T222 Fatima - unloved set?

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Posted By: bcornell

I'm curious whether there are others on this board who collect T222's and what your impressions are of this set. I'm a huge fan of this issue and am slowly working my way to completion.

My own experience is that T222's are both hard to find and not much in demand. T200's (issued under the same Fatima brand one year previously, in 1913) are almost always found up for auction on eBay and elsewhere and seem to have grown in popularity in the past few years. T222's, in contrast, are almost never seen on eBay (there have been none since October 2001) and haven't shown up in the comments on this board as yet. Lew Lipset auctioned a complete set of 52 in mixed condition last fall that realized about $5200; another group of 8 came in at $643. This seems pretty tepid.

T222's unpopularity has me somewhat stumped and I wonder if I'm missing something. This set doesn't follow the pattern of other less popular "T" sets: it's not unattractive, like T207; it's not too easy [sic], like T201; it's not impossible, like T208. My guess is that the relative lack of HOFers (only 7 in all; no Cobb, Mathewson, Lajoie, Speaker) and the fragile condition of the cards are black marks against it, but there may be other reasons.

As a final question, Lipset's book on "T" cards theorized that the numbers written at the bottom of the cards (1 to 15; some have none) was a guide to their scarcity, but recent price guides don't take this into account. I'd appreciate any insights.

Bill