T206, or not....let's have a continuing conversation....Ty Cobb Smoking Tobacco card

[RCMcKenzie]

Originally Posted by rats60

Larry Fritsch was the first one to complete the 524 set. He discovered the Doyle error, but he kept his hobby discoveries to himself. It wasn't until a second Doyle was discovered in 1987 and auctioned off by Bill Huggins that the hobby became aware of it's existence.

I don't consider Doyle part of the set either. I would consider it part of the master set like the different backs. No Topps set requires you to have every error or variation to have a complete set. 1952 Topps is complete at 407 cards. You don't need the Sain/Page errors, Mantle, Robinson, Thomson variations, etc.

As far as the Cobb back, I believe that it was not issued until after production of the t206 set was complete. The Ty Cobb brand was not owned by ATC until after the break up of the ATC monopoly in 1911. It was a product of the FR Penn tobacco company which ATC had secretly invested in to keep in out of the government's antitrust case against. It seems very unlikely to me that there would be any cross promotion between two companies who were hiding their relationship.

Thank you, rats60. You have reminded me of the Doyle history. I have to relearn stuff all the time, as I forget a lot. I guess we will never know how many cards are in a T206 set. 52 Topps, as you say is 407. Did the ATC mean for collectors to chase Magie, Wagner, and Plank, or ignore them, etc.?

I follow the argument that Burdick was the classifier, so if he says T213-1 is not T206, then it is simply not, under his system.

I don't understand the argument that a Ty Cobb back is not a T206, when Burdick said that it was. Burdick created the idea of T206, so he is the final arbiter.

[steve B]

I suspect Burdick had at least a rough idea how complex the set really is. And rather than make it into three or 16 or more sets, he opted to put any card that seemed to be from the same set in that grouping.

If it's about this size, has white borders, and is on this sort of cardboard and has a brown caption then it's a T206.
Anything else is easy to categorize as its own set.

It's that way with a lot of large complex groups of related sets.
The old Judges
And the M-101s