My T206 Plank theory....and, what's your guess ?

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

Ok... here's what I think and why:

Bender, H. Davis, and Plank are in American Caramel sets. American Caramel is based in Philadelphia, where the A's played.

1903 E107, Breisch Williams was a predecessor of AC, and the set had all 3, Bender, Davis and Plank. I think BW merged into the new AC.

American Caramel sets

Bender Davis Plank
1908 E91-A y y y
1909 E90-1 y y y
1910 E125 y y y
1915 E106 y n y


other sets
1909 E92 Dockman y y n
1910 E93 Standard Caramel y n y
1909 E95+96 Phila Caramel y y y ****
1909 E97 Briggs n y n
1909 E101 set of 50 y n n
1910 E98 set of 30 y y n
1909 E102 y n n
1910 E105 Mello Mint y y n
Most of these sets are small 25 cards, 30, 50, 100 or so.

What do Bender, Davis and Plank have in common? All played in Philadelphia with the A's. Their careers overlap. Davis started sooner, and retired sooner (except for some token appearances).

How are they different? Plank was a college graduate, an educated gentleman playing a ruffian's game.

It is reasonable that AC got Philadelphia players under contract for their cards, either when the cards were released, or soon after. The American Tobacco Trust sent reporters out to get contracts signed after production started. Maybe AC did this before ATT, or maybe contemporaneously. The ATT T206 cards probably came out at the end of the 1909 season, so it seems that some of the candy cards were out there first. Wagner had his T206 pulled over the money (not the tobacco). If Plank, college educated, was approached to sign, it seems that he may well have not taken the few dollars offered and refused, since he'd already signed an agreement with hometown AC. Maybe he heard about Wagner's not signing, Pittsburg wasn't that far from Philadelphia.

So Plank isn't in the ATT tobacco issues. He is in 2 non-ATT tobacco issues:

T208 Fireside, from 1910. The cards show Bender, Davis, and Plank. They were from the Thomas Cullivan Tobacco Company of Syracuse, NY.

T204 Ramly, from Massachusetts. The cards also show Bender, Davis, and Plank.

Maybe T204, T208, and the Philadelphia Caramel Company (above with "***") which was located in Camden, New Jersey... maybe these out of state companies didn't care about what AC thought of their use of the likenesses, or maybe Plank or the AC just didn't know, or they didn’t care what was happening outside of Pennsylvania.. ATT was selling cigarettes in Philadelphia, but Ramly and Fireside weren't, and that Camden NJ candy company would not have had much of a presence there, either.

So I think Plank would have been under contract with AC, and he wouldn't sign a contract for ATT when approached. I figure Bender and Davis were less educated, less concerned about proprieties, and pocketed the few dollars offered.

I think Ted Z has something with all of this.

Frank.

Edited.... I had those "y"s spaced out under the players' names, but it didn't space after submitted, so I've added "n"s and it is a mess. Sorry.