S74 Collectors - Need help with theory regarding white version checklist

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Posted By: Bob Casmer

Leon,







I've heard the same rumor you have. I haven't seen one in person but, don't I remember seeing you have a Cobb silk with a Helmar back in the recent group you picked up. Or was it of another player? In any event, very nice. Also, I believe you recently picked up a Red Sun backed Cobb, of which I've heard rumored there are only two known? Again, very nice. Those are great. I think they are definitely underappreciated/undervalued.



I wish you had some of these ones I'm looking for. I've been looking for examples of those five silks for about a decade now and everyone I've talked with doesn't have them, hasn't seen them. Some people I've talked with have rumored that they believe they don't exist at all. I'd be happy to find any of them without the advertising backs even. I could see if there were one, maybe two of these silks that were almost impossible to find. But five of them.....doesn't make any sense. When I noted that two of these impossible to find ailks were players supposedly listed on two different teams and saw the info about when they played on those teams and when the different versions of the silks were supoosedly issued, I started to come up with my theory about how that could happen.



As additional evidence, there's actually a third player, Hap Smith, who is also shown as being on two different teams in the S74-1 white version silks. The suppposedly rarer version of him with the Boston Rustlers is actually listed in the Standard Catalog as the third most valuable silk in the S74-1 white version set (behind the Cobb and Mathewson). This rarer Boston Rustlers silk is listed in the Standard Catalog as having a NM value of $500, while his supposedly more common version with the Superbas is valued at $150. Unlike Graham and Steinfeldt though, Hap Smith's S74-2 colored version silk is NOT of him with Rustlers, the rarer of his S74-1 version silks. On that one he's only shown with the Brooklyn Superbas. So there is no possibility that this rare S74-1 version silk of him could really just be an S74-2 version with a lot of fraying. What is also odd is how/why did someone listing values in the Standard Catalog determine that his Rustlers version silk was so rare and assign it such a premium value? There is no premium or extra value noted for what I've found to be the rarer versions of Graham or Steinfeldt S74-1 silks. They are shown at the same value as all the other common silks. I've got a white silk version of Smith with the Rustlers, so I do know it exists for real. These others, I'm not so sure.



Also, if my guess about changing over from just white silk material to the varied, multi-colored materials you primarily see used for the S74-2 colored version silks is correct, that would indicate that there is a possible short print effect for white S74-2 colored version silks that no one has really thought about before. There's so many different colors in the S74-2 version though that is probably doesn't matter and wouldn't lead to any kind of premium, or should it?



And there's still my theory that whoever created the original checklist for the S74-1 white version silks had some very frayed versions of white colored S74-2 silks that they thought were S74-1s, and mistakenly added them onto the checklist. Unfortunately, the S74 silks don't seem to get a lot of love, and therefore, virtually no input from others yet about this thread. Hopefully some others will see this thread and chime in with what they know/think. I'd love to find out if I can actually quit looking for these other missing silks and either prove or disprove once and for all if they do or don't exist. Thanks. Bob