Posted By:
Frank WakefieldThis made me first think of those Ty Cobb cards... the ones where folks that own 'em want 'em to be T206s, but it seems obvious to me that they aren't.
I'm with the shellac or varnish theory above. I've not had a T206 like that, but did buy some 1940 Playballs that had been coated. They'd been in a scrapbook, I think pasted in with some paste that readily dissolved. The backs of the cards were bright and clean (someone must have soaked them off), the corners sharp, but the fronts had that gloss, that wasn't perfectly clear, they looked ever so slightly darker than a normal Playball.
Look at the T206 under really bright light, with a magnifying glass, tilting the card so you look across its surface. Can you see any slight waves or brush strokes?