Posted By:
Debra JohnsonHi Rick,
The scrapbook was in the attic of the original family’s house at the bottom of a chest, (not far from where Brett Favre’s family scrambled to their attic during the storm). At least ten miles inland, but near a river, the surge went over the roof. The family had evacuated. When the house was mucked out by volunteers, items were bagged and boxed to be gone through later after the house was made livable. When ‘later’ arrived, at the beginning of 2008, the box with the album was finally unearthed, and the lady of the house identified the contents as ‘collectibles.’ The lady had not known of the existence of the scrapbook until it was retrieved from storage. The lady prefers to stay anonymous due to kid/grandkid problems. (Just for perspective on the lengthy recovery time down here, the house next door to me has yet to be mucked and gutted.)
In February, knowing I was an ebayer, my elderly friend brought me the crumbling scrapbook of damaged cards in the hopes that I would partner with her to realize some value to help with rebuilding bills. After stumbling upon the Net54 site (from OC site) and posting a question regarding identifying E125's, I knew that was possible, knew I was in way over my head not knowing who were the sharks, so gambled and contacted Lyman Hardeman for help who kindly vouched for Frank Ward and Rhys Yeakley, both of whom continued to step up in the following weeks and months and helped immeasurably. I realize now that 'attic finds' and 'dead grandfathers' (dead uncle in this case), are a running joke among card collectors, so I’m sure I came off as a trolling kook, my apologies to both Hardeman gentlemen (and anyone else who needs one).
The original gentleman was raised in the Atlanta area, which explains why the vast majority of the cards were Piedmont, (one Ames hands-at-chest brown hindu, one Revelle Old Mill SL). There were no 350-460 backs. As Ted Z told me, the guy must have quit smoking summer of 1910. No really scarce cards – the collection didn't hit Scot Reader's list until Lundgren Cubs. Most of the T206’s were in ‘poor’ condition, (album marks, Katrina 'patina', and the gentleman put small slash marks behind the team name on some of the best cards, I suppose to mark his private stock --i.e., three strikes against). As far as the total number of cards, I don’t know yet due to some piecing together problems, but the final tally will be close to 700, most of which have been sold, mostly duplicate (and triplicate+) commons. I’m holding on to about 50 beaters. Most were simply worth too much to keep. When I get all of my notes transferred to the T206 database, I’ll post for those interested.
Besides T206’s, the scrapbook contained two handfuls of E91's, 2 crumbling T3’s (44,47), many, many Piedmont fish, a handful of Fatima opera singers, a handful of Murad college series, a couple of 27 Scrappers, one theatre card, and one Hassan mongoose.
Thanks, Rick, for your interest.
Deb
09-23-2008, 04:08 PM
Question for Debra Johnson
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