I surveyed close to 25,000 graded T205 cards, here are the results (full data added)

[53toppscollector]

I was hoping to wait and write a really long thread here detailing all of my T205 research that I've conducted over the last 8 months, but I was slandered by a fellow board member in one of my BST threads, so I am simply going to share the top end data for now, and eventually I may come back and further write out more detailed analysis.

To create this data, I went through the VCP database for the T205 set. I went alphabetically, and for each player, I went through their entire 15+ year history of sales of graded cards. When an image was available with the front and back of the card, I logged the grading company certification number into Excel and set up formatting rules to make sure duplicates were not double counted. I did this for every single front in the main 208 set, and almost all the cards in the extended master set (errors, variations). For cards where the scan was too blurry, or where there was no back, for example, I did not log it because I couldn't be certain what the front back combo was. Mislabels and bad scans happen. After going through VCP, I went to ebay and added in the cards that were listed for sale, and double checked the sold listings to make sure none were missed by VCP. When factoring in duplicates that I removed, I looked at close to 100,000 cards, I'd guess.

This census is just that, a census. It is the cards I was able to find based on a unified set of data. To be clear, there are more of these copies out there that have been graded and never sold. PSA and SGC's pop reports are not great for T205 because they do not distinguish between the factory variations (Hassan, Sweet Cap, Piedmont) and in PSA's case, they don't even differentiate the backs, its just "T205 Gold Border"...so I felt like this census would be useful. There are also obviously raw copies of these cards out there that have never been graded and they were not included. For example, I saw zero copies of the Foxen with American Beauty back, but I have a raw copy of the card, so I know it exists. This is not a 100% perfect study, it is a sampling of 25,000 cards.

I will post the numbers for the main 208 card set and then the extended errors/variations that are part of the master set. This second grouping is more subjective and tougher to narrow down because of the various minor print defects/oddities that have been found on some cards and trying to figure out if its truly a variation or an error. The 208 set does not seem to be in question, so I found that data more useful. There are also a few cards that are tougher to evaluate in the method I used above. For example, Dots Miller has 3 different "variations", a middle initial B, a middle initial D and one that contains sort of an overprint of the B and D. Unless you have a great, clear scan that can be zoomed in on, it can be difficult to tell these apart. Some of the scans, especially the older sales from 2013/2014, it is impossible to tell. I chose not to guess and the result is fewer cards evaluated. This only really happened in a few cases, like the one above.

208 card Main Set



Here is the data for the "variations"



This includes the following cards:

Chase Both Ears - Frame Extends
Crandall - T Not Crossed
Dougherty - Red Sock
Gray - Stats On Back
Graham Rustlers - Blue Signature
Hoblitzell - No Stats
Hoblitzell - No Cin After 1908
Hoblitzell - Name Misspelled
Hoffman - Yellow Base, No Stripe
Hoffman - Yellow Base, With Stripe
Latham - WA On Back
Leifield - AP In Signature
Mathewson - 1 Loss Cycle
Moran - Stray Line of Text
Wallace - No Cap, 1 Line
White - No Quotes
Wilhelm - Suffered

Adding this chart in the first post too:



This shows the summary numbers, and then breaks it down a bit further.

Number of fronts that have a back (ie, there are 192 different subjects that have a Piedmont 25 back, 74 subjects have a Piedmont 42 back, etc)
% of number of fronts that have a back (percentage of the above)
Average number of backs per front (total number of a back divided by the unique number of fronts, eg, 8,570 divided by 192 = 44.6, or 45. So, if a card has a Piedmont 25 back, the average would be 45 examples

Hopefully by looking at the raw numbers and the percentage of the total backs, you can get an idea of the overall scarcity of T205 backs. You also need to consider the "relative scarcity"...the minor leaguers were only printed with Hassan 649 and Polar Bear backs. I counted 174 Polar Bears and 844 Hassan 649s, a nearly 5 to 1 ratio. There are no exceptions among those 12 cards, I saw way more Hassans than Polar Bears for every single minor leaguer. These numbers also put into perspective the rarity of Piedmont 42s (which someone told me I was lying about), American Beauties and Cycles, and especially Broad Leaf, Drums and Hindus.

If you think this data sucks and is worthless, discard it and move on, that is fine by me. If you get something out of it, then thanks for reading.

Update: Full data dump is here

[jason.1969]

This is amazing! Would be thrilled to see any “part two” you’d be comfortable sharing.


Jason
Twitter: @heavyj28

[G1911]

The most interesting thing here to me is the Hassan 649 vs. Hassan 30 figures. Factory 30 seems to have been a lower production facility for this brandas whenever Hassan appear in an issue there is a gap in scarcity. Large sample sizes of other non-baseball Hassan sets indicate to me about a 3:1 ratio gap in those sets, 649:30. Interesting that the ratio may be widely different in T205 vs. Hassan’s less popular sets today.

[53toppscollector]

Here are 2 more quick charts for now. If there is interest, I may put more of this stuff in the thread later. Keep in mind, I did this census over about 8 months, so some of the cards, there will be more items that have been graded/sold since I started, I will get those when I update, which I am actually in the process of doing now. Directional scarcity is more important than the exact numbers, imo.

Here is the data I collected for the 12 Minor Leaguers, which I referenced in the first post.



Also, I picked out this subset of cards because I thought it was interesting. These cards have 6 backs total (except Street, which has 7, but I am not counting the blank back since its so rare and likely just a scrap)



Collins Mouth Closed has 5 of the same 6 backs as the rest, but he has no American Beauty back (that I saw), and instead has a Hassan 649, which none of the others have. Why? I have no idea. But it is interesting to me.

[Johnny T]

As I close in on the slaying of the Monster (37 to go!), I've been thinking about my next project, and T205's are high on my list.

Thank you for sharing!

[t206kid]

Josh Levine has some awesome data that's very similar to this. He published his findings in an SGC Magazine article about 10 years ago. I saved this screenshot...

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by G1911

The most interesting thing here to me is the Hassan 649 vs. Hassan 30 figures. Factory 30 seems to have been a lower production facility for this brandas whenever Hassan appear in an issue there is a gap in scarcity. Large sample sizes of other non-baseball Hassan sets indicate to me about a 3:1 ratio gap in those sets, 649:30. Interesting that the ratio may be widely different in T205 vs. Hassan’s less popular sets today.

The other thing to consider is how many fronts actually have a given back. For example, the MLs have a Hassan back, but it will always be the 649. Based on what I saw, there are a bunch more fronts where there is a Hassan 30 back (112) than a Hassan 649 (75), but because of those minor leaguers who have disproportionately higher totals I think it impacts the totals. Below in chart form



Sweet Cap Black (25 and 42) are only found on 56 fronts, but they are plentiful on the cards that have them. For example, the Sweet Cap Black is much more populous than the Polar Bear on a card per card basis (22/23 per for SC Black, 14 per for Polar Bear)

Lots of interesting stuff in the data, imo. When I went in, I expected Sovereign and Honest Long Cut to be slightly more rare than they actually ended up being.

[53toppscollector]

Jay thanks for posting that, I hadnt seen it before.

For my purposes, I never split out the AB Green/Black and the Broad Leaf Green/Black because they are mutually exclusive and can't appear in both colors, so it was easier/faster for me to not break them apart in my sheet, but it wouldn't be too hard to do.

[Yoda]

Truly a labor of love. Well done.

[puckpaul]

Thank you for doing this, it is really insightful and helpful in looking at the set.

[packs]

Interesting to see how tough Sovereign is. I don’t feel like it’s usually advertised as a rare back.

[53toppscollector]

Here are the 13 "short prints" that come in 3 backs only, Piedmont 25, Hassan 30 and Cycle

Cycles are tough.

[53toppscollector]

last one for now, not sure if anyone came up for a catchy name for this grouping of cards, the "second short prints" that come in 5 backs instead of 3, but are all lower pop and quite difficult. they share the exact same array of backs. the interesting thing about this grouping is that they all have much higher counts of Piedmont 42 backs. The Piedmont 42 back is very tough in general, but all of these cards have at least 9% of their seen examples having a P42 back.

[brianp-beme]

Here is a thread started by Joshua L in 2012 concerning the 22,013 T205 cards he researched, and the various percentages for the backs. It is interesting to note the very large difference in percentage for the Piedmont 25 cards in this 2012 posting, and the SGC article. I assume the SGC article was strictly involving the SGC T205 percentages...?

Also Joshua broke down backs a little more thoroughly, for example percentages for Broadleaf in both Black and Green ink colors.

Here is the link to that thread:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=157949

Post # 40 on this thread contains a table another member created that is a little easier to see.


Brian

[stutor]

Great thread James! Thank you for sharing this very informative data.

[peterb69]

Thanks for your time and effort put into this.

[Baseball Rarities]

Awesome data. Thanks for all of the work.

[obcmac]

I think there is additional information within the back runs that hasn't been fully explored either. Polar Bears, for example, don't appear in equal numbers...if they are in the group of 22 that appear with only 5 backs, then they are very tough in the polar bear group relative to other polar bears. As another example, 32 sovereigns will come with a darker green back...the same set of 32 is the entire group american beauty blacks (that is...if it has an american beauty black, then it has a dull green sovereign).

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by obcmac

I think there is additional information within the back runs that hasn't been fully explored either. Polar Bears, for example, don't appear in equal numbers...if they are in the group of 22 that appear with only 5 backs, then they are very tough in the polar bear group relative to other polar bears. As another example, 32 sovereigns will come with a darker green back...the same set of 32 is the entire group american beauty blacks (that is...if it has an american beauty black, then it has a dull green sovereign).

Yea I have definitely seen cases where the PB back seems to be much lower than expected. I found 24 cards in particular where I saw 5 or fewer graded Polar Bears. These 24 cards fall into 2 very distinct groups:

Group 1: Piedmont 25, Sweet Cap Black Both, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign

Group 2: Piedmont 25, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest

Group 2s do not contain the Sweet Cap backs but contain the Hassan backs. Group 2 and Group 1 both contain Honest Long Cut, but Group 2 does not include Sovereigns.

Even within this subset there is another interesting wrinkle. The Group 1 cards that have Sweet Cap backs have much lower Piedmont counts. It is pretty weird seeing a card like Abbaticchio only have 7 graded Piedmont 25s. The fronts in "Group 2" have very plentiful Piedmont 25 backs.

[Fred]

James,

Holy cow! That's a lot of effort!

I can remember a time when my knowledge of T205 and T206 backs was pretty minimal. I sold a T206 on ebay and couldn't understand why it went for much more than other cards for that same player in the same condition with a Piedmont back. Then I found out it had to do with it being from Factory 42. That was over 20 years ago.

I've learned quite a bit through this forum because of unselfish people as yourself. Thank you for sharing the information.

[Baseballcrazy62]

Thanks for compiling this data!

[Danny Smith]

Wow. This is awesome!! Definitely bring on all the data!

[MuncieNolePAZ]

Thanks for sharing! Would love to see the rest of the data.

Thanks
Chad

[53toppscollector]

Okay, first thanks for all the kind words. This was definitely a labor of love, and I appreciate everyone who left a nice message.

What I am going to do now is basically dump the data I currently have, with a few caveats. You will then have everything I have. Over the next few months, I am going to go through all my player by player sheets and update them. I am changing the formatting a bit, I am adding new cards that may have been logged in VCP since I originally cataloged that player, and just double checking everything. I have no idea how long this will take. I am currently between jobs, so I have a bit of free time right now, but I suspect that free time is going to evaporate quickly once I start my new job. So, I may not have anything to add for a few months, or longer, in terms of updates. But, I want to share what I have now so you have something. Down the road, my plan is to actually create some kind of website to house all the data, and to be able to update it in real time and make it accessible. For now, this thread will be the place.

I am going to provide the data based on the number of backs I found for each player, which might show interesting patterns or trends. I will check this thread obviously and answer any questions anyone has, but if I don't reply for a few days, my apologies in advance.

* Caveat 1: I am not including Dots Miller in my list. One of his 3 cards is included in the main 208 set (Middle Initial B), but as I noted in a previous post, his cards are the most difficult to ascertain because you need to have a very high quality, zoomable scan to see the middle initial, and the overprint version of the card is challenging to see without it.

* Caveat 2: Danny Hoffman has 3 variations, a white base (the card in the main set), Yellow Base with Stripe and Yellow Base Without Stripe. Depending on the quality of the scan/the condition of the card, these can be tough to tell. I will spend more time when I double check his card to make sure counts are as accurate as possible. The numbers I have for him now are good, but it is one I will double check for sure.

* Caveat 3: As I said previously, I started this project in May of last year. It took me basically until January of this year to finish. Over that time, there have been new cert numbers popping up, so the totals I am going to show you are 99% up to date, but not 100%. I have re-counted a few cards (starting at A) and noticed that I was able to add 4-5 cards per front in this update. I suspect as people keep grading cards, new examples will pop up. The directional accuracy is the most important thing in this data, imo. You might see one new Piedmont, one new Sovereign, etc. But the trends and overall percentages should remain stable, given the sample size we have. If that changes over time, that will be interesting to track.

* Caveat 4: Again, this is only graded cards where a front/back scan is available, and the scan is legible. I found tons of examples in the VCP database where only the front scan was available, no back, and so it is impossible to tell what the card is. Again, directional accuracy/scarcity.

* Caveat 5: Below, I will use the phrase "more populous" a lot. This simply means, "I saw more of these", it should not imply this is an exact population report. This is obviously not a pure population report. It is a census. A sampling.

Okay, thats that. Now, on to the data

Cards with 2 Different Backs



These are the 12 minor leaguers + one outlier. I talked about the MLers earlier, they are very heavily weighted to the Hassan 649 Back, the Polar Bear is much tougher.

The outlier is the Graham Rustlers card with the black signature, which is what has been assumed to be the "correct" card, since all other players in the set have a black signature. Graham Rustlers Blue Signature is actually much more populous (I will show that one later) but the Black Signature version was much less populous and I only saw it in two backs, Piedmont 25 and Cycle. If you have a Black Sig copy in a different back, I'd love to see it. This was another card that required more time and care when logging because the signature color is only really clear on a small part of the card.

Cards with 3 backs



Here we have a grouping of the 13 short prints that are found in only Piedmont 25, Hassan 30 and Cycle.

We have 2 additional rule breakers, the Rustlers/Cubs traded cards of Shean and Graham and the Bobby Wallace No Cap 2 Lines of Stats. The two Cubs cards are found in Polar Bear and both Hassan backs, with the Hassan 649 being more populous for both. The Wallace card has a variation with only 1 line of stats, more to come on that one later.

Cards with 4 backs



These are all rulebreakers....or maybe that means there is no rule. The Dougherty is a variation, he also has a "Red Sock" version. The Hoffman White Base is one I noted above, and again, I want to re-check this one very closely to make sure nothing was missed. The Doc White is by far the most populous of these cards, and his variation which is "No Quotes Around Doc" is only found with a Polar Bear back, or at least that was the only back I saw.

Cards with 5 backs

There are 2 distinct groupings here for the 5 back fronts.



These cards all have a Piedmont 42 back. The Piedmont 42 is much more common for this set of fronts. These are not short prints, but they are definitely lower population cards and tougher to find.



These cards do not have Piedmont 42 backs. Excluding the two rulebreakers, this batch contains Piedmont 25, Polar Bear, both Hassan backs as well as Honest Long Cut. The two rulebreakers are Chase Frame Ends and Dolly Gray No Stats. The Chase of course is one of the more famous variations, as he has a Frame Extends version (more on that later). His Frame Ends variation has a Cycle back but not an Honest Long Cut. The Gray is also a variation, as he has a rare version with stats on the back.

Cards with 6 backs



I wrote this one up yesterday, but posting it again here for consistency. The Collins Mouth Closed is an interesting card because it has a Hassan 649 back while none of the others in this subset do, and it is missing an American Beauty back. If you have a Collins Mouth Closed with an American Beauty back, I'd love to see it.

Cards with 7 backs

There are a few interesting groupings of fronts with 7 different backs. First



All of these cards have a Piedmont 42 back. 11 of the 14 cards have the same back pattern: Piedmont 25 and 42, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest Long Cut and American Beauty. Three of the cards have a slightly different configuration, with a Sweet Cap Red back, no Hassan backs, and then a Sovereign and Cycle back. These 3 outliers also had much lower populations based on what I saw. Not sure why.



I had to stich this one together because it contained so many fronts. These cards with 7 backs do not have a Piedmont 42, but they have the exact same configuration: Piedmont 25, all 3 Sweet Cap backs, Polar Bear, Honest and Sovereign. I have nothing else to add here.

Cards with 8 backs

There are 2 groups of cards here as well. First



12 of the 15 fronts here have the same configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty and Cycle.

The three outliers are interesting. As I noted yesterday, I have a raw Foxen with an AB back, so it exists, even though I saw zero graded copies. The fact that I saw zero graded copies in 15+ years of data indicates to me that it is a very difficult card. Fletcher has the same configuration as Foxen though I haven't seen an American Beauty back on the Fletcher. Looking at this, I'd assume it exists. The Matty card is a famous example and easily explainable. He'd fit the same criteria as the 12 other fronts, except his Cycle card had the misprint, showing only 1 loss instead of 11.

Second group



There are 19 cards shown here. 14 of them show a common pattern: Piedmont 25, all 3 Sweet Caps, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign and Hindu. The other 5 feature 2 variations and 3 cards with the same pattern. The Hoblitzell and Latham contain the same configuration: Piedmont 25, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign, AB, Cycle, Broad Leaf, Drum.

The other 3 cards also share the same configuration: Piedmont, Sweet Cap Red only, Honest, Sovereign, AB, Cycle, Broad Leaf. Do they have Drum backs? I wouldn't see why they wouldnt. Why did Leach, Lobert and Paskert not get printed with the Sweet Cap Black backs? No idea.

Cards with 9 backs



There are a few interesting anomalies here. The 2 cards without a Piedmont 42 (Corridon and Shean Rustlers) have the same back configuration: Piedmont 25, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign, AB, Cycle, Broad Leaf, Drum.

The other 7 cards have slightly different configurations

Crandall T Crossed does not have a Sweet Cap Red. His T Not Crossed variation has Piedmont 25 and Sweet Cap Red, so clearly his T Crossed variation is missing Sweet Cap Red because all of the Sweet Cap Reds for him were T Not Crossed.

Harry McIntyre has a similar configuration to the other 5, but he has a Hassan 649 back, which the others don't and he is missing the American Beauty back, as best I can tell.

The other 5 have the same configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty, Cycle

Cards with 10 backs



You can separate these into 3 groupings:

6 cards have this configuration: Piedmont 25, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty, Cycle, Broad Leaf

8 cards have this configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty and Cycle

2 cards (both HOFs) have this configuration: Piedmont 25 and 42, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Hassan 30, Honest, Sovereign, American Beauty, Cycle, Broad Leaf.

Cards with 11 backs



These cards fit into 2 nice groups. The 4 cards with a Piedmont 42 back do not have a Hassan 649 back. The rest do not have a Piedmont 42 and have a Hassan 649. For the 4 cards that only have a Hassan 30 with a Piedmont 42, the Hassan 30 back was much less populous than a typical Hassan 30 back.

The variations



Obviously these are a scattershot that I won't go through in detail. If anything looks incorrect, call it out so I can add it to my list to double check as I go through everything again.

One more bonus chart.

The 20 most populous cards I saw



No surprise that the list is dominated by the Hall of Famers, as they will generally sell for more/be worth more, and hence, the desire to get them graded. The Matty was magnitudes more plentiful than the Cobb, which is at least somewhat interesting to me.

That is all for now. As I said, if you have any specific questions about the data or my methods, I will do my best to answer. If you have copies of cards that don't show up in my census (ie, a back that shows up as missing/zero, but you have a scan of the front/back) I'd love to see it. If you are going to tell me "I see 4 copies of this card, not 3", I'd refer you to my caveats section above.

Thanks for reading.

[MuncieNolePAZ]

Thanks for sharing all the data. I love this stuff. Great work!

Thanks
Chad

[h2oya311]

James - very interesting research idea. Thanks for sharing your results with us. I knew the Piedmont 42s were rare, but didn’t think they were “Drum” rare. I’m still a little peeved that I sold a huge lot of T205s a few years back via an AH and mentioned that there were several Piedmont 42s in there (probably 30-40% of the 80 or so but they still chose to lump everything together as one large lot. If only I could turn back time…

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by h2oya311

James - very interesting research idea. Thanks for sharing your results with us. I knew the Piedmont 42s were rare, but didn’t think they were “Drum” rare. I’m still a little peeved that I sold a huge lot of T205s a few years back via an AH and mentioned that there were several Piedmont 42s in there (probably 30-40% of the 80 or so but they still chose to lump everything together as one large lot. If only I could turn back time…

Therein lies the conundrum. The market for T205s just doesn't exist in the same universe as T206. T206s are much much more populous and available, and they command better prices across the board than T205s. The demand/desire for T206 is why T205 prices arent close. I've picked up a bunch of American Beauty/Cycle/P42 backs for between $20-30. That would be unheard of for T206. I wonder at some point if T205s will gain in popularity, but I have my doubts, even though I think the set is majestic and incredible.

[Musashi]

Well at least this seems to confirm my theory that I should jump on Piedmont 42's whenever I get the chance -especially when they're buried in group lots. Someday, the market will catch up.

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by Musashi

Well at least this seems to confirm my theory that I should jump on Piedmont 42's whenever I get the chance -especially when they're buried in group lots. Someday, the market will catch up.

Even here, it really comes down to relative scarcity, which is a topic Luke talked about a lot on his site for T206s. If you look at the grouping of cards above with 5 backs, you see this grouping (not short prints but less commons, whatever you want to call them) are all much more populous when it comes to Piedmont 42s. For those cards, the average number of Piedmont 42s per subject is around 10. If you remove those 11 subjects and look at the other 63 subjects that have a Piedmont 42 back, the average per card is only 5 per subject. I found that 28 of the 63 had between 1-3 copies of the P42. Why are those 11 fronts so unique with having an outsized portion of their backs being Piedmont 42s? I'm not sure.

[Leon]

Great research. Thanks for sharing!
.

[brianp-beme]

Even though my preferred way of collecting, T205 cards included, is ungraded, I love seeing the results of all the work you have done. Thanks for sharing!

Zack "Broadleaf" Wheat came to see what all the fuss was about, and even 3 of his friends stopped by and were blown away by all the T205 information available.


Brian

[Misunderestimated]

Thanks So Much For Sharing Your Results !

[notfast]

This thread is a great read. Thanks for posting.

Now I just wish I could find someone wanting to move a low grade p42 Cobb.

[53toppscollector]

Couple of random thoughts I had while looking through the charts again

* There are 56 subjects that have the Sweet Cap Black Fac 25 and 42 backs. Of those 56, 55 of them also contain the Sweet Cap Red back. The only one that does not is the Leifield A In Signature front. Of course, his second card, the "AP In Signature" front comes in the Sweet Cap Red back, but not the Sweet Cap Black backs. This would indicate that the Sweet Cap Red back was printed after the Black backs maybe? If they decided to change his card and add the AP in the signature on the front, presumably they did that before printing the Sweet Cap Red backs?

* Honest Long Cut was the third most prevalent back, with 174 fronts, coming in behind Polar Bear (191) and Piedmont (192). If you remove the 12 minor leaguers (printed with only Polar Bear and Hassan 649 backs), you get a list of 22 fronts without the Honest back. They are a pretty interesting sampling. You have the 13 short prints, then Chase Frame Ends, Dougherty White Sock, Graham (Both versions), Hoffman White Base, Wallace No Cap 2 Lines, and Wilhelm Suff ed. I would assume, looking at this, that Piedmont, Polar Bear and Honest were meant to be the 3 "flagship" printings of the T205 set. There is a big dropoff from Piedmont, Polar Bear and Honest down to the next most populous backs: Sovereign 119, Sweet Cap Red 117, and Hassan 30 at 112.

* There are 23 fronts that have an American Beauty back but no Cycle back. There are 20 fronts that have a Cycle back but no American Beauty back, with 13 of those being the short prints. The non shortprints with a Cycle back but no American Beauty back are: Chase Frame Ends, Fletcher, Graham Rustlers, Hemphill, Davy Jones, Harry McIntyre, and Overall. None of those cards stands out in any way, so, I wonder if the AB back does exist, because I can't see a reason why it wouldn't. The Chase example can be explained, because his "Frame Extends" copy does have an American Beauty back, they likely just never bothered to print it with an AB back when printing the Frame Ends front. The others, I don't know.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

* Honest Long Cut was the third most prevalent back, with 174 fronts, coming in behind Polar Bear (191) and Piedmont (192). If you remove the 12 minor leaguers (printed with only Polar Bear and Hassan 649 backs), you get a list of 22 fronts without the Honest back. They are a pretty interesting sampling. You have the 13 short prints, then Chase Frame Ends, Dougherty White Sock, Graham (Both versions), Hoffman White Base, Wallace No Cap 2 Lines, and Wilhelm Suff ed. I would assume, looking at this, that Piedmont, Polar Bear and Honest were meant to be the 3 "flagship" printings of the T205 set. There is a big dropoff from Piedmont, Polar Bear and Honest down to the next most populous backs: Sovereign 119, Sweet Cap Red 117, and Hassan 30 at 112.

I'm not a T205 guy, my research is focused on boxing and non-sport, but I suspect part of the reason for oddities in T205 is that it was never completed. Most T sets we have today are relics of a completed production, but T205 was abandoned partway through for some reason (almost certainly the court-ordered breakup, but that's an assumption most have made - card releases definitely slow down after Q1 1911). There is substantial evidence that many ATC issues were not really released in series, but in waves with subsets of the subjects available at an exact given moment in the timeline. I suspect T205 is the ultimate example of this, with its intended ~400 (claimed subject counts are often slightly off, but not far off outside of T205). Maybe Honest was intended as a primary issuer, or maybe those sheets happened almost by chance to just get done in time before the project was cut.

Why X brand released Y sets/waves is an area of mystery that I have been trying to find material for in the primary source evidence. Why did Honest release T219, T205 and T227 at the end of card production as the monopoly was broken up, and nothing in 1910? Some sets suggest connections based on the departments (brands were grouped with several constituting a single department - there appears to be no correlation at all between the internal brand groupings and the factories) but there may be no real correlation - sets aren't released by all the brands in a department. It's not even clear to me the ATC made these decisions at all - the group of lithographic companies making the cards effectively operate as the ATC's direct marketing department rather than just being printers. They even name, design and trademark the monopolies brands. It seems to be a crapshoot for a consumer if a brands pack will have a card or not; even fairly common sets today are packed for very short periods of time if the Posey letters are correct, and most brands don't have a sequence of set 3 replacing set 2 which replaced set 1, there seem to be large gaps in time without cards, and then the brand has cards again, oft for a relatively brief period. There's a lot of stuff here not on the surface directly related to the cards that if we can learn will make a whole lot of what we see in the cards finally fit together better.

Thank you again for sharing the dataset publicly to us all.

[collectt205]

This data is incredible, thanks for doing that!

I see many of your auctions on eBay 1953! Have any more T205s for sale?

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by collectt205

This data is incredible, thanks for doing that!

I see many of your auctions on eBay 1953! Have any more T205s for sale?

everything i have for sale is here:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=346249
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=345270