What set is the most under appreciated and why?

[rats60]

Originally Posted by trambo

t205 in my eyes. A few of the variations are far harder than all but Doyle NY National in t206. Definitely doesn't get as much love as some of the other sets.

This is the answer in my opinion.

First of all t205 is one of the most beautiful sets ever made. As has been pointed out, 3 other sets reused its design. The gold borders bring a unique beauty that few sets have ever had. It also introduced condition sensitive, which brings a challenge to collecting nice looking examples.

t205 is one of the first sets to have write ups on the back and the first to put players stats (again reused for t202). While a few sets started with the write ups, it was 40 years before stats became part of issues. Future cards without either just aren't baseball cards in my opinion. t205 is the first (modern) baseball card set.

t205 also has a unique difficulty to collecting. It is the true monster. I went from 0 to 519 with t206 in one year. It took me 30 years to put together a set of t205 that I could be satisfied with. There are levels of scarcity among the commons, then short prints and errors and variations. It really has everything that a baseball card set should have and was produced in 1911.

In my opinion, t205 is one of the three great baseball card sets, along with t206 and 1933 Goudey, but gets completely overlooked by many collectors.