/Cycle/Anonymous, or is it more if the subject has a Red Cross, they would also only have those 3?


Grover Hartley is the player I collect. 15th toughest card I believe in the set? Doesn't bode well for me with trying to place valuations on his cards.


Interesting. Are the Anonymous factories also specific to each set? The Hartley anonymous I've seen is a Factory 3 (also, BL & Cycle).

Hi Kyle - you're now aware ( from a previous thread http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207372) there are two classes of cards:

• Recruit - with Recruit (Fac 240 and 606) and Napoleon (Fac 240 only) backs; and
• Broadleaf - with Broadleaf, Cycle and two factories of Anonymous (3 and 25) backs.

There is no crossover between the two classes. The only twist to this from the backs perspective is that there are a handful (~50) Recruit cards that are known with one of the Anonymous backs (Factory 3).

As for relative valuations, I think others have hit it on the head: you can't compare across classes; and Cycle seems to be the only one to see any bump; no one really cares, it seems.

Hartley being Broadleaf-class then has 4 backs (BL, Cycle, Anon3, Anon25). All things considered, I'd place him in the easier half of the Broadleaf cards, probably in the top 40 in difficulty, but well below 15. That said - and you see this time and time again in these threads - everyone's experience varies with the Broadleaf class cards. Its just a matter of timing.

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Why are there no T207 set collectors anymore? Of the T205/06/07 trio it's clearly the least popular, but it's still a heck of an interesting set. I'm surprised to hear that.

Originally Posted by sb1

Barry,

I bet a head count of the board would show less than 5 people pursuing the set, perhaps as few as 3.

Not all of us have gone by the wayside, Barry, at least not completely, but I think Scott's assessment is pretty close. I'm probably not in that group, but am still occasionally active as there are a number of subsets I'd really like to finish.

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Scott and Tyler- I can only think the reason there are so few set collectors is that the price has become prohibitive. Tobacco sets, and even some of the candy sets, are the backbone of the pre-war era, and they were always widely collected. When I see what some of the key T-206 HOFers sell for, I realize most collectors are priced out.

And the charm of the T-207 set is exactly the obscure mix of players. In place of Cobb and Mathewson you get Lew Lowdermilk and Chet Hoff, but that is what always drew collectors to it. The hobby is changing.

Agreed with all that, Barry, yet the last year has been a better time than in in a while to find good T207s at dirt prices ... as long as you don't want certain cards. I can say that it has not been a great time to be a seller, even with some of the tougher backs.

Originally Posted by Luke

I agree. I really like the T207 set, but there are some factors that make it tough for people to collect it. If I had unlimited funds, I'd be working on the set. As it is, I can't really afford to go after the BL class cards, so I am slowly working on Napoleon and Anon Recruit Class poses.

Some of the artwork is breath-taking, and some is just objectively ugly. The Johnson is one of the worst, and looks nothing like him. If the artist that did the Leach or Hooper had also done Johnson, the interest in that card would be ten-fold what it is now.

In that same vein, the set doesn't feel that cohesive to me. It's hard to look at Konetchy and Sullivan and feel like they really belong together. Konetchy is incredibly ugly and the Sullivan is one of the best looking T cards ever produced imho.

Hey Luke. Amen on both Napoleons and Anon 3 Recruit (the two most difficult subsets after RedCross). Hard to believe we don't yet have confirmation on the Napoleon cards . There's also the long-standing open question of exactly how many cards there are in the Anon 3 Recruit group. Its at least 49..

As for the variance in portrait quality, I'd be interested if some research on the subject might showed that there were at least two separate groups doing the artwork and back text over time. The differences are pretty stark, and you could (likely) split them.

The broad split is Broadleaf and Recruit w/Anon 3 vs everything else.

• The former have ~realistic portrait poses with colored logos and emblems
• The latter, well, don't and have the caricatures and fugly "in-grass" set of poses.

Clearly these were not done by the same team of artists.

Further, look at the use of color across any team set. Compare all the cards on, say, Pittsburgh, Boston (Amer), Brooklyn ... to others on the same team to see what I mean. Colored (non-brown) team emblems and names on the jerseys are on the Broadleaf cards, and the Recruits that can be also be found w/an Anon3 back... McKechnie, Leifield & Leach look more like the Broadleaf class (Donlin et al) w/Blue 'P' and Pirates in Blue than the do the other Recruits (Miller, Byrne, Ferry, ...)

Same with the RedSox - Bradley, Gardner, Henriksen O'Brien and Yerkes do not have an Anon 3 card, all the others do.

Not as obvious on some of the other teams, but the case is pretty obvious (Brooklyn's Rucker is the only outlier I'm aware of).

Fun stuff, as ever. I hope to finish my (fell-into) goal of completing the Recruit, Broadleaf, Anon and Cycle subsets, but would settle for seeing the list of Napoleons confirmed. At least it would be good to know if any of the variations in the Recruit class have more than one of the variants found with a Napoleon back.