Southern cards "find"? When was it made?

[DeanH3]

Originally Posted by tbob

Jerry is right when he says The Southern Find was from the mid 1980s. I received a call from John England (RIP) a well known collector who owned a local card shop and who said he did not have the necessary cash to buy the entire collection. The seller was a rather random guy from Louisiana who had an enormous group of T213-2s and T213-3s. He happened to be in Arkansas and contacted John through his card shop. The cards were in vg to exmt condition generally with a small number lesser. The 4 of us took turns selecting cards, we would start with the HOFers and work our way to the "commons." Example, there were, approximately 20 Ty Cobbs, 20 Walter Johnsons, etc. so each would pick 5 of the Cobbs, 5 Johnsons etc. We went on the order 1,2,3,4, 4,3,2,1 and so on. I started with T213-3s of each player and so ended up with a complete set of T213-3s, half of which were overprinted backs. The others were drawn toward the more colorful T213-2s with their glossy front.
I can tell you I wound up with 3 T213-3 Cobbs all in excellent condition. I sold one through Net 54 20+ years later, traded one for an olive E94 Honus Wagner in excellent condition about 10 years ago, and sold the last along with the rest of the complete set to Bill Mastro in the early 90's, a huge mistake based on what the set would sell for these days. I sold my near set of T213-2s plus a ton of duplicates to Mastro in the early 90's.
I don't remember how many cards in total but I would estimate 250-300 T213-3s and about around 2000 T213-2s. We paid $10,000 for the cards. He was thrilled and to be quite honest, in the middle 1980s there weren't many collectors collecting the Coupon cards. All 4 of us eventually sold off the cards over the years.
Imagine $10,000 for the whole lot and nowadays you could easily get $10,000 for just one ex/exmt T213-3 Ty Cobb.
It was amazing to sit there and hold on to all the many Cobbs, Johnsons, Mattys, LaJoies etc. We never heard from the seller again although he mentioned that he had a ton of more cards from Lousiana with "Victory" on the backs. My God, we should have offered to fly down there and buy them all!
This was THE Southern Find, not the one mentioned above....
Post Script- if the name John England sounds familiar, he is the guy who sold his personal collection to Larry Fritsch for north of 1 million dollars before Larry passed away many years ago.

Thats a great story Bob. I can't imagine the feeling of splitting up those cards. What a blast. Love hearing the background surrounding these types of finds. My three Matty's.