Question About T205 Backs...A. Latham And PSA

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Posted By: DJ

I know virtually nothing about T205 backs but I do collect Arlie Latham. It was a late night and I'm pretty sure I saw an Arlie Latham T205 with a "Latham" back with a heavy price tag.

In the description, the person talked about it being "rare" and I think that same card was on eBay for less a few weeks before. How rare is this and what have been realized prices of late?

Also, doing another Latham search today, is this a PSA error? It's a Polar Bear back but the slab says "A. Latham" back or am I incorrect?

http://cgi.ebay.com/1911-T205-A-Latham-PSA-4-vg-ex_W0QQitemZ8746664302QQcategoryZ31718QQrdZ1QQcmdZ ViewItem

Thank you,

DJ

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Posted By: Brian H (misunderestimated)

Not sure I get your question entirely but here is what I know:

2 versions of the T205 Latham:
A Latham on the back; and
WA Latham on the back. Although I don't recall for sure, there is almost certainly a link between these variations and the company advertisement on the back. That's how it is for virtually all of the variations in this set.

Although the pop reports indicates that the W.A. var. is the scarcer of the two I would not say that it is especially scarce as T205s go. Nonethless at the upper reaches of the grading spectrum (PSA 6 and higher)the relative scarcity of W.A. can make a big difference in the price between the two cards.... This price differential would be registry driven. .
PSA does designate this variation by listing the card as "WA Latham" or "A Latham", although that hardly forecloses the possibility that an individual T205 Latham was mislabelled.

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Posted By: J Levine

Brian did a very good job, here is a little more complete answer...

The Latham card comes with two different captions on the back. One just has "A. Latham" at the top and the other has "W.A. Latham" on the back.

Now is there a premium to the back variation. There never was before but I am about to create one.

The version with "W.A. Latham" on the back I have only seen with the Sweet Caporal Red Fact. 42 back.

The version with just "A. Latham" on the back comes with Cycle, Drum, Piedmont Fact. 25, Polar Bear, and Sovereign. At least. I think it probably comes with both the Black Sweet Cap backs as well.

As an aside, if anyone has any "W.A." versions with any other back other than Sweet Cap RED, I would love to see a scan. Here of e-mail.

As of this morning, I now have 919 different front/back combos on my matrix for the T205 set and am not even half way complete. I do have some other interesting tidbits about supposed scarcities and some (like the Latham) that might be changed but not really ready to put it down as fact yet.

Joshua

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Posted By: DJ

Thank you guys so much for your help on this matter!

DJ