T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[G1911]

Another note I should have made - it's not evident in photos, but in hand all of these are amazingly bright and bold in color. T220 and E229 usually look good color wise, but these are much bolder than pretty much any I have ever seen. Which makes sense for a pre-production sheet presumably ran with full ink and then stored in a box for decades.

[scooter729]

Holy crap, Greg - this post was the first I heard of this. Insane! Can you share one of the eBay listings? I tried to search and couldn’t find - curious if they were listed poorly, which is why no one saw them?

Congrats - glad they ended up with someone like yourself! This far beats the mail day you got from me!

[Pat R]

Congrats Greg it's nice that most of them went to someone who will keep them together and intact.

[G1911]

I was pretty confident my mail day from you was the highlight of my year, Scott! The Jackson cabinet is still on my desk on display.

They weren't listed great, which was definitely why I got a bargain. They were labelled as 'early reprints' in the auction titles. On the other hand, they were listed in the Tobacco Cards section, with "Mecca" in the auction title. I was pretty confident others would notice; some must have seen and assumed they were indeed reprints.

I didn't think I had as good of a bargain as I've evidently got; I really thought I was likely to continue winning even as other bidders got in. The $2K bids felt like paying a lot for a favorite set, but I bid based on value to me instead of market (who knows what market is). The Donovan is presumably worth multiples of the others.

Here's the Jackson as an example, sold listing for "Mecca reprints" will produce them all.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/12488838824...8AAOSwhldhNshZ

I am hoping we can produce a full sheet and it's layout from this, but as they divide into multiple hands it will be tougher; I think there are more the seller has that are now going somewhere else for property listed sale than we have seen. When I get back home I will take the last 5 I got and try to sort all 13 together as best as possible as a starter; some of them definitely connect (Edwards/McGovern horizontally, Jackson/Lavigne vertically, Jordan is the upper right corner). If a full sheet had all the cards, which I think is the most likely layout, we are missing panels that might appear of:
Choynski
Coburn
James Corbett
Young Erne
Jack McAuliffe
Tommy Ryan
Randall/Belasco fight

I'll !@#$ my pants if a Jack Goodman appears.

[D. Bergin]

Damn!

[DaveW]

Wow! Those are awesome Greg, congrats!

[RCMcKenzie]

Nice find, Greg, congrats. I like the e229 Track and Field panels. It's wild that Burdick had one and it's at the MET. The best my brother and I could do before the internet was a 1964 Topps Koufax.

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Damn!

Well put Dave! I love it when stuff like this shows up. Thanks for sharing your find with the board. I imagine these were all pre-production samples. They must have been in some printers files all these years to survive in such nice condition.

[Pat R]

Did you ask the seller if he was the one that cut them into panels?
It's odd that some of the boxers only have the right side border of a sheet and
some of the track and field athletes only have the left side. border of a sheet.