T206's thrown away back in the day?
 

I am curious how many people actually kept the cards that came in the packs? It is hard to imagine (at least for me), but I can see where a guy that smoked a couple of packs a day wouldn't even look at the card and just discard it along with his empty pack when his smokes were gone.

I'm pretty sure there are a million T206s that have survived. Maybe not a million but have to be up in the hundreds of thousands.

There are stories out there that kids waited outside stores and bothered adults for the cards. I've also heard that they would go over to the store and picked up discarded cards.

One estimate says that between 5-10% of T206's actually still survive to this day. They say 20 million were printed and 1-2mil still exist

I thought I saw a picture once of the interior of a bar circa 1910 that had cards laying on the floor.

I would love to see that!

Yes please, I would love to see that photo as well.

I'm sure if the original smokers put their T206s in penny sleeves right away, just like today's collectors do with modern cards, T206s in Gem Mint 10 condition would not be as rare, and as expensive, as they are today. Remember, one of the reasons the vintage stuff in excellent condition is so rare is BECAUSE nobody saw a need to keep them in pristine shape.

T206's thrown away back in the day?
 

My guess is that more cards are thrown away today. Back then, baseball was extremely popular, and children couldn't go to their neighborhood store and buy packs of cards. In the 1980's I was fortunate to make a number of trades with a man who was an enterprising young boy when t201 - t206 cards were produced. He told me that many men, after a day's work, would stop at their neighborhood store and buy one or two cigarettes before going home. They couldn't afford to buy the pack. The shopkeeper would save the cards for him. I suspect this was common. If the cards were thrown away, it was years later.

That is how I got mine
 

My Great Grandfather was head janitor of the Morgan Guarantee Trust Company in New York City. At the end of the day he had his staff empty the waste baskets by the employees desks and bring him the cards.

He gave them to my Grandfather who gave them to me in the late 1960's.

There were a lot of them.

Only 198 survived.

That's the provenance of the Doc Crandall Uzit, which I still have.

Doug

I come here just for stories like this.
 

The stuff dreams are made of.....

Very cool

I am sure far more cards got thrown away than got saved. Any one want to go trash dump diving?

I really don't know why I'm doing this, given the silence I've received on my NEVER CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN.

Go to:

The Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide Number 4 (1982)

You will find on pages 416-418 a marvelous article with photos:
"THE OTHER JOHN WAGNER"
Interview and Article by Christopher Benjamin

The first paragraph contains a Jim Dandy anecdote that NONE of you T-206 collectors will ever forget.

--Brian Powell

This thread reminds me of this 1900s English postcard.

Attachment 136059

It's the Sloate rookie!
[ancient Net54 joke]

So old I don't even get it.:o

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear: http://tinyurl.com/lw56vja

A couple of quick pieces of info to add to the conversation. Back in the 80s I met and old, old man who told me about how the boys would hang around the duckpin bowling alleys and often the men would throw their packs in the gutters and they would scramble for them. He had a nice little collection, though I have no idea what ever became of it...probably 500 cards, a couple of Cobbs but nothing really high grade or scarce that I recall.

Also a few year back a turn-of-the-century house in Lynchburg was being remodeled. They found a few dozen high grade cards where the empty packs with cards still inside had been sealed in a closed off area.

I thought this was Barry's rookie card? :)

http://photos.imageevent.com/piojohn...o%20sloate.jpg

In the early 70's when I was a youngster, an elderly woman at our church was selling her home and moving into a nursing home. Her husband had died awhile before, but she still had his baseball cards when he was a kid. I calculate being a "kid" would have been around 1910.

She knew I collected cards and asked me if I wanted his collection. Without even looking at them I said, thanks, but I only collect modern day players.

Oh how I wish I didn't say anything and took them. They ended up in the trash.

Thanks David. Absolutely no memory of that....and now look what you did, you set Wonka loose on me!:)

Nice. Did you show this to Judy, Barry?

She saw it a while ago. This great rarity has been circulating around the hobby for some time.:)