T206 Time Machine
 

I couldn’t fall asleep last night, and had a fun idea in my head that I thought would be a fun discussion post….Im going to add parameters to it that might make it nonsensical, but relatable to this forum.

Essentially, if you stumbled upon a Time Machine that could only go back to 1909-1911, what resources would you need to bring with you to maximize your purchasing power of cigarette packs and thus your collection of NM T206? Perhaps a real Honus Wagner…

Clearly, modern currency wouldn’t work, and I don’t believe Gold would help due to the Gold Standard. So what abundant resource in 2023 could you bring that would maximize your 1910 equity and get you more buying power?

Bonus! What would you wear as to not get caught right away as a time traveler!

I'd bring a PSA 9 52 Mantle!

Gray's Sports Almanac is all you need

Where could you realistically bet on sports in 1910?

Cash, and buy the tobacco company. Or at least a couple of them.

All cards, all the time.

you'd have to bring cash older than 1909...which could be a challenge. i'd bring cigarettes...to trade for the cards.

So let's say that you manage to buy up millions of mint T206 cards, and bring them back to the present. Including a gigantic stash of Wagners.

Does your intervention suddenly impact the market, like with the BSF, except with a much larger existing supply and demand?

And does a T206 Wagner no longer have the same cachet?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but pre-Black Sox, I believe gambling was quite prevalent around the game. (Although not officially sanctioned the way it is now.)

You certainly have to start with something other than cash. 2023 cash is funny money to someone in 1910.

Gold won’t work either. Were silver or diamonds more valuable then?

Food might be a commodity. Modern food production probably makes something super cheap in 2023 very valuable in 1909…

You are probably right, although i thought it was “illegal” back then. Be careful not to get the bookies and gangs on your tail for taking advantage of them!

You could get a job! Start making bets and Biff Tannen your way to the top.

Silver coins and gold coins. Not to mention paper money from that range of time as well. Fits right into the time frame.

It would at least go a long way in explaining the apparent scarcity of the Wagner card. Regardless, there would still be money to be made off of the cache that would be brought 'back to the future'.

Why bring anything. I guess you'd figure out a way to get $$. Rob a bank, whatever (ok, bring an assault rifle with you).

Then why bother with buying the cards. Go to the lithography print shop and run a few hundred sheets. Make sure to include all the top error cards and the big four in your print runs. Make sure you have a lot of the tough backs and all the HOFers in large quantities. Create a Honus Wagner with a Honus Wagner back while you're there.

Also, be a nice guy and tell Addie Joss to get himself checked out and prevent his death. Why stop there, while back in time, visit Austria and find out where Adolf lives and plan an accident ahead of time so he doesn't make it to Germany in 1913. I guess according to Doc Bown, that that would screw up the entire space-time continuum, and in the modern day, nobody would give a crap about pictures of dead guys on cardboard and you'd have a worthless stash of lithography that nobody wants and you'll be wishing you went back to the 1950s and picked up Pele rookies.

oh, got a little carried away there...

You've got to be sure that you don't snag too many cards. If a set gets too rare, set collectors write it off as impossible, and so the price drops. Price, of course, is a product of supply and demand, but demand, especially for collectibles, is not independent of supply.

(Probably not for anything? If oranges were super rare, we'd probably just think of them as rare curiosities, rather than as things you might realistically snack on. And so people wouldn't want to buy them, hence their price wouldn't rise as much as you'd expect given their rarity.)

Now, they made enough T206 cards that this probably won't be a problem. You'd need a really big deLorean to haul home an appreciable share of the T206 cards manufactured. But, in principle, watch out for second-order effects like this.

Also, as for buying stuff in 1909. Just take period currency. Looks like you can get half dollars for $20 on ebay. (I assume that these are terrible prices, just like most ebay baseball cards.) A pack of smokes cost, what, a nickel in 1909? So you'll be paying $2 per T206 card if you go that route.

Being a coin and currency collector, I've thought about this idea many times for many things. The cheapest coins would be the Morgan silver dollar from 1878 to 1904. Liberty V nickels from 1883 to 1908 would be a cheaper option, and the Barber dimes from 1892 to 1908 would be a decent option as well. Those 3 options would run you $25 to $35 in todays price, for a dollar face value that could be spent during the 1909-1911 time frame.

Buy turn of the century Silver coins in the .10 and .25 cent pieces. Easy exchange for packs..

Every single person is wrong so far.

Don't hide from it, flaunt it!! The only way to approach this scenario is to dress casually in your normal clothing...perhaps dazzle everyone by donning a t-shirt with Farrah Fawcett in the red bathing suit on it, and a Mets (or your preferred team) hat. Bring Pop Tarts and all sorts of snacks to hand out, and a comfortable chair. Perhaps have some 'Seinfeld' DVDs to give out (since you can't really do much with DVDs anymore). Set yourself up in the most tobacco-est area possible of a town or city and let it be known that you will wow anyone who gives you tobacco cards with fantastic tales of the future.

A second option is to bring with you many thousand-count boxes of 1990 Score cards (only commons, of course, because these 1910 idiots don't know who the stars are/will be) and tell the kiddies, "I will give you 10 incredible futuristic cards for every silly, worthless and 'new' tobacco card you give me."

Word will spread like wildfire, and your only problem will be how in heck do you get back to the time machine with the incredible amount of booty you've scored.

you arrive the same way Arnold Schwarzenegger did in Terminator and buy clothes with all of the pre 1909 Morgans you brought.. Once clothes are acquired, you proceed to but 20 packs of cigarettes per Morgan.

cheap morgans are about $30 right now so you will get 20 MINT cards for $30.. not bad.

Bring lots of 2023 shiny, glittering refractors all graded 10 and 1/1 examples. The Wagners, Planks etc will fall at your feet. Maybe a Joe Doyle -National. Who knows. They won't be able resist your Juan Soto double platinum refractor over these dull tobacco cards.

Hahaha!! Some great responses!

Besides buying old clothes and old currency which may limit your buying, I would bring back some type of technology and sell the rights. That alone will make you a lot of money to buy those T206's and whatever else.

Something to think about. What if you did go back in time and bought just 1 Honus Wagner. And that happen to be the one owned by Wayne Gretzky. Since you bought it in 1909 and brought it back with you, would that mean he would have never owned it?
What if I went back in time and bought every card in your collection, does that mean your collection would be totally different?

Anyone see the movie....The Final Countdown?

I would sell the time machine for big dollars. Oh wait....

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I would take back old stock certificates from now defunct companies like American Caramel, Union Pacific, American Steel & Wire, etc. that were valuable in 1910 and put them up as collateral to start a tobacco shop in New York.

Once I had the shop set up I would offer a 1 cent discount to tobacco buyers to open their pack and leave their T206's with me.

The rest, as they say, would be History...

I think I’m going to go the pineapple stand route. I’m guessing nobody had access to pineapple on the east coast back in 1909, i bet i could convince everyone that it had healing powers as well.

I’m guessing i can convert many cigarette packs for a few cuts of pineapple…

I would love to how many proofs there are. I bet the Collins, which would be amazing to own, is not the only proof card never mass produced.

My first thought would be to travel back in time to shortly before the T206s started being produced, then do whatever is necessary to begin working for one of the printing companies. Once production started, wait for the memo requiring all Honus Wagner cards to be destroyed. On that day, volunteer to help with pulling and discarding all produced copies. At the end of the day, toss them into the trash and swing by that night and raid the dumpster. If you can't get a job inside, just keep checking the trash nightly for however long it takes. I imagine a few months at a printing company would make for a nice retirement. Maybe even tell the boss your son is a baseball fan, so you will work for less if you can take home some cards after each shift.

If that option is not feasible, become a day trader using historical daily reports of stock performance. I imagine the 1910 range, there were alot of sharp ups and downs in the market, so you hit every up and avoid every drop. You should be able to keep doubling your money every few week or so. Or, wait 10 years, travel back in 1920, start day trading and then start buying Coca Cola shares at $40/ea. Those shares are worth about $10 million each today.

But, one thought occurred to me. If you have a time machine, would a 110 year old card present differently than one that has spent 110 years degrading? I have to think the vibrancy of the ink and the cardboard has changed over the years, even if well preserved. Would brand new T206 cards seem fake when compared to other examples?

Isn't there a dozen or so proofs that werent mass produced? I thought Keith O had them?

Good point, might be BSF all over again.

While you're there, don't forget to snag some copies of the T206 Evans to go along with Wagner, Cobb, Matty and the like.

A 1912 wsj.

I was also thinking Morgan silver dollars. Really nice ROI assuming you can pick up a huge stash of T206s (or a sizeable stash of unopened cigarette packs for that matter) for one silver dollar.

I've often wondered what would have been the best thing I could have spent my money on at my first card show in April of 1986. I bought a Will Clark card, a 1972 Ty Cobb card, and a pack of 1986 Donruss (all commons as it turned out). I must have had about a $5 budget. I figure if I could have found them, I would have done best to have picked up 5 of the 1984-85 Star #101 Michael Jordans, and then my $5 would be worth six figures today.

thats a funny thought! I attempted to trade my whole collection at the time in the late 70's for a 76' babe ruth. she said NO!!!!
some of my earliest memories at shows prob late 70's-early 80's i picked up a fake mayo cross for $2...and a beaten t206 matty for $2. This was basically my budget!

Just stay for awhile and invent something, put the company in trust and return knowing your business is worth billions.

Similar to my idea, what's inexpensive for us, but would have a lot of value then, and be easily transportable.

Knowledge.

Like what inventions will take hold, what won't. A few printing secrets, like hey ALC, don't give those scammers 17K for their bogus aluminum plate system (from a real case where they bought a process that didn't and would never work, and sued the "inventors" who ran off with the proceeds. )

Maybe one trip swapping the info for a few select items... Wagner, a couple other cards, a sheet or two, like a piedmont sheet and a Drum sheet.

Maybe a couple trips, one to sell, then one once the proof happened as you said, collecting the pay and buying cards on the secondary market. An offer of 5 or 10 cents each for old baseball cards should bring out a lot of sellers.

Not sure, but sounds a little familiar.

I believe this might be one of the articles:

https://t206resource.com/Olbermann%20Proofs.html

One other thought….

What time frame would you want to go back to to maximize your access?

June of 1909 to find a Wagner and Plank before they disappeared?

I don't know if you'd need to buy cigarettes to get the cards. A lot of people probably tossed them when they opened the packs. I wish I could remember the name of the short story but it was written in the time period and there was a scene where the narrator passed groups of kids bugging people buying smokes for the cards.

I'd like to drop in on Cy Berger just before he dumped the cases of 1952 Topps. I could get them free.

While Wagner was only available for a very short period in my opinion he wasn't included in the initial printing of the T206's and it would have to be later than June 1909 but that's just my opinion based off some T206 research.


Atlanta Journal August 13 1909
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...20-%20Copy.jpg[/IMG]

Random info: the "B" signature on the drawings in the article belongs to the cartoonist Alfred Brewerton (1881-1960). He worked for the Journal during this period.

Interesting, thanks for that information Andy.

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...10_09_02_5.jpg[/IMG]

jewelry, pawn shop, problem solved.

Id go dumpster diving at American lithography co and bring back the best scrap error cards. No money needed. ��

Pat's linked article from the 1909 Atlanta Journal points the way to T206 acquisition success. With promises of iPhones, iPads and other such electronic ilk, recruit a modern day 8 year old street urchin, dress him up in period knickers and pageboy cap, and after transporting him back in time have him hang out at a local tobacco shop and plead for tobacco cards from sophisticated smokers exiting the store. Have him go back in time at various intervals during the 1909 to 1911 time frame, and instruct him to trade common cards with common backs for Hall of Famers, scarcities and rare backs. Make sure to give him plenty of card sleeves to stash the cards (when out of sight of his fellow ragamuffins).

Brian

And miss the thrill of opening a fresh pack? No way! That’s the fun!

The key point here is to not create such an operation that you amass too many cards or you change the future too much in some way. You have to get in and get out, not to effect the market too much upon return. Maybe a set for yourself and a set for sale?

Depending on the size of the time machine you could bring lots of Pop Tarts and open a Pop Tart restaurant which will be super successful with all the flavors, then you become rich, acquire goods. Then you return to the present and not only will you have plenty of cards but there will be a History Channel documentary on your Pop Tart creations and super successful restaurant.

I would take back the formula for transparent aluminum and live long and prosper that way.

I'd bring a gun and a big bag. Park the time machine right outside the smoke shop and I'm in and out in less than 2 minutes.