Help with novel, sort of off-topic, but T206-related

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Posted By: Rob Fouch

Hi, everybody. I'm an occasional poster, but I mostly lurk, read and learn.

I have a question maybe some of you guys who collected in the '80s can help me with. I'm an aspiring novelist and have completed a couple of books that I'm trying to get published. In one of the books, the two main characters collect baseball cards. Shocking, huh?

Anyway, one of the characters is a high-intellect, geeky kind of guy who's a hard-core collector and has money to spend (from a very profitable yard-mowing business). He acquires Topps sets from 1969 through the 1980s. And he also manages to get a T206 Cobb red portrait in decent shape. (The cards are integral to the novel's final scene.)

Here are my questions:
In the early to mid-'80s, what would have been the most logical way for this character, who lives in a very small West Virginia town, to acquire these cards? Ordering from ads in the back of price guides? Obviously, this was pre-ebay.

And what would a Cobb red portrait have cost from a dealer in that era? In approximately VG condition.

I collected as a teenager back then, but I wasn't smart enough and didn't have the cash to order those kind of cards. I simply bought pack after pack of the modern stuff at the local 7-Eleven. Sigh.

Anyway, whatever help you could give me would be appreciated. I really want to get the details right.

Thanks. Rob

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Posted By: Rich Klein

Sources such as Larry Fritsch and other people who were dealers at the time and advertising in National Media.

Publications such as Baseball Cards (More newstand oriented) then SCD and Baseball Hobby News.

Basically all was done mail order in those days from catalogs and magazine ads

Rich

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Posted By: Brian

Probably would have bought the card through an ad in the Sports Collector Digest (SCD) or a local card show.

No clue to the price, I can't remember what I paid for gas last week.

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Posted By: T206Collector

....my 15 or 16 year old friend purchased an (obviously raw) EX-MT Christy Mathewson T206 portrait from an ad in Sports Collector's Digest. This would have been 1988 or 1989. I believe he paid about $400 for it. A VG Cobb would probably have sold for a little less -- maybe $200 to $300, though I really have no means for comparison.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I was selling T206's in the 1980's and I would guess a red Cobb VG might have been in the $90-120 range and Ex in the $175-200 range. Doing this strictly from memory.

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Posted By: Steve M.

but best bet is he was a subscriber to the SCD. Most of us were in those days and bought mostly from that source. My guess on the Cobb (even before I read Pauls) is $250.00.

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Posted By: T206Collector

...completely outdone by my friend, I purchased a 1933 Goudey Grove (which now is in an SGC 60 holder) for $225 at a show at Pier 92 in Manhattan in March 1989. I was 15 years old. Not sure if that is at all helpful....

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Posted By: Steve M.

Maybe in 1980 but in the later years of the 80's they were going for more.

So, I guess the author will have to decide when in the 80's the card was acquired.

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Posted By: andy becker

i would agree with barry on red cobb price in the early 1980's.....more as the decade wore on....but $80-$125 sounds right.

as a side note, the red portrait cobb has always been a "sexy" card....and sold for a huge premium back then.
in the same era an e92 cobb was $25.

scd is good too, but i would say serious collectors were participating in sales and auctions from "the trader speaks", a publication that ran from the late 1960's to the mid 1980's.

my thoughts, good luck on your book.

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Posted By: peter chao

Rob,

Your writing a novel, right. It's not necessary to adhere to the facts, put the Ty Cobb in a PSAS holder. This stands for PSA Sucks.

Peter

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Posted By: barrysloate

Fair enough- sometime during that decade I was selling VG's for $90- but perhaps by 1989 it was higher. But didn't Rob say the story was taking place early to mid-eighties?

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Posted By: Steve M.

my bad I Should have read more closely.