Well, I started collecting the T206 set with the New York Giants sub set. I had just read a great book called the old ball game which highlighted Christy Mathewson, John McGraw and their Giants team and so I decided it would be fun to put together the giants set. Well it took me about a year to collect the sub set in about good to vg conditon. During that time I decided to get a couple of additional HOFer's such as a Cy Young portrait and a Ty Cobb (Green) portrait card. Well the green in the T206's kinda stuck to me and I started looking at the backs of some of these cards and really liked the look of the American Beauty's. Well, guess what happened next......I ended up buying a few T206's with an emphasis on AB backs. As you can see, the monster sucked me in and now I am 188 cards into the set and loving every minute of it!
All of the cards I collect I either buy graded and crack them out or buy raw and keep them that way. I keep almost all of them in penny sleeves, then placed into the T size top loaders and then place them in a 3 ring binder. They look incredible together and it's a blast flipping through the pages seeing the different teams together and on the opposite side I can see the diverse group of advertising backs that I have collected. The only cards from my T206 set that are still slabbed are my Demmitt and O'Hara cards. Other than that they are all "naked." I also have been lucky enough to add a couple of T206's to my set such as the T206 Cobb red portrait from the skydash collection and a Lundgren with an EPDG back. I am also always on the lookout for T206 oddities. I have some T206's with names on the top, miscut backs, two names on the card, and some with color problems to the front. At this point my set is pretty diverse which I am pretty happy about and hope to continue this type of set building in the future!
Here is a break down of my set so far:
American Beauty (Framed)- 30 cards
American Beauty (No Frame)- 1
American Beauty 460- 2
Piedmont- 77
Sweet Corporal- 32
Sovereign- 3
EPDG- 9
Tolstoi- 3
Old Mill- 10
Polar Bear- 4
Hindu- 14
Cycle- 1
Lenox-1
Drum-1
Uzit-1
Here is a photo of my T206 set:
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As for the survey question, I feel like I could fall into all of the categories. But thats what's so great about the set, you have so many different ways to collect it, you could potentially collect it forever!
Jeff