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

[tedzan]

Originally, in the early months of 1909 the Greater New York Baseball Association (GNYBA) was mailing out letters to
the players on behalf of American Lithographic Co. seeking their permission to portray them in the forthcoming T206
set. The well known Neal Ball letter is an example of this. And, I would say this practice continued by GNYBA (or some
other intermediary) when new players were added in subsequent sets of that era.

So, my point here is, that the Rights to portray the players was not directly related to the American Tobacco Co. (ATC);
but, the outfit doing the printing.

The influence that ATC had in the printing of the cards was related to the advertising info on the backs of these cards.
For instance, in the ATC divesture period (early 1911), when the American Beauty, Piedmont, or Sweet Caporal brands
were transferred to the L & M plant in Durham, NC....the backs were changed to reflect this new Factory #42 location.


TED Z

[marcdelpercio]

Thanks for the info Ted. I always assumed that the players contracted with the ATC as suggested by the 1912 Sporting News article which stated that the tobacco manufacturers collaborated with sportswriters to help secure the printing rights of the players (or at least Wagner specifically). I figured that once the rights had been secured by ATC, they would then sub-contract with the printer to physically produce the cards.

I realize that the Ball letter does directly reference American Litho so perhaps they retained the printing rights rather than the tobacco companies. If that is the case, then your T207 theory certainly is plausible.

[Bridwell]

Good points, Ted and Marc. Perhaps American Litho was unable to strike an agreement with Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. after the break-up of ATC. If I was with ATC, and had been using American Litho, I would not want American Litho to just take the authorizations from the baseball players and create a set for Liggett & Myers. That would be disloyal to ATC, and there was probably a contract between ATC and American Litho about the development of the T206 set. ATC & Liggett became competitors in 1911. As we've shown, most or all of the T207's were distributed by Liggett & Myers, not ATC.

Furthermore, the T207 cards seem very different from T206's and other issues. Another observation is that none of the images used are the same as the T206 images, I don't believe. It certainly seems likely, as Ted said, that a different printer & designer was used. If American Litho already had the authorization and the artwork, they could have included Cobb, Eddie Collins, Evers and other stars that were in T206. They could have easily made sepia-toned images from the T206 images. But they didn't.

That's why, Ted, I feel the ATC break-up had an influence on T207.

Ron