Chronicling my T206 adventure

[53toppscollector]

*warning....this is going to be too long and will probably interest no one, but I am posting it anyway*

I no longer have a blog or website, so this is really the only place where I feel like I could write about and try to chronicle my T206 adventure. This will likely be a long post, subsequent updates will be shorter, but really this is just a place for me to explain my process, make notes on my journey, talk about how the plan has changed over time, etc. It may not be interesting to anyone but me, which is okay, I just feel like typing it out will help keep things sorted in my head, and will also help me to stay motivated to continue on what is (I think) a fairly ambitious project.

Last summer, I decided to basically abandon all of my other collecting interests and focus on T206. Previously, I had assembled a near complete set of graded 1953 Topps (hence, my username), and I took about 6 months to sell off that entire set, ending up with a small profit based on where I purchased the cards. About 100 of the 274 cards were items I purchased raw and got graded myself at PSA. It was a fun process, but one that I ultimately fell out of love with. When I got down to about 10 cards left, they included 3 of the big 4 (I had the Paige in a PSA 5.5), and I just wondered if I was ready to spend $6000 on a lower grade Mantle, and another $4k for a passable Robinson and Mays.

Ultimately though, what really caused me to fall out of love with my 1953 set, was that the set was graded, the cards were just in a big BCW cardboard box, and I basically never looked at them. I spent many more hours looking at my Excel spreadsheet, seeing what I paid for each card and when, and what I still needed to collect. I had the full checklist basically memorized, but I very rarely ever just sat down and looked through my big cardboard box of graded slabs.

As I finished selling through my 1953 set, I knew that I wanted to branch out into older pre-war cards, and I knew I wanted to collect T206. In what I think is not too uncommon, I just kind of dove in. I bought 3 graded T206 cards. My first ever purchase was a Krause Portrait American Beauty, and I just absolutely loved it. But as I sat at my desk and looked at my 3 graded cards, I realized I was about to go down the same path as I did with the 1953 Topps set. I was going to accumulate a bunch of slabs that would go in a cardboard box, and this was going to be a much more costly endeavor.

At that point, I decided to pivot to what is now my T206 project. I decided that instead of trying to collect a 520 set, or something close to it, I would instead just collect all of the portraits. I remember going to Luke's T206 site and seeing his banner at the top, with a collage of a bunch of different poses, and really marveling at how the portraits looked so stunning all grouped together. The different color backgrounds really brought the portraits to life. One thing I also sort of realized is that the portraits are obviously much more "life like" and a much closer representation to what the player actually looked like. If you compare, say, the Cy Young portrait with his action shots, the action shots almost just look like generic stock players. Some of them, it is impossible to really even distinguish who the player is. There are some cool things about the action shots, notably the various sunset backgrounds, and the few horizontals. But overall, I was just much more drawn to the portraits, and as I did more research, I realized that if I collected just portraits, I'd end up collecting all the big names in the set anyway, as Cobb, Matty, WaJo, Cy, Tinker, Chance, etc all had portraits.

In version 1.0 of this plan, I was going to try and truly collect a portrait master set, getting every front/back combo with the exception of Magie, Plank and Wagner. However, I obviously realized that trying to find the one or two known copies of some of the Drum, Lenox, Uzit, etc would be next to impossible, and unlike some folks here, I don't have an unlimited budget. So I had to scale things back a bit, but I believe I settled on what is a "realistic" lifetime collecting goal for T206: to collect all of the Piedmont/SweetCap + off backs (everything except Hindu, Broad Leaf, Carolina Brights, Drum, Lenox, Uzit) for all of the portraits, with the exception of Wagner and possibly Plank. I may be able to afford the Plank at some point, maybe.

Not having to track down the one or two Drums or Carolina Brights makes this task somewhat achievable, and there are still a bunch of very tough (and very expensive) backs to track down, like some of the very scarce Old Mills or Sovereign 150s, the low pop Tolstoi's and American Beauty's, etc. Based on the checklists at T206 Resource, I think my magic number is 1,383. This excludes Wagner, Plank and Magie (for now). This number is subject to change, if theorized cards end up actually being confirmed in the course of me collecting.

The key to making this work, was to settle on a way for me to actually be able to see my cards, to look at my cards, and to stay connected to everything. As I noted above, I lost my desire to complete the 1953 Topps set because the cards were just stored away in a box and I never looked at them. To prevent that happening again, I spent weeks researching different types of binders. I ultimately settled on the Lighthouse binders with 15 pocket pages. I was initially kind of scared to put these very old cards into binders, but having now done this for 5 months, it was 100% the right decision. Knowing that I needed to collect almost 1,400 cards, the idea of buying PSA or SGC 4s and 5s quickly went out the window. I started to look for lower grade cards I could snap out (and I have become an expert at cracking open PSA and SGC cases) and put in the binder. I also embraced the idea of buying raw cards. I think it took a bit of time for me to feel comfortable buying raw, but I've since acquired 100+ raw examples, and I am confident all of them are authentic and just fine. The single most helpful addition, however, was a pair of stamp tongs, used to put cards in the sleeves. Using these tongs, I've had absolutely zero issue inserting a card into the pocket pages, or removing a card when needed. They have honestly been a lifesaver, and I can't imagine collecting cards in a binder without them.

So that brings me to the current day. Based on my tracking, I have collected 207 of the needed 1,383 cards. Here is a breakdown of what I have so far:



As I said, I used T206 Resource for almost all of my background and lists. They do not consider the Bridwell with Cap on their portrait list, but I included him, because I think it is a portrait, or close to it. Their portrait checklist also omits Davy Jones, who is clearly a portrait.

My plan is to use subsequent posts in this thread to show my "completed" back runs. Since I am omitting Brown Hindus from my project, that means I only need 2 cards for the Southern League portraits, and I have 2 of those complete now, but waiting for those cards to arrive in the mail. I will try to scan and upload when they come in.

The most important thing to me, is that I am truly enjoying this collecting project much more than any previous attempts, and I think the binder is a big reason. When a new card comes in the mail, I don't simply file it into a big cardboard box. I take my binder off the shelf, and slowly page through to find the appropriate slot in the binder for the card. I remove the placeholder piece of paper, I slowly slide the card into place, and then I continue to leaf through the binder and admire what I have already collected. I've already gotten more joy out of this collection in 4 months than I did in the 2+ years when I was working on the 1953 set.

So, if anyone actually read through this, thanks for your time. I will be adding more pictures later, and periodic (monthly maybe?) updates to my overall progress. Eventually, I will work out a way to make a video of my flipping through the binder, page by page, but that will have to wait until I have a way to film it properly, and until the binder is more heavily populated.