1910 Turkey Red Cigarette Silk help

[BobC]

The images on the S74 silks are the exact same ones on the T205 gold bordered cards, and the end panels on the T202 triple folder cards. The images/borders around the players pictured on those cards was not identical for all the players. Some player's images were imposed over an image of an infield with the bats, balls, gloves, etc. framing the bottom border of their image. Others just had a plain, solid background on their cards with no infield and equipment shown. Each S74 image was unique to that player and there were no variations on the design of each player's silk. If you were looking to see if you had some type of rare variation for your Baker silk, the answer is no. As an earlier poster said, the S74-2 colored version silks came printed on various colors of material, with no apparent premium associated with any one particular color. The actual printing itself was done in one of three different colors, blue, brown or a rust colored ink. Also, unlike the S74-1 white silks that came with a paper advertisement on the back of the silks, these S74-2 colored silks came with no paper backing but, instead at the very top and bottom of the silk had the tobacco brand and factory number imprinted in the same color ink as the rest of the image.

As for your question about value, to command top prices for S74-2 colored silks you would want the silk itself to be clean, well centered and with no fraying at the top or bottom so that the tobacco brand and factory number are clearly shown. The image you included is a little small and hard to see all the details of the silk. The bottom shows some significant fraying and loss of material. The top edge appears to have been cropped out of the scan, so you can't really tell what condition that is in. The centering isn't the best and again, it is hard to tell from the scan but, there appears to be some staining on the silk. Creases or folds don't really impact the value of S74-2 colored silks in my opinion as they are a satin material that can easily be ironed perfectly flat. All told, your silk in the condition it is in would likely be in the $25-$50 range at best, in my opinion. A better, complete scan would help. And although Baker is a HOFer, his colored version silk is not especially rare or hard to find, again, in my opinion.

Bob C