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Posted By: Keith O'Leary

At a local estate sale sale a while back, I purchased a scrap book that had a couple of T206s pasted in it. Also included were a couple of non sport tobacco cards (Piedmont fish, Recruit military, flags, couple of rulers, etc), some nice advertising trade cards, and some other things I figured I could make a profit on.

Amongst this "stuff" was a small piece of paper with a picture of a hand drawn bird on it. To make a long drawn out story short, I live in an area that has a rich German heritage and in the early part of the 19th century, these people produced what is now called "fractur". While I'm no expert, fractur can best be described as embellished calligraphy (you can look it up on the net if you're really interested ). Many of the school teachers of the time were the only literate people around and used their talent to create these things (birth certificates, book plates, memorial pieces, etc.), they go for big bucks. My piece was evidently cut from a child's homework paper. The teacher drew this bird (I think its called a Distlefink) as a "reward of merit" for a job well done (Julie has a baseball related one). The bird had a checkerboard pattern and on the back of this small piece of paper (about 3 X 5") you could read where the student was practicing listing the days of the week as well as part of the alphabet. I sold it for $1600 to a local collector that even knew the teacher that drew it. Evidently he was known for these checkerboard birds, the piece dated from the 1830s.

Every blind groundhog....