Well, it has been four years since the last update to this thread - the removal of Bradley and non-TPG-only confirmation of Neal Ball in June/July 2022. Thought it would be a good time to revisit status and add comments/observations.
Confirmation still stands at 145 cards, out of the possible 155 cards usually seen with any Recruit-class back.
I separate the missing 10 into two groups:
The first group of five are those I fully expect to be found ... eventually:
- Erwin - Brooklyn
- Graney - Cleveland
- Willie Mitchell - Cleveland
- Northen - Brooklyn
- Sullivan - Chicago AL
The second group of five are all on the variation cards:
- Austin (StL) S Louis AL
- Fisher (Blue cap) - New York AL
- Mullin (D) - Detroit
- Livingston (small c) - Cleveland
- Livingston (big C) - Cleveland
To me, finding any of the unconfirmed variations would imply that they should all be found. As it stands, the lack of confirmation of the 'corrected' variations (as some would argue), has possible implications as to when the Napoleon cards might have been released with respect to the larger T207 release cycle(s).
There are generally perceived difficulties in finding players on certain teams with the Napoleon back. It seems Brooklyn, Boston (both leagues), and Chicago (both leagues) are notoriously difficult, though it varies a bit from player to player.
Having gathered 126 of the 145 confirmed cards in the Napoleon starting in about 2010, I don't expect to be able to complete the subset given the current state of things. They just don't show up and when they do, competition can be crazy. In addition, ~2/3 of the remaining ones for me are on the teams listed above, for each of which there are team collectors looking to complete their own runs.
Not unsurprisingly, I suspect, these team-related difficulties mostly mirror patterns seen with the anonymous factory 3 Recruit subset of
49 50 cards, where Boston (AL) - 12, Chicago (AL) - 8, Brooklyn - 6, Boston (NL) - 5 and StL (AL) - 5 account for 36 of the
49 50 known cards... with the Cubs being an outlier as they have no known Recruit cards with the Anon Factory 3 back.
So check your T207 backs and if you have any of the ones listed above, a note for confirmation to move this thread and our collective knowledge forward would be most appreciated.
-
Mike