T206 Collecting in 1909

[bbcard1]

Better pic

[uniship]

that story is INCREDIBLE! what are the odds? any idea who the card is behind the pasted picture of honus?

[bbcard1]

Originally Posted by uniship

that story is INCREDIBLE! what are the odds? any idea who the card is behind the pasted picture of honus?

None whatsoever, so I am assuming it is Honus Wagner.

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by bbcard1

None whatsoever, so I am assuming it is Honus Wagner.

Cool card, and of course that is what I would assume as well. It just makes sense that a kid would want a Honus action shot over his boring portrait.

Brian

[robw1959]

Originally Posted by bbcard1

None whatsoever, so I am assuming it is Honus Wagner.

In that case, it can't be the same card that the old man told you about because his Wagner picture was pasted to the back. So the ball player on front would still be visible.

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by robw1959

In that case, it can't be the same card that the old man told you about because his Wagner picture was pasted to the back. So the ball player on front would still be visible.

I might be mistaken, but I think Todd meant that this Honus action shot was pasted on the front of a card with a Piedmont back.

Brian (sometimes known to be occasionally mistakenly mistaken on occasion)

[Yankees1964]

Love this story. I wish our collections could talk. I wonder where they have been. As a kid in the early 70's flipping cards, I remember how much it would suck to come home from school and have lost cards and how good it felt to come home with a haul.

Must also have been the same for the kid waiting outside the store hoping to get a Cobb or a Matty and getting a Karger or Byrne!

[bbcard1]

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

I might be mistaken, but I think Todd meant that this Honus action shot was pasted on the front of a card with a Piedmont back.

Brian (sometimes known to be occasionally mistakenly mistaken on occasion)

That is a correct interpretation!

[teza11]

This has probably been shown before. 1880's Duke tobacco card illustrating that kids did not wait until 1909 to demand cards from cigarette consumers.

Jeff

[trdcrdkid]

That 1909 article has been posted here a few times over the years, but it's always worth revisiting. It's quoted in Scot Reader's booklet "Inside T206", as quoted by me in this thread from 2016:

https://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=231087

In that post, I quoted Jefferson Burdick's observation from the 1939 United States Card Catalog: "Many old collectors remember the hey-days of 1890 and 1910 when collecting cigarette cards was an almost universal pastime. Prices in those days sometimes soared to 50c and $1.00 for a single badly wanted card. It was something like an auction sale where bidders in their eageness go to fantastic heights and the article is sold at many times its actual value."

See also this 1983 article about longtime collector John Wagner and his firsthand memories of collecting T206s when they first came out. It was this John Wagner who donated the T206 Honus Wagner which is now in the Burdick collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

https://net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207915

Rich Mueller wrote about the 1909 Charlotte Observer article and similar contemporary accounts of T206 in Sports Collectors Daily in 2009 and again in 2015:

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...ll-card-mania/

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...-1909-release/

[Bigdaddy]

Makes you wonder if any of those 13 Cobbs still exist today. Or what was the cause of their demise - fire, house cleaning, flood, sent to the dump, just worn out, thrown in a gutter, etc.

I always have that same thought when I see a dugout photo with a bin full of bats. Did any survive? Where are they now?

And where is Honus's glove?

[NiceDocter]

That Wagner card may be the greatest thing I have ever seen in my 55 years in the hobby! It’s got to be the same one! Best story ever!

[chriskim]

Great story worth to re-visit every now and then! Thx for sharing! Wouldn't that be nice if newspapers back in the old dates have pictures or there are short video clips of how those kids fought for those "baseball men" cards?

I also wonder how those Piedmont shipments being packaged. One drug store could sold over 3000 cigarettes, that's $15 sale in one night!! I assume those are 10ct pack which means they sold 300 cigarette packs. If those cartons look like this (https://memorylaneinc.com/site/bids/...e?itemid=54383) which contain dozen packs in a carton, that's 25 cartons in total.

I also wonder they meant 3000 cigarettes or 3000 cigarette packs.

[chriskim]

Oh wait, I think I have seen 20 packs carton too. I guess my math is off. Would have been nice if they have pictures of those cartons and cigarette packs!

[tkd]

Seems like the Wagner worked well as a chase card. Especially after reading this. I wonder if news broke in 1909 when this was written that the Wagner would no longer be made or if they kept people chasing?