T206 variations

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Posted By: Art M.

Here is the history of the T206 Joe Doyle variation cards from my research of many years ago involving my conversations with Larry Fritsch and Bill Huggins.

1981 - Wisconsin dealer Larry Fritsch is selling T206 team sets (imagine that in todays market!) from his card inventory. One morning while filling an order for a T206 New York team set, he came across a card of Doyle, hands over head, N.Y. Nat’l. At first, he is puzzled by this card and is unable to find any record in his checklists or personal collection. This was the first discovery of the T206 Joe Doyle variation. Larry proceeded to place several ads in hobby magazines offering twice the current value for any T206 Doyle card. The Doyle cards pour in, however none are the Doyle error.
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This is from a conversation that I had with Bill Huggins back in 2001 regarding the first publicly documented T206 Doyle variation in 1987. Hope this is interesting to T206 collectors:

April 14, 2001

Conversation with Bill Huggins
House of Cards, Maryland
by Art Martineau

Topic: T206 Joe Doyle variation card

Bill remembers the May 1987 auction of the T206 Joe Doyle variation card very well. This was the first public offering of the tough variation. Bill got a collection of about 500+ T206 cards from the Richmond, Virginia area. He had a friend in Richmond who sent the owner of these cards to Bill.
When the cards arrived, Bill had one of his workers sort the cards. He told him to get out the big Beckett book and put them in order. When the worker finished, he said "What about this one that’s not in the book?" Bill said to just put it at the bottom of the pile and he would figure it out. He had thought that the worker just couldn’t determine which card it was, but after looking at it closer himself, Bill noticed it was definitely not in the Beckett book.
He called another friend/collector in Maryland to ask about the card, but his friend had never seen or heard of this variation. Another call, this time to Lew Lipset, resulted in the same response.
Larry Fritsch had owned the only known example of this Doyle variation since 1980, and had regularly teased Lew Lipset that he had a T206 card nobody had ever seen!
Bill Huggins decided to sell this unknown variation in a Sports Collectors Digest auction in 1987. Lew Lipset advised Bill that he would either get $300 or $3,000 for the card.
The auction began, and the first bid to come in was $2,000. Bill sat back and smiled, knowing that he had a valuable card. There were 3 bidders going after the card up to the $7,000 level. One dropped out at $7,000, but Larry Fritsch and Dan Flanagan continued to go back and forth. Larry was the first bidder to get to $10,000. Dan called to check on the card and was told that he had been outbid at $10,000. Dan put in another bid, this one for $10,500. A couple minutes later, Dan called Bill back and decided to withdraw his last bid and let the other bidder win the card for $10,000. Dan said, "I don’t want to go there" meaning past the $10,000 level and not knowing where this might end. Larry had an advantage over Dan in the bidding because Larry already owned a Doyle variation and no other collector had never seen or heard of it before. Bill Huggins then called Larry Fritsch to congratulate him on winning the T206 Joe Doyle variation for $10,000. Larry now owned the only 2 known copies of this rare card.