Why are there no T207 set collectors anymore? Of the T205/06/07 trio it's clearly the least popular, but it's still a heck of an interesting set. I'm surprised to hear that.

Barry,

There are very few set collectors of most T & E sets in this era, T206 is obviously the most widely collected in some form of set format. In nearly all of the others, the Cobb, Wagner, Johnson and Mathewson are about the only cards that the collectors of today seem to want. T207 having only the Johnson of the above has never been that popular, and now it is even less so. I bet a head count of the board would show less than 5 people pursuing the set, perhaps as few as 3.

I agree Barry; I like the set a lot. I think the set has limited appeal to most collectors. This is a set that IMO, is strictly for people who love collecting cards because they love collecting in general and not for people who love collecting because they love sports. There's just not enough star power and the look turns a lot of people off them as well (though I love them). It's also hard to get jazzed up spending thousands of dollars for players like lowdermilk and irvin lewis. Still I'm a little surprised there isn't more interest in the set.

Scott and Tyler- I can only think the reason there are so few set collectors is that the price has become prohibitive. Tobacco sets, and even some of the candy sets, are the backbone of the pre-war era, and they were always widely collected. When I see what some of the key T-206 HOFers sell for, I realize most collectors are priced out.

And the charm of the T-207 set is exactly the obscure mix of players. In place of Cobb and Mathewson you get Lew Lowdermilk and Chet Hoff, but that is what always drew collectors to it. The hobby is changing.

I agree. I really like the T207 set, but there are some factors that make it tough for people to collect it. If I had unlimited funds, I'd be working on the set. As it is, I can't really afford to go after the BL class cards, so I am slowly working on Napoleon and Anon Recruit Class poses.

Some of the artwork is breath-taking, and some is just objectively ugly. The Johnson is one of the worst, and looks nothing like him. If the artist that did the Leach or Hooper had also done Johnson, the interest in that card would be ten-fold what it is now.

In that same vein, the set doesn't feel that cohesive to me. It's hard to look at Konetchy and Sullivan and feel like they really belong together. Konetchy is incredibly ugly and the Sullivan is one of the best looking T cards ever produced imho.

Quick side note, these are the 15 Red Cross players (well, 13 since I've never seen the third and fourth cards from the early 1980s find confirmed).

Steve


Player Discovered
1 Russell Blackburne 1980s
2 George Weaver 1980s
3 1980s
4 1980s
5 Frank Lange 1980s
6 Ward Miller 1960's
7 Louis Lowdermilk Louisiana Find
8 John Adams Louisiana Find
9 Russell Blackburne Louisiana Find
10 William Cunningham Louisiana Find
11 Otto Miller Louisiana Find
12 Red Nelson Louisiana Find
13 Don Carlos Ragan Louisiana Find
14 George Tyler Louisiana Find
15 Jacques Fournier 2016

I'm working on it ... and with 19 cards to go, getting close. I'll say this, though. It wasn't my first choice. Or my second. Or even my third, really. I mostly started T207 not out of any great love for the set as much as just to work on something new.

All of that said, probably about 50 cards in, I really started enjoying the cards and now, I absolutely love them. I honestly wish more people would give them a chance because, like me, I think it would grow on them. But between the look that scares people off and, as Luke said, the rarity on so many, it's very hard to do a set. Even the common Recruit guys aren't all that plentiful. PSA pop reports show them to be almost five times as rare as T205 ... which is already significantly rarer than T206. Some of it, I think, is there just aren't a ton of them around. I went to a relatively large show earlier this year and saw, I don't know, a dozen total between maybe 2-3 dealers?

Shameless plug...

Any Hartleys for sale, let me know. ;)

T207s
 

Glad to see a T207 post ... I suspect the relative number of these vs ones on T206/5 directly correlates to the number of folks interested, collecting.

Hi Kyle - you're now aware ( from a previous thread http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=207372) there are two classes of cards:

• Recruit - with Recruit (Fac 240 and 606) and Napoleon (Fac 240 only) backs; and
• Broadleaf - with Broadleaf, Cycle and two factories of Anonymous (3 and 25) backs.

There is no crossover between the two classes. The only twist to this from the backs perspective is that there are a handful (~50) Recruit cards that are known with one of the Anonymous backs (Factory 3).

As for relative valuations, I think others have hit it on the head: you can't compare across classes; and Cycle seems to be the only one to see any bump; no one really cares, it seems.

Hartley being Broadleaf-class then has 4 backs (BL, Cycle, Anon3, Anon25). All things considered, I'd place him in the easier half of the Broadleaf cards, probably in the top 40 in difficulty, but well below 15. That said - and you see this time and time again in these threads - everyone's experience varies with the Broadleaf class cards. Its just a matter of timing.

Not all of us have gone by the wayside, Barry, at least not completely:):), but I think Scott's assessment is pretty close. I'm probably not in that group, but am still occasionally active as there are a number of subsets I'd really like to finish.

Agreed with all that, Barry, yet the last year has been a better time than in in a while to find good T207s at dirt prices ... as long as you don't want certain cards. I can say that it has not been a great time to be a seller, even with some of the tougher backs.

Hey Luke. Amen on both Napoleons and Anon 3 Recruit (the two most difficult subsets after RedCross). Hard to believe we don't yet have confirmation on the Napoleon cards . There's also the long-standing open question of exactly how many cards there are in the Anon 3 Recruit group. Its at least 49..

As for the variance in portrait quality, I'd be interested if some research on the subject might showed that there were at least two separate groups doing the artwork and back text over time. The differences are pretty stark, and you could (likely) split them.

The broad split is Broadleaf and Recruit w/Anon 3 vs everything else.

• The former have ~realistic portrait poses with colored logos and emblems
• The latter, well, don't and have the caricatures and fugly "in-grass" set of poses.

Clearly these were not done by the same team of artists.

Further, look at the use of color across any team set. Compare all the cards on, say, Pittsburgh, Boston (Amer), Brooklyn ... to others on the same team to see what I mean. Colored (non-brown) team emblems and names on the jerseys are on the Broadleaf cards, and the Recruits that can be also be found w/an Anon3 back... McKechnie, Leifield & Leach look more like the Broadleaf class (Donlin et al) w/Blue 'P' and Pirates in Blue than the do the other Recruits (Miller, Byrne, Ferry, ...)

Same with the RedSox - Bradley, Gardner, Henriksen O'Brien and Yerkes do not have an Anon 3 card, all the others do.

Not as obvious on some of the other teams, but the case is pretty obvious (Brooklyn's Rucker is the only outlier I'm aware of).

Fun stuff, as ever. I hope to finish my (fell-into) goal of completing the Recruit, Broadleaf, Anon and Cycle subsets, but would settle for seeing the list of Napoleons confirmed. At least it would be good to know if any of the variations in the Recruit class have more than one of the variants found with a Napoleon back.

T207 sets
 

I'm a set collector with 2 sets of T207. After I finished my T206 set (of 521), I started on T207 and really love them.

One thing I love about T207 is the good players that don't appear in T206 or in many other sets either. Such as:

Rafael Almeida
Armando Marsans
Joe Wood
Harry Hooper
Max Carey
Bill McKechnie
Lefty Tyler
Vean Gregg
Hank Gowdy
Vic Saier
Ward Miller
Buck Weaver
Ivey Wingo
Duffy Lewis

It's a good challenge trying to find higher grade cards of this set. I also like that all the images of every player seem to be unique to this set.