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

[Sean]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

If, in front of us on a table, there were about a thousand white border tobacco cards that we know as T206s (no slabs) laying there on the table, face up, and one of them was the Ty Cobb / Ty Cobb card... It would leap out at us in our field of vision. It ALONE would be the only card with the glossy front. A lingering question would be why does only one of these cards have a glossy front?

We flip all of the cards face down (gently, they aren't in slabs). There would be a variety of backs... but only one card that has Ty Cobb King Of The Smoking Tobacco World. And all of the cards but one reference Baseball Subjects or Baseball Series.... all except one card, that sole glossy front card.

And if we asked a wife, a third grader, or most anyone with walking around sense (that would exclude me and most collectors) to find the one card on the table full of cards that is different from the others, I think they'd easily separate out that Ty Cobb / Ty Cobb card from the rest.

In my mind is this story of ATC folks going to Georgia to talk with Ty about lending his name to a new brand, and they had printed a sample of cards to give him. And that's where the cards came from, and how they happened to be found in Georgia.

Let me simplify that table of cards. There's about a dozen cards there, all have a red portrait Cobb on the front, although one has a glossy sheen on the front. And those backs... there's one Ty Cobb King of the Smoking World back, and the others are all Piedmont, Sovereign, Sweet Caporal, Cycle, Polar Bear, El Principe de Gales, and Old Mill. All but one of the backs have Baseball Series or Baseball Subjects.... and the one that doesn't is that Cobb King of the Smoking World card. Which card is different from all the others?

I think that Frank makes the best argument. Considering the differences with both the backs and the glossy (Cobb back) or paper (Coupon) card stocks, it seems like the Red Cross and Coupons have more in common with T206 cards than the Cobb back has.

And there is the question of distribution as well. Ted, has anyone ever shown
how the Cobb backs were distributed? I know that some believe that they were in Cobb tins, but that seems unlikely. Do we know if they were ever in any type of pack? It seems like they could have just been a promotional giveaway, especially since more than half the known cards came from two finds.

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by Sean

And there is the question of distribution as well. Ted, has anyone ever shown
how the Cobb backs were distributed? I know that some believe that they were in Cobb tins, but that seems unlikely. Do we know if they were ever in any type of pack? It seems like they could have just been a promotional giveaway, especially since more than half the known cards came from two finds.

Hi Sean

No packs known.

The image on the Ty Cobb Tobacco tin is the batting version printed on the 1909 T206 Cobb
card. This is consistent with ATC's initial marketing of the Ty Cobb Smoking Tobacco in 1909.




However, the image American Lithographic used for this Cobb card is the red portrait version.
Which was first printed in 1910 (or very late 1909).

To me, this imaging inconsistency suggests that the red portrait Cobb card was not intended
to be stuffed in the Tobacco tin.


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[parkerj33]

Just had a thought regarding Burdick decision to group things together as t206 vs. t213-1, t215-1 etc... I think we all agree that there are plenty of reasons he could have considered a broader definition of t206 that included those sets, or perhaps narrower that didn't include the cobb/cobb. Perhaps his decisions were not completely arbitrary or completely his own? Maybe amongst he and the other collectors of that time (1920s-1940s: Bray, Conlon, Carter, Wagner, et al) prior to his first ACC publication, they had already effectively decided which cards should be grouped together as the t206 (which i believe based on leon's posting of original documentation was called the #521 white border set).

If there was already a loose consensus of what would be in a white border set (what we call t-206) perhaps he was just following the prevailing thoughts. Maybe the few collectors of the time were already not considering coupons or red cross's as t206.

fyi, it was called #521 but that # was only coincidentally close to the actual size of the set. i think #520 was t205, for example....and that might also have driven his motivation to make have the gold borders come before the white borders in his new numbering scheme.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by parkerj33

Just had a thought regarding Burdick decision to group things together as t206 vs. t213-1, t215-1 etc... I think we all agree that there are plenty of reasons he could have considered a broader definition of t206 that included those sets, or perhaps narrower that didn't include the cobb/cobb. Perhaps his decisions were not completely arbitrary or completely his own? Maybe amongst he and the other collectors of that time (1920s-1940s: Bray, Conlon, Carter, Wagner, et al) prior to his first ACC publication, they had already effectively decided which cards should be grouped together as the t206 (which i believe based on leon's posting of original documentation was called the #521 white border set).

If there was already a loose consensus of what would be in a white border set (what we call t-206) perhaps he was just following the prevailing thoughts. Maybe the few collectors of the time were already not considering coupons or red cross's as t206.

fyi, it was called #521 but that # was only coincidentally close to the actual size of the set. i think #520 was t205, for example....and that might also have driven his motivation to make have the gold borders come before the white borders in his new numbering scheme.

I have also wondered if there wasn't something Burdick and others knew that hasn't been passed down for some reason. Maybe because they just figured it as too ordinary to write down, or because it was too obscure and finicky to think anyone but them would care.

There's plenty of stuff like that in another hobby of mine, for many things the best resource was written in 1902, and even some of the original records used as a source may be lost. (and that book has errors... ) A few things were "known" in the early 1930's and are being rediscovered.