And he brought it to one of our Net54 dinners for show and tell. While it was razor sharp, it actually had poor centering and didn't deserve a 10.

Which brings us to the age old question: how does a grader distinguish a 9 from A 10? And if those 9's and 10's were broken out and resubmitted, is there any chance they would receive the same grades?

How would a card survive with "10" corners after being wrapped up in a pack of cigarettes?

It probably wasn't in the pack. There was a large find of un-circulated T206's in the late 80's by a company called Southern Cards. More than 1500 if I remember correctly. I bought a couple dozen at the time, I would bet that most of the 8's, 9's and 10's are from this group. There were Piedmont and Sovereign 150-350 and Old Mill SL. Cobb Bat On (the only Cobbs) and a few Johnson portraits among the HOF'ers

Please tell me more about this. Was this find ever written up anywhere? This is a new one to me.

There were several ads in the old SCD with lists of the common cards available, I remember 3-4 full page ads of just vertical columns of player names in small font size in one issue. This was when SCD was large format, like a really old Life magazine. They were using a grading scale that went into decimals to try and describe the difference in conditions (9.9 or 9.925 or 9.975 etc.

The cards originally walked into a shopping mall show where some were purchased and then the rest were tracked down by Southern Cards. I believe this was in North Carolina.

The theory at the time was that a worker at the packing factory took home a box of cards that were meant to be inserted into the packs. I think we know that the cards were printed in NYC and shipped to the various factory locations and inserted.

If you look at both PSA and SGC population reports of cards that grade 8-9-10 you will see that some have multiples more so than others (Johnson portrait for example) its likely that these are from the find. There were McGraw finger in air cards and Keeler batting in multiples if I remember correctly. I have personally owned portraits of Evers, Chance red, Joss, Lajoie and Fred Clarke as well as SL of Coles, Helm and Paige from this group.

There were many "diamond cut" cards with huge borders and even some trapezoid cuts where the bottom edge was straight and the top was extremely tilted like a barn roof.

I imagine that many of the cards are in 6-7-8 holders because of quality control or just movement in the storage box etc., but the idea that all high grade T206 are trimmed is not the case as I know some people think (understandably).

Brian Goldner (JuJuDrum) knows a bit about this find as well, he and I were trading cards from it back and forth for a couple years back then!

GB

"Southern Find"
 

I should also note that there is another card find that had T213's from the mid 1990's that has taken the name "Southern Find". The card find I am referring to was also called the Southern Find (because of the Company name involved) but it was several years prior and I think the names were mixed together due to pre-internet word of mouth information. This T206 find is unparalleled as far as I know...

Correct
 

The southern find was absolutely written about several times in SCD. It was an impressive collection of beautiful t206 cards. The first find from late 80s.

It sounds very similar to the E98 Black Swamp Find. It is encouraging to hear this story (for me, for the first time as well), as I had always assumed that the cleanest T206s were either trimmed, or had been soaked out of a scrapbook once upon a time.

Thanks for sharing. Would love to hear/read/see any more details.

i never heard the southern find consisted of "uncirculated" cards? In fact if they were uncirculated then why are so many that ended up in the harris collection suspected of being trimmed?

A lot of the Harris cards just look bad, way too small etc. Also, the find didn't have any 150 series only cards that I recall, no Sweet Caporal backs, no super prints and no 460 series. It was probably a box or "shoe" of cards (like a Vegas dealer) taken home from factory 25 based on the backs involved. Harris was a myriad of all things.