T206 Sweet Caporal Census Project

[53toppscollector]

5. Adkins (Print Group 2)



Discoveries:

T206 label > Factory number: 1
T206 Sweet Caporal label > Factory number: 10

Of the 35 Adkins PSA scans I looked at, 12 of them had the old "T206" label, and most of them were Piedmont 350s.

We all know the good doctor is one of those cards that was/is hoarded, so I wasn't shocked to find a limited sampling of cards to look at.

[53toppscollector]

6. Alperman (Print Group 1)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 15 (5 not cataloged due to blurriness)
T206 > Factory: 11 (6 Piedmonts, 2 were too blurry to read)

Lots of 649 Overprints here.

The PSA population report shows 21 copies (which we know is incomplete), but I found 22 alone in the 70 PSA slabs I looked at. Some of the 649OPs look to be a lot more populous than others, will be interesting to see if that plays out as I go through all 34 cards in the sub-set

[53toppscollector]

7. Ames Hands At Chest (Print Group 1 // 150 Only)



Ames Hands At Chest only comes in 150 series backs, so no SC 350/25 or SC 350/30.

Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 11 (5 not cataloged due to blurriness)
T206 > Factory: 3 (plus 9 Piedmont 150s and 3 that were SCs but too blurry to ID the factory number)


From what I've noticed anecdotally when doing my every 6 months pop report update in Excel, there are basically 2 groups of Sweet Cap 150s in terms of population between the two factories....those in the 2:1 ratio of 30s to 25s, and those closer to 4:1 or 5:1 in terms of 30s to 25s. I will have more on this in a few months when I do a comprehensive population report update. Based on this census, Ames falls sort of in between, but is definitely not in "rare" bucket for Factory 25s in the 150 series.

[steve B]

When I looked at overall populations of the 150 only and a few others a few years ago the Hof cards seemed to be about double the number of the commons.

I put that down to higher demand and grading returns.

Have you noticed the same thing?


I didn't look at factory differences, it may be long enough ago that PSA wasn't doing them then.

I think this sort of deeper look at what data we can get is going to eventually be a key to sheet composition. For example, backing out from High demand/low demand, and getting approximate numbers can show that the 2:1 and 4-5:1 were not on the same sheets.
It would be interesting to compare this data to the Plate scratch reconstruction Pat has done. That might answer if production was done as generic fronts that got specific backs to fill orders, or if each brand got their own.

[53toppscollector]

Thanks Steve, yeah that was one of the things I was thinking about when I started this. Obviously I have a long way to go, but I am hoping that once I've gone through 100-150 cards I will start to see a few patterns that might be interesting.

One of the challenging things here, as you know, is figuring out what is a low population card/subset because it was truly rare, and what is/was a low population subset because there is less demand to have it graded. If you find a Cobb T206, that card is way more likely to get graded than a Fromme or Nattress, for example.

But my hope is that when we have better factory counts for all 520 subjects (technically 518 subjects) we can draw some conclusions.

[53toppscollector]

8. Ames Hands Above Head (Print Group 3)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 14 (3 were too blurry to read)
T206 > Factory: 5 (7 Piedmonts, 2 Sweet Caps that were too blurry to read)

I also found one SGC slab that had 1910 Piedmont on the flip, and the scan of the back was a SC 460/30 back, which is an error I believe since Ames doesn't have a SC 460/30 back as far as I can tell. Likely a user error when scanning the card.

[53toppscollector]

9. Ames Portrait (Print Group 1)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 8 (3 were too blurry to read)
T206 > Factory: 7 (plus 9 Piedmont 150s and 350s)