Todd,
As I had said in an earlier post, I agree with you in that you would think that the T205 card set would have been produced first, and then the ancillary sets like silks and stamps would have followed using those same images then. That was why I went to the trouble of mentioning about things like the Kling-Cubs "proof" silk and the oddity of the white silk of Tony Smith-Rustlers and the late 1910 date when Harry Smith ended up with Tony Smith as a teammate on the Superbas as a possible explanation as to how they could have confused Tony for Harry and mistakenly produced a white version Rustlers silk of Tony when it was Harry that had played for the Boston team in 1910. In looking back at all this detail again between the players and teams shown on the S74-1 white silk, S74-2 colored silk, and T205 sets in trying to determine exactly when each of these were first produced and distributed, some interesting things suddenly started showing up.
First off, it seems like all the players involved in the team changes between the white silks and the colored silks, and then carried over to the T205s, only include Cubs and Rustlers players, and no others. In just the white version S74-1 silks, the checklist shows three different players supposedly playing for two different teams. Peaches Graham with the Cubs and Rustlers, Harry Steinfeldt with the Cubs and Rustlers, and Tony Smith with the Superbas and Rustlers. In the cases of Graham and Steinfeldt, it has since been pretty much disproved that either of them actually had white version silks on two different teams after all. Graham does not actually have a white version silk of him playing for the Cubs, to whom he was traded on 6/10/1911. And Steinfeldt dues not actually have a white version silk of him playing for the Rustlers, to whom he was traded on 5/25/1911. (Steinfeldt was actually sold by the Cubs to St. Paul of the American Association on 4/5/1911, and then St. Paul traded him to the Rustlers on 5/25/1911.) So in the S74-1 white version silk set, both of these players are only shown with the teams they played for in 1910 and started the 1911 season with. Then in the S74-2 colored version silk set, both of these players are only shown with the teams they were traded to after the 1911 season started. The third player, Tony Smith, actually was shown as playing for two different teams in the S74-1 white version silk set, but that appears to possibly be an error when Tony was maybe confused with another player with his same last name, Harry Smith, who was picked up off waivers from the Rustlers by Tony Smith's Superbas team on 9/21/1910. And as previously noted, that error was apparently quickly found and corrected as a Tony Smith-Rustlers silk is very rare. And this is borne out in the colored version silk set then as Tony Smith is only shown in that set as a Superba. (Some checklists mistakenly show his S74-2 colored version silk as Happy Smith, which is an error as the actual S74-2 silk is of Tony Smith.)
And then in the S74-2 colored version silk set, there are no players that are shown on more than one team. So based on all this it is obvious that the S74-2 colored version silk set did not get produced and issued earlier than the latter half of 1911, and that it was clearly produced and distributed only after the S74-1 white version silk set was released.
Moving over to the T205 set, there are numerous players that have more than one different card in the set, but only two of them are because that player is shown on two different teams, Peaches Graham and David Shean. And guess what, the two teams that both of them are shown on are once again, the Cubs and Rustlers. Already mentioned Graham's trade from the Rustlers to the Cubs on 6/10/1911. In David Shean's case, he played for the Boston Rustlers for all of 1910 and then was traded to the Cubs on 2/25/1911, and played the rest of 1911 with them. And that matches up perfectly with his silks as he was only shown as a Rustler in the S74-1 white silk set, and then only as a Cub in the S74-2 colored silk set.
But that got me to thinking about other players that had moved between teams during 1911 that weren't being shown on multiple T205 cards like Graham and Shean. Most notably I was thinking of Johnny Kling and Harry Steinfeldt. Kling was on the opposite side of the 6/10/1911 trade also involving Peaches Graham, where he went from the Cubs to the Rustlers. But Kling is only shown on a Cubs card in the T205 set, doesn't appear at all in the S74-1 white silk set, does appear as a Cub on the unusual S74 colored "proof", and then finally appears as a Rustler in the S74-2 colored silk set. Harry Steinfeldt went from the Cubs (through St. Paul) to the Rustlers on 5/25/1911, but is only shown on a Cubs cards in the T205 set, also only as a Cub in the S74-1 white silk set, but finally as a Rustler in the S74-2 colored silk set.
I couldn't figure out why these players were being treated differently with some on multiple teams and others not, till it suddenly jumped out at me. For these players that switched teams, they were being shown in the S74-1 white silk set with the team they played on in 1910, and then in the S74-2 colored silk set with the teams they played on in 1911. Which is probably a big reason why the white version silk set was thought to have been first issued in 1910. But then when it came to cards of these same players in the T205 set, if they had played with the Rustlers in 1910 and then moved to the Cubs in 1911, they originally issued a T205 card of them with the Rustlers, and later issued an updated card of them playing with the Cubs. But for those players who initially played for the Cubs in 1910 and then moved to the Rustlers in 1911, they only issued their T205 cards showing they played for the Cubs, but then never updated them to show they had moved to the Rustlers. So when it comes to the T205 set, it appears whoever was producing it made sure to reflect the Boston National players as Rustlers when the team name changed at the very end of 1910, but then had a negative bias against the team going forward and didn't bother to show changes for anyone going to the Rustlers during the 1911 season. Meanwhile they had a positive bias for the Cubs and made sure to create an additional card in the T205 set to show players that moved to the Cubs team during 1911. That seems very strange and have no idea why whoever produced the T205 cards did that. Maybe someone involved with the set was a big fan of the Cubs, or the city of Chicago itself.
It still doesn't really help on whether or not the white version silks or the T205 cards came out first, since both sets included the Boston Rustlers that weren't using that name till December of 1910 at the earliest. So that would tend to indicate that both sets may have started production sometime in 1910, but likely neither were actually finally and released until sometime in 1911. Of course, it is also possible that either or both of the S74-1 and T205 sets could have been produced and released in 1910 without any Rustlers players initially. They could have then added the Rustlers players to subsequent production runs after 1911 started then. I doubt we'll ever be able to get a definitive answer, but I'm leaning more towards the S74-1 white silks and the T205s being produced and released at about the same time, most likely in the beginning of 1911 at the earliest. Because of the Rustlers players, and no mention of any of them as a Boston Dove, that seems to make the most logical sense.
You did mention something about not ever seeing any ads or publications that showed dates or timing of when any of these sets may have been issued. Did you see the Red Sun advertisement on that S74 site I pointed you to by any chance? It is on the home page and shows an ad for Red Sun cigarettes from a 5/20/1911 copy of the New Orleans Times Democrat newspaper. In the ad there is a a blurb that indicates they are now putting baseball and actress satins in the packs. It is just to the left of the big number "5" in the ad. And since the colored silks were never issued for Red Sun cigarettes, this ad can only be referring to the S74-1 white version silk set. So there is confirmation that the set was at least being distributed by that date. Fun stuff!
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