T206 set update.....anyone else?

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

As you guys make progress on the white border set, something that is interesting is to sort them by team, and then alphabetically, as was done before Beckett. The old guys sorted cards by team, alphabetically.

If you do that, you can see one team at a glance. And the cards can be laid out by series. Put your series 150 Cubs at the top of a table top, then the series 350 and assorted under them, and then the 460s at the bottom of your field of vision. Then, you can visualize who had cards at the start, how many of those were portraits, how other players were added along with new poses for some of the stars... All of that is something that is totally missed by collectors who think of the cards in terms of #1 through #524 (or so).

This sorting is contrary to how guides and catalogs list them. But if you really look at the cards it makes more sense to sort the cards by teams then alphabetically, than it does to use the SCD or Beckett numbers. Sorting them by series makes more sense than sorting them by SCD or B. It is the distance in time that we are from the issuance of the cards, and the quantity of different cards that has modern collectors embracing a simple number system. And this isn't obvious to a collector unless they've tried the older sorting. Even Mr. Lipset set out the old Egan List first in his columns of the set listing, in his Encyclopedia.

Frank W.