T207 Upside-Down Wrong Backs
 

I just picked up two raw T207 oddities that I don't think have been seen before - Bill Carrigan and Heinie Wagner with upside-down wrong backs. The Carrigan has a Hank Gowdy back and the Wagner has Ed Hallinan. Both are Recruit Factory 240s.

One interesting thing about this is that there are multiple known copies of Carrigan with a Wagner back, and also of Wagner with a Carrigan back, although they were all right-side up. It looks like those errors have even been catalogued as variations in some sources. Other T207s with correctly-oriented wrong backs are known, but Carrigan and Wagner seem to be the most common. So my two upside-down wrong backs just happen to be the same two cards that are most commonly seen with correctly-oriented wrong backs. Coincidence?

The upside-down wrong backs also seem to be considerably more rare than correctly-oriented wrong backs. I could only find evidence of two that were previously known. One is a Hageman/Lord, also a Recruit 240, in a SGC 35/2.5 holder. It sold through Huggins and Scott at some point and was also once owned by a board member here. The back cut on that one was the same as on my Carrigan (wrong name at the very top of the reverse), so I suppose there's a chance they originally came from the same sheet. The Wagner is also cut the same, but appears to be from the bottom (top) of the sheet. Another board member has also informed me that he owns a Tooley/Stovall that is in a SGC 2 holder, although I don't know the factory or what the back cut looks like on that one.

Does anyone else know of another T207 upside-down wrong back, or have one to share? Let's see them!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...e0b2f766_b.jpg

I had a couple, scans are on a thumbdrive elsewhere, and have seen others. Not seen very often, but also do not seem to bring much of a premium.

Pretty cool oddity.
Never seen it before in the T207’s but I am not a T207 collector.

But I still enjoy seeing cards like this

Hi Scott - so it sounds like there are certainly more out there. I haven't been collecting T207s that long, so I don't have much institutional knowledge of the errors, other than what I can find on the Google machine.

I can't find much pricing data. The only sale I could find was the SGC 35/2.5 Hageman/Lord, which went for $1075 at auction in 2015. Regular Hageman Recruit cards in the 2-3 range were going for around $150-300 at the time. I was fortunate to only pay maybe a 2x premium for mine, but they were advertised as normal T207s with no mention of the error. I'd imagine they would have gone a good bit higher if they were sitting in plastic and had better advertising.

I would say that was a one off price. The few that I have seen sell, only went for $200-300 each but that was several years ago.

Neat cards, I discovered them after it ended while searching for T207 Carrigan comps. I definitely would have been a bidder. I believe there is a premium but unfortunately T207 doesn't carry the weight that other T sets do.

here you go- the "other" board member.

There doesn't seem to be any premium attached to T207's with brown reverse lettering either.

here are the two I had...I will have to go find who was on the fronts..

Cool cards! I meant to bid on the Wagner but looked away for a minute and looked back about 30 seconds after it ended. Doh.

I would be curious to know who the seller was or the original owner.

The reason I ask is that I believe whoever had these(at least owned them 30+/- years ago was the person that might have gotten them included as part of the set, a fact that I had Bob Lemke remove from the SCD guide circa 2006 or so, when I first discovered other wrong backs.

I have had mine for about 20 years...can't recall who I bought it from on ebay.

Mine came from a Greg Morris eBay auction about two weeks ago. He auctioned off about 170 raw T207s over a few days. I assume he was breaking up a large partial set, although there were a couple dupes, so a couple may have come from other consignors. All but six were Recruits. There were two Anon 25s, one Broadleaf, one Napoleon, and the two wrong-backs. He did not mention the rare backs anywhere in the listing title or description, except for one of the Anon 25s.

Good to know, I suspect it was someone's older collection that might been the impetus behind the Carrigan/Wagner wrong backs, we shall never know. And it really does not make much difference, the cards are what they are.