Time to Give Up Chasing T206 Cards?

Summary

I am not giving up on the T206 set but I will be much more focused on spending time and capital on greats like Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Nap Lajoie and others.

The T206 set is one of the most impressive baseball card sets of all time. Modern or vintage. It changed the game of baseball card collecting, long before bubble gum too. The T206 set’s sheer size of 524 different cards is one of the reasons they refer to the set as “The Monster.” Some incredibly high dollar cards, like maybe Honus Wagner and Eddie plank, also contribute to “The Monster” status. And then there is the countless combinations of various labels (“backs” that the American Tobacco Company used to highlight its brands. I have already outlined some changes to how I will deal cards in 2024.

The time has come for me to stop being continually involved in the hunt for T206 cards. I have not “left the building.” I am just going to be more focused in which T206 cards I buy and sell — and that I will personally collect in 2024 and beyond. I plan to be focused almost entirely on the Hall of Famers and stars when it comes to buying and selling T206 cards.

For years and years it was fairly easy to find ungraded commons, stars and Hall of Fame player cards at conventions. The prices were generally $35 to $50 for raw commons and up to $100 for raw star and many of the Hall of Fame players that would grade from Authentic to “1 or 2” by PSA or SGC. Now, when you find these at shows, the number of raw T206 cards is quite low and the prices are generally comparable to what they would sell for in auctions as if they were already graded a 1, 1.5 or even 2 by PSA or SGC.

Scarce or Common?

T206 cards are now more than 110 years old and, despite their age, they are not scarce by any means. The graded population of T206 cards is nearly 277,000 cards from PSA alone. These cards are auctioned on eBay almost every single day. There are often countless pages of these cards up for auction in weekly and monthly auctions from the likes of PWCC, Heritage, Goldin and others.

I am not actually giving up on all T206 cards. I will no longer be carrying 20 to 50 common T206 cards at a time. The inventory from Ogg’s Cards will almost always have some T206 Hall of Famers. One issue that has been harder to contend with versus prior years is the price points. Dealers know they do not have to offer up bargains on the T206 cards — particularly the Hall of Famers.

How to Collect

Collecting T206 cards is rather fun. Honus Wagner’s multi-million sales prices have helped this to become one of the most famous sets to collect. Even a SGC 1 or PSA 1 would cost over $1 million for old Honus! Putting together a set of cards is likely going to be close to a $100,000 endeavor even without the errors and grail cards.

Some collectors want all of a team, or all the players in a position. And some collectors just want to chase all of the cards with various backs beyond just the Piedmont and Sweet Caporal backs. There are also the Old Mill and Sovereign backs, as well as American Beauty, Carolina Brights, and El Principe de Gales. And then there brand backs with Cycle, Polar Bear, Tolstoi, and the much more scarce Broad Leaf, Drum, Hindu, Lenox, and Uzit logos.

Some collectors just want the Hall of Fame players. Ty Cobb alone has four different cards with multiple backs, and he even has his own “Ty Cobb” back with just his red portrait example as one of the few surviving cards. Greats like Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Nap Lajoie have multiple card examples from the set, and even more combinations when the number of rare backs are considered.

And some people just want the card of John Titus simply because he is the only T206 player with a giant mustache that was popular perhaps a decade earlier.

And…

I will sometimes miss catering to T206 set builders. Perhaps I will make an exception if I ever find a large enough stash of raw cards that are priced low enough to where they can be graded and then sold without creating a financial loss. But buying the one and two raw T206 commons is something that I am having to leave behind.

Years ago, I was forced to abandon my ambitions of putting together a full T206 set. I had all of the Hall of Fame cards (not Honus or Eddie of course) and most of the 134 minor league cards. The real problem was not just the money. I literally had boxes of cards full of slabbed T206 cards. It was going to be largely impossible to just sit down one day and enjoy the beauty of all these cards. And I didn’t have enough wall space to display more than 500 slabs. And the thought of breaking out this many slabbed cards to turn them back into “raw” to put in binders was just painful.

So What’s Next?

I am always hopeful that will stumble across a trove of raw T206 cards. It does still happen in the hobby, but not that frequently any longer. I am sure that when I see T206 cards I will still have some of the same infatuation that used to be there, but there are just so many other cards that are just as hard to find individually and just as hard to buy. The 1914 and 1915 Cracker Jack cards come to mind. The T216 issue from the Peoples Tobacco Company. The E90 and E92 caramel cards from 1909. These are all beautiful cards worthy of a chase. And there are the scarce cards from the 1800s.

There is also the American Tobacco Company’s T205 set from 1911 that was meant to follow up after “The Monster” with its more detailed portraits and the famous gold borders. This set is more focused with generally one card per player, not counting backs and variations. The PSA graded population of about 46,000 graded cards (versus about 277,000 for the T206 PSA pop reports). Maybe that’s the next big focus.