What We Have Learned About Ty Cobbs With a Ty Cobb Back

[sgbernard]

Ted, it was a pleasure shaking the hand of someone with 30+ years (I hope I have that right) of card collecting experience at this year's Philly show. Evcharisto polu for your many knowledgeable posts on T206s, we all stand to learn much from reading.

This is an issue of classification not personal opinion: the crucial factor of distribution puts the card, in my mind, in or out of Jefferson Burdick's ACC designation as a T206 (remember to those, ahem, who post: the T206 is an artificial category created by Burdick to describe a certain class of cards printed and issued in a similar manner in the same time). We can argue until we're blue in the face about what does and doesn't constitute our own definition, but as far as Burdick's is concerned, the fact that these ATC cards were distributed similarly puts them under his same umbrella.

Jon, that was a great call in the first post: I had missed those tobacco stains. I thought, no way he's right, but sure enough the REA card has what can only be tobacco stains and, as you point out, resemble quite clearly the polar bear staining of loose-tobacco. It's a clincher for me. I went back to other Cobb/Cobbs and found no such staining, so as far as I'm concerned this is an important new observation.

[ebrehm]

Aside from the theoretical question of whether Cobb/Cobb 'belongs' in T206, as a practical matter:

* If you are assembling a standard T206 front set (524 subjects), you don't have to worry about this card.

* If you are assembling a T206 back set, you are going to have to decide whether you need this card. I recommend getting one, just in case.

* If you are trying to obtain all possible T206 front/back combinations, you could work on that project for 500 years and never even know if you are done.

* If you are building a collection of all known Ty Cobb cards, you need this card!

[Potomac Yank]

The Mono's have a white border, should it be part of the T206 set?

If an Abbaticcio back card was found, with stains,and a white border ... would you consider it part of the T206 set?

[Chicago206]

Originally Posted by Potomac Yank

The Mono's have a white border, should it be part of the T206 set?

If an Abbaticcio back card was found, with stains,and a white border ... would you consider it part of the T206 set?

Absolutely not. Burdick's classification system was done 70+ years ago. Things change....the world being round, women having the right to vote, slavery ending, etc, etc. Just because thats "the way its always been" does not mean thats the way it will always be, nor does it mean its correct.

[sgbernard]

Joe, thanks for your reply. The Mono cards were not issued between 1909-11 by the American Tobacco Company, and they were not distributed in tobacco products made by the ATC. Same with our fictitious Abbaticchio back: if it had a white border, was made by the ATC, and was included as part of ATC tobacco products, then yes, I would include it. Does that make sense, I don't just consider the white border sufficient: ATC cards made during those years with a gold border are designated (again, by Jefferson Burdick's rubric) T205. So, there are several factors, and now that the Cobb/Cobb seems to have fulfilled Burdick's factors, I think it belongs under the classification he designated for cards with such characteristics.

Again: my congrats to Jon as I think that noticing the tobacco on the back proves in my mind that these were distributed with tobacco products just like other cards under the T206 heading.

No one who reads my posts will be surprised to see me bring it up, but this is like the T209 cards: under Jefferson Burdick's designation, cards issued by the Contentnea tobacco company and distributed with their products during 1910 are listed under the classification T209. Now, some of those cards are color some are black and white, and so we have T209 I and T209 II, but I don't think anyone would want to make T209 IIs into an entirely separate set just because one is color and one is black and white.

Edited to say: Marshall Chicago206 Chao, when Jefferson Burdick wrote his catalog, there was no slavery, American women had suffrage rights, and the world was largely agreed to be round. If you want to re-write the ACC, be our guest. But I don't think that was the original question: it was whether or not the Cobb/Cobb belongs in the ACC designation "T206." But you don't seem to be contributing much of substance here.

[T206DK]

the thing that I wonder about is that some of the cards have gloss and some don't. Could it be that some were distributed in the tobacco, and others were used as displays or advertisement pieces or enticements ? This subject has always intrigued me, so I love the discussion and information that has been discovered as of today.

[Jim VB]

I think we are trying to impute 2010 knowledge and logic on 1910 baseball cards. They will NEVER match.

The "marketing" division of ATC (and I use that term loosely) just wanted to sell more tobacco. That's all. Period. If that meant re-using a front image with a different brand back, so be it. If that meant changing a team name, on the title, or on the picture itself, so be it.

I don't think that they envisioned that, 100+ years later, we'd be sitting around trying to classify, sort, and rearrange, their motives. Even when Burdick first did this job, these were "old" cards.


The work done over the years has unearthed an awful lot of "what" ATC did, but, in the end, finding "why" they did something, or even, what they intended to do, will always be a guess.

[Potomac Yank]

Originally Posted by sgbernard

Joe, thanks for your reply. The Mono cards were not issued between 1909-11 by the American Tobacco Company, and they were not distributed in tobacco products made by the ATC. Same with our fictitious Abbaticchio back: if it had a white border, was made by the ATC, and was included as part of ATC tobacco products, then yes, I would include it. Does that make sense, I don't just consider the white border sufficient: ATC cards made during those years with a gold border are designated (again, by Jefferson Burdick's rubric) T205. So, there are several factors, and now that the Cobb/Cobb seems to have fulfilled Burdick's factors, I think it belongs under the classification he designated for cards with such characteristics.

Again: my congrats to Jon as I think that noticing the tobacco on the back proves in my mind that these were distributed with tobacco products just like other cards under the T206 heading.

No one who reads my posts will be surprised to see me bring it up, but this is like the T209 cards: under Jefferson Burdick's designation, cards issued by the Contentnea tobacco company and distributed with their products during 1910 are listed under the classification T209. Now, some of those cards are color some are black and white, and so we have T209 I and T209 II, but I don't think anyone would want to make T209 IIs into an entirely separate set just because one is color and one is black and white.

Edited to say: Marshall Chicago206 Chao, when Jefferson Burdick wrote his catalog, there was no slavery, American women had suffrage rights, and the world was largely agreed to be round. If you want to re-write the ACC, be our guest. But I don't think that was the original question: it was whether or not the Cobb/Cobb belongs in the ACC designation "T206." But you don't seem to be contributing much of substance here.

*

A very slight correction .....

Too late ... The T209 type 1, and T209 type 2, although put out by Contentnea ... are two totally different sets.

Type 1. As we all know, is made up of color images.

Type 2. Is made up of interesting early photographs ... and that's what makes it two different sets.

My 219 different type 2's keep telling me that.

[ChiefBenderForever]

The Cobb back is a T206, always has been and always will be.

[sgbernard]

Originally Posted by Potomac Yank

My 219 different type 2's keep telling me that.

Whoah, that makes me incredibly jealous. When you give up the hobby and those T209 IIs hit the BST, give me advanced notice, ok?

To answer your point, Joe, that's sort of what I was saying though: they are two sets, but they're under the same ACC heading. So if we are arguing about whether or not cards are different sets, that's one thing, but if we are arguing about whether or not different cards belong to the same ACC heading, that's very different. The Cobb belongs to the T206 set just like the T209 IIs belong with the Is: because the ACC says so. Jim's right, though, this is a lot of modern haggling for a classification system that wasn't in the minds of the people who were rolling these things out and putting them in cig packs in the first place.

[E93]

Thanks to Ted, Seth, and others for sparing me the need to reiterate these points again.
JimB

[Leon]

For the record Burdick always classified the Cobb back as a T206. Even in the 1953 ACC he included it.....Now, in his later revisions he took out Hustler from T206 but he left Cobb (back) as a T206. (He never listed Coupon as a T206 back )

For T209 Contentnea he listed them as type 1 and type 2.