Washington T206 Mini-Set Comparison to High-Grade Competitor

[GeoPoto]

Some time ago I began assembling T206 back runs for all of the players who were featured on T206 cards and played for Washington at that time. As time has gone by, I have accumulated most of the cards before you get to the very rare (and expensive) backs, which I have pretty much ignored. My back runs generally peter out around American Beauty. Along the way of course I have become much more knowledgeable regarding the cards and eventually developed my own opinions regarding what to look for in a T206 card.

Perhaps I should pause here to clarify the world I live in. I'm engaged exclusively with graded (encapsulated) cards and internet-based transactions. This means I make bidding/purchase decisions based on scans of graded cards. I realize and admire the skills and tools that many collectors have developed to evaluate raw cards in person at shows and in card shops. I don't do any of that. I'm not proud to say that, in fact it pains me slightly, but, for me, it's the best I can do.

So anyway, a couple of years ago I began focusing on "upgrading" the collection. I use quotations around upgrading because now that I have more mature opinions regarding how I prefer that a card look, improvements often involve swapping out cards that are more highly graded and replacing them with lower graded cards, that I find more desirable. This has been going on long enough that I am becoming somewhat pleased with the results. I have also been curious regarding how the collection would stack up against others.

An opportunity to compare my cards to those contained in a highly regarded collection was recently presented by the Heritage auction involving The Rounders Collection, which included a high-grade set of T206 cards, including one card for each player I collect. Heritage's description did its best to create the impression that the provenance of the Rounders collection was rooted in card collecting that began decades ago. In reality, however, Heritage is vague about that, and I suspect that the vast majority of the cards Heritage auctioned joined the collection fairly recently. At any rate, I didn't want to get into this publicly while the auction was running, but I saved images from the Heritage Auction. My plan for this thread is to use those images to compare my cards with their counterparts from The Rounders Collection.

Note that I plan to compare cards with identical backs. This means I am not choosing my "best" candidate card for each player to compare with the Rounders card from the Heritage auction. Instead, I am using the card from my collection that has the same back as the H/R card. The backs included in the Heritage/Rounders auction were all common. One (the first one, it turns out) is Sovereign. All the others are Sweet Caporal or Piedmont.

I plan to largely ignore the financial aspect of these comparisons. The auction prices paid for the H/R cards fully reflect their high grades. All of my cards cost substantially less. In fact, during my "upgrading", I have recovered significant value by selling cards that were once in my collection but have been "upgraded" to cards with lower grades. But I wasn't motivated to save or recover money. Each time I have "upgraded" a card it has been to replace it with a card I liked better, not to "save" money. For the record, the 25 H/R cards that are relevant here sold for an average (including BP) of $5,259; the 25 cards of mine that I will compare to the H/R cards cost me an average of $535.

Disclaimer: I am hoping that I can do this without appearing to throw shade at Heritage, the Rounders Collection, or anybody who may have won any of the cards discussed at auction. Everything I say will merely reflect my opinions and preferences, which are no better than anyone else's. The evaluations documented here are derived from the seat-of-the-pants comparisons I performed during the auction period to allow me to decide whether to bid on the items considered. I delayed until the auction (and some planned travel) concluded to begin this public discussion of some of the auctioned cards and how (I think) they compare to mine.

A few preliminary comments regarding my standards. I am not very concerned with edges and corners. Everything else equal, I'll take the sharper card, but edges and corners lose quickly to better centering and borders. I don't like surface wear but can tolerate some for other advantages. An attractive image is important. The big drivers are centering and borders. I do believe that backs are important, especially in a back run. I would avoid paper loss, but centering is not paramount for the back. Moderate surface wear, staining, fading, and toning are acceptable for backs, hopefully not all on the same card. Backs were not much of a factor in comparing my cards to the H/R cards. In general, all of the backs were acceptable.

I think that's enough introduction. My next post will address the first card up.