A refresher course on why the Joe Doyle Nat'l card is so rare

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

For those of you who are new to T206 cards, or need a refresher regarding why the Joe Doyle "Nat'l" card is so rare.
Also, there have been several responses that indicate that some collectors have questions regarding this mysterious
T206 card.

The theory as to why the Joe "Doyle N.Y. Nat'l" card is so very scarce is quite simple. The 350-only Series of T206's
was initially issued in late 1909 (or early 1910). There are 216 Subjects in this Series, that includes Joe Doyle......a
pitcher for the NY Highlanders of the AL.

In this Series is another Doyle......Larry of the NY Giants (NL). Therefore, we can conclude that the T206 designers
must of confused Joe with Larry and captioned Joe's card with "Nat'l". The first batch of this Series of cards rolled
off the printing press and where shipped to the Piedmont plant in Virginia. The Piedmont's were always printed first.

Back in NYC at American Lithographic (ALC), an alert Quality Control checker quickly caught the "Nat'l" mistake on
the first batch of Joe Doyle cards. With haste they simply erased the "Nat'l" lettering on the caption printing plate.
In doing this, they created another error, the error of omission. They should have added "Amer." next to N.Y. This
corrected card should have read...."Doyle, N.Y. Amer."....so, they corrected their initial error with another error.

Anyhow, a few of the Doyle "Nat'l" cards left ALC and were inserted into Piedmont packs before they were caught,
along with some other (Piedmont 350) T206's that are almost as rare as the Doyle (but, not as noteworthy).

How many Doyle "Nat'l" cards were inserted into Piedmont packs ?

We will never know. But, 99 years later we can account for only 7 of them. Perhaps, if we are lucky, there are a
handful of the Doyle error cards still out there some where and they will eventually be discovered.


Furthermore, there are the regular Doyle cards with the aforementioned "printer's mark". A survey here 2 years ago
showed that 12% of the regular Doyle cards can be found with this "mark". It is theorized that this "mark" is a rem-
nant of the "N" in "Nat'l" that remained when ALC did not cleanly erase off the word "Nat'l" on the printing plate. This
variation of the regular Doyle card can be found on cards with Piedmont 350, Sweet Caporal 350, Old Mill, and Polar
Bear backs.


Incidently folks, this same scenario applies to the Magie card, except a greater number of the Magie cards were in-
serted into Piedmont cigarette packs before ALC caught this spelling mistake.....and, corrected it to read Magee.


Finally, I cannot emphasize these two factors enough......

The Doyle N.Y. Nat'l card was printed only on a PIEDMONT 350 back.

The Magie card was printed only on a PIEDMONT 150 back.



TED Z