T206 Super Print cards, pop reports, relative availability

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

This thread is prompted from an exchange of emails between Ted Zanidakis and myself...

The idea is to see what information can be gleaned from the number of times the grading folks have graded certain of the white border tobacco cards, T206s.

Super Prints refers to those cards identified by Scot Reader in his erudite publication, Inside T206. If you've not read that, I highly recommend it. Scot identifies Chance with yellow background, Chase with blue portrait, Chase with dark cap, Cobb red portrait, Evers batting "Chicago" yellow background, and Mathewson dark cap. Scot perceives that American Litho printed more of each those 6 cards than other cards for American Tobacco, so that the tobacco companies could take advantage of the current popularity of the players.

My thinking is that Cobb cards have a greater likelihood of being graded than other typical cards. And to an almost similar extent the same would be true for major HOFers, Johnson, Lajoie, Mathewson, and Young.

The question would be how many times the companies have graded those cards. And to set some sort of standard for comparison, numbers for a few other cards are sought...

Scott Fandango has been most helpful at assembling numbers like this, we hope he'll help this time.

How many times have these cards been graded?
**denotes a superprint

Bresnahan portrait
Bresnahan with bat

Chance batting
Chance red portrait
Chance yellow portrait**

Chase with trophy
Chase blue portrait**
Chase pink portrait
Chase throwing dark cap**
Chase throwing white cap

Cobb green portrait
Cobb red portrait**
Cobb bat off
Cobb bat on

Evers portrait
Evers bat "Chicago" yellow**
Evers bat "Cubs" blue

Johnson portrait
Johnson with glove

Lajoie portrait
Lajoie throwing
Lajoie batting

Mathewson portrait
Mathewson dark cap**
Mathewson white cap

Perdue (a southern leaguer)

Reulbach with glove
Reulbach no glove

Young portrait
Young with glove
Young throwing


Bresnahan is in there as a control low tier HOFer. Perdue is in there as a typical southern leaguer. Reulbach with a common card, and a less common one. Then we have major HOFers, and all of the superprints.

I'm thinking that we'll see that red and green Cobbs have been graded the most. Lots of Mathewsons and Youngs. And that the superprints will shine through with more yellow portrait Chance cards than either of the other Chances; same for Evers with more of the yellow sky batting with "Chicago" on the shirt than either of the other two; and the same for Mathewson.

[Archive]

Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Conversely, let's also see the numbers on the rare guys, like......

Dahlen (Brooklyn)

Elberfeld (portrait Washington)

Lundgren (Cubs)



TED Z

[Archive]

Posted By: Scot

Frank,

Thanks for the kind words. Each of the six 350/460 superprints seems to have a back profile that is more or less a composite of a 350-only and a 460-only subject, rather than the back profile of a 350/460 regular print subject. Thus, one would expect to find roughly as many cards of a 350/460 superprint extant as THE SUM OF a typical 350-only subject PLUS a typical 460-only subject.

Scot

[Archive]

Posted By: Craig W

Ok, the lightbulb just came on in my head! The reason T-Rex Ted did not include the Superprints as part of the 350-460 Series Sweet Cap Fact 42 OPs is because:

"Each of the six 350/460 superprints seems to have a back profile that is more or less a composite of a 350-only and a 460-only subject, rather than the back profile of a 350/460 regular print subject."

[Archive]

Posted By: Scot

Craig,

The six superprints CAN be found with SC 460/42 OP.

However, they are NOT possible with AB 350 No Frame--which is unique to the 350/460 RP subject group.

Moreover, they ARE possible with AB 350 With Frame, Carolina Brights, SC 460/30 and Sov 460--which are NOT found on the 350/460 RP subject group.

Scot

[Archive]

Posted By: Frank Wakefield

After years of fooling around with these little cards, a new thought has occurred to me.

It was not some grand master plan going on... Someone in Virginia wrote or wired someone in NY at American Litho that they needed some more ballplayer cards for such-and-such brand and such-and-such factory. They didn't really care which ballplayers were on the cards, just send the correct brands to the correct factories. Someone did think a bit about who to get permission from / who to include, but just a bit. It wasn't rocket science. Any one of us today would put loads more thought into who'd we include in a 150 subject set... and who we'd add if expanding to 350.