T206 Collecting in 1909
 

I've been trolling newspaper digital archives and found this interesting story about kids collecting cigarette cards. It's from the August 9, 1909 Charlotte News.

Michael

This is absolutely amazing. What a read! Thank you for sharing.

Interesting that Cobb was at first scarce and then widely available. Makes you wonder if there would have been a flux of Wagners if not for its removal.

Wow what a great find! Thanks for sharinf

now that was cool

Cool article, and it provides a good account of the flipping/gambling aspect that helped damage our T206 cards.

With the kids reselling the 5 cent pack of Piedmont cigarettes for between 1 and 2.5 cents apiece without the cards, I guess that effectively made the market value of the T206 cards on the street to be around 2 to 4 cents apiece.

Brian

The fact that the reporter actually reported how many Cobbs were found in the last batch of cigarettes at that store makes you wonder if he was also a collector.

Great article. Thanks for sharing!

Found this 1910-1911 photo with a few T206 & T205s in the background, nice little collection.

https://i.imgur.com/Mpa0bvw.jpg

Fantastic read. I note there is no mention of a Wagner card being found.

History repeats itself.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...light=observer

In the early 80s, I got to meet a very old man who had collected T206s as a boy. He had a nice stash of a few hundred, no interest in parting with anything but his story, which I gladly accepted. He told of hanging out outside of duckpin bowling alleys and the men would toss their packs into the gutters by the street which is where he came by them. He told me everyone was looking for a Wagner, who was famous even in Roanoke, Va. He eventually found a picture in a magazine of Wagner, carefully cut it out, pasted it to a T206 back and traded it to one of his buddies for 20 or 30 cards. Years later, I bought a collection out of a town about 50 miles away. In it, there was a picture of Wagner pasted to a Piedmont back. I stiill have it. I imagine it working its way from boy to boy across the 50 miles. I'll alwasy wonder if it was the same one.

Now that’s a great story!

+1, and now let's see that T206 Wagner!

Brian

So cool, thanks for posting.

sorting
 

Those old collectors... they sorted their cards by team first, and then alphabetically. I find it interesting sorting the cards that way. The you can lay out cards by name and by series, and see the progression of how the fronts changed as the series changed.

I like those old ways... but I stop at putting pins in the top margin to pin the cards to a wall.

the original
 

Case break at Wilsons Drug Store on East Trade Street!

This story made my day!!! Got these at the Buford Hotel cigar stand!

As requested, here's the T206 Wagner, I has a Piedmont 150 back. (As is appropriate).

Better pic

wowza!
 

that story is INCREDIBLE! what are the odds? any idea who the card is behind the pasted picture of honus?

None whatsoever, so I am assuming it is Honus Wagner.

That 1909 article has been posted here a few times over the years, but it's always worth revisiting. It's quoted in Scot Reader's booklet "Inside T206", as quoted by me in this thread from 2016:

https://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=231087

In that post, I quoted Jefferson Burdick's observation from the 1939 United States Card Catalog: "Many old collectors remember the hey-days of 1890 and 1910 when collecting cigarette cards was an almost universal pastime. Prices in those days sometimes soared to 50c and $1.00 for a single badly wanted card. It was something like an auction sale where bidders in their eageness go to fantastic heights and the article is sold at many times its actual value."

See also this 1983 article about longtime collector John Wagner and his firsthand memories of collecting T206s when they first came out. It was this John Wagner who donated the T206 Honus Wagner which is now in the Burdick collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

https://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207915

Rich Mueller wrote about the 1909 Charlotte Observer article and similar contemporary accounts of T206 in Sports Collectors Daily in 2009 and again in 2015:

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...ll-card-mania/

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...-1909-release/

Makes you wonder if any of those 13 Cobbs still exist today. Or what was the cause of their demise - fire, house cleaning, flood, sent to the dump, just worn out, thrown in a gutter, etc.

I always have that same thought when I see a dugout photo with a bin full of bats. Did any survive? Where are they now?

And where is Honus's glove?

Most awesome
 

That Wagner card may be the greatest thing I have ever seen in my 55 years in the hobby! It’s got to be the same one! Best story ever!

Great story worth to re-visit every now and then! Thx for sharing! Wouldn't that be nice if newspapers back in the old dates have pictures or there are short video clips of how those kids fought for those "baseball men" cards?

I also wonder how those Piedmont shipments being packaged. One drug store could sold over 3000 cigarettes, that's $15 sale in one night!! I assume those are 10ct pack which means they sold 300 cigarette packs. If those cartons look like this (https://memorylaneinc.com/site/bids/...e?itemid=54383) which contain dozen packs in a carton, that's 25 cartons in total. :eek::eek:

I also wonder they meant 3000 cigarettes or 3000 cigarette packs.

Oh wait, I think I have seen 20 packs carton too. I guess my math is off. Would have been nice if they have pictures of those cartons and cigarette packs!

This really must be the birth of our hobby. I mean think about it. The T206 Wagner mystique most assuredly has its genesis with these boys in 1909.
How many of these young collectors, in the next generation, were responsible, as adults, for the marketing of candy, bubble gum, or even in vending machines?
Perhaps the mania, and the ensuing search of the elusive card led to the missing Lajoie card in the 1933 Goudey set, or the skip numbers of the 1948 Leaf set.
Yeah, I know that baseball cards started in the 1880's, but an argument could be made that the hobby, as we know it, started in 1909.

Seems like the Wagner worked well as a chase card. Especially after reading this. I wonder if news broke in 1909 when this was written that the Wagner would no longer be made or if they kept people chasing?

Stories like this have also been shared about kids pursuing Old Judge cards in the late 1880s.

Cool card, and of course that is what I would assume as well. It just makes sense that a kid would want a Honus action shot over his boring portrait.

Brian

In that case, it can't be the same card that the old man told you about because his Wagner picture was pasted to the back. So the ball player on front would still be visible.

I might be mistaken, but I think Todd meant that this Honus action shot was pasted on the front of a card with a Piedmont back.

Brian (sometimes known to be occasionally mistakenly mistaken on occasion)

Love this story. I wish our collections could talk. I wonder where they have been. As a kid in the early 70's flipping cards, I remember how much it would suck to come home from school and have lost cards and how good it felt to come home with a haul.

Must also have been the same for the kid waiting outside the store hoping to get a Cobb or a Matty and getting a Karger or Byrne!

That is a correct interpretation!

This has probably been shown before. 1880's Duke tobacco card illustrating that kids did not wait until 1909 to demand cards from cigarette consumers.

Jeff

u nailed it Jeff! thx for sharing!

Great thread, love this stuff!

Just a few more.
Washington DC seemed to have a lot of action. A barber was offering baseball cards to kids when they got a haircut (Wash Post 22 July 1909); someone was selling 200 cards for $1.00 (Wash Post 14 April 1910) and a dealer was advertising cards for sale (Wash Post 30 Oct 1910). The dealer had a want ad in the paper weekly for months.
And finally, a Florida distributor was advertising a large shipment of cigarettes which included one coupon and two pictures (Tampa Tribune, 18 August 1909.) I would spend my almost complete Morgan Dollar collection if I could go back in time and buy these cards.

Michael

Collecting
 

Great stuff, I started a thread back in 2017 with similar articles for those who may have missed it.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=246121

Collecting cards was as much of a mania in the late 1880s as it was in 1909. Here are a couple of threads I've posted with firsthand recollections by oldtimers of collecting back then.

From 1929:
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=202129

From 1942-43:
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=239836

Great clippings. I did encounter several of these, but some are new to me. It just means that much more to collect T206 knowing some of the history behind them.

Michael

Now those are some great recollections. Kind of gets me wondering, and I'm certain that there may be threads on the topic, but a dedicated thread about how people started collecting, and how they collected cards, would be cool.

Michael

Here's an article from 1949 in which the author reminisces about collecting T206s, T205s, T210s, and T209s when they first came out. His mom threw out his cards when he went away to World War I.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=235011

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing...

Often read, but rarely post, but I wanted to share what a great story this is!