T207....indeed a strange set....let' talk about it ?

[marcdelpercio]

Here are a few Napoleon backs which I believe to be one of the most underrated as far as difficulty of any tobacco brand in any set. Also a super tough brown ink Anonymous and a blank back.

[timn1]

Hi guys,
I've enjoyed reading this T207 thread.

-- The next issue of the Old Cardboard email newsletter will have a mini-article written by me and Lyman that will touch on a few of these issues, although it's meant primarily for neophytes rather than veterans, who will know most of it. Check it out, though.

-- Given the discussion above about the breakup of the ATC, here's an excerpt from the final paragraphs of my VCBC article that I thought might lead to some fun speculation--

"For some reason, enthusiasm for the whole promotion dries up earlier than anticipated, and all production ceases at once, leaving the “second series” Recruits and the Broadleaf-Cycle group forever scarcer than the rest. This could have been caused simply by the end of the baseball season, or more momentously by the fallout from the 1911 breakup of the American Tobacco Company under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which brought the great age of nationally issued baseball tobacco cards to an end.

An abrupt ending to production might help to explain the set’s strange lack of big stars, and the inclusion of so many obscure figures. The cards of Hank Butcher and Buddy Ryan both refer to their play alongside Cleveland’s slugging young outfielder Joe Jackson, who had hit .408 in 1911 and would hit .395 in 1912. Given the copywriters’ interest in him, why does Jackson himself not appear in T207? Were these references to Jackson on other cards meant to hint at his eventual appearance?

Was T207 originally conceived as a successor to the massive multi-series set which had just ended in 1911? Could the original plan have been to produce several hundred cards over a period of years, as T206 had been? The lack of star players in the set makes more sense if we imagine it as the first issues of a larger set.

We may never know for sure why the set never got past 200, or if it was ever meant to. But there may be enough evidence at least to imagine a larger T207 including such legends as Cobb, Mathewson, Lajoie, Plank, and Joe Jackson."

[Bridwell]

Hi Tim,

Your articles on T207 are the best I've seen. Congrats!

If my figures are correct, there are 199 different players in T207 (Mitchell is pictured twice, confusing Mike with Willie). Of those, only 13 are HOFers (6.5%).

By comparison, there are about 389 different players in T206. There are 38 different HOFers, some with multiple poses. There are also about 260 different players in T206 that are on major league teams. 34 of the HOFers were major leaguers at the time. The others were minor leaguers. So 34 HOFers out of 260 is 13% stars.

T207 could have been originally designed as a bigger set, but maybe not much bigger. Without minor leaguers and multiple poses, there are almost as many players pictured as T206! (199 players vs. 260) Yet there is half the percentage of stars (6.5% vs. 13% for T206). To match the T206 numbers for major leaguers the speculative 'unpublished series' of T207's would have to contain 61 different players, with 21 being stars. It seems unlikely that the set designers would save so many stars for the final series. Therefore, the theory that halted production explains the lack of stars in T207 is not a good theory IMO.

Ron