T207 Back Multipliers
 

Are any T207 collectors able to shed some light on the multiplier I should add to each back? Struggling with valuing the only T207 subject I collect in his different backs. Thanks.

Finding a consistent multiplier for the backs in something like T207 is not easy because it is one of the rarer tobacco sets in comparison with things like T205 and T206.

Also keep in mind that not every subject is on every back. For example, some players have Recruit or Napoleon backs. Other players have Broadleaf and Cycle backs. But those groups don't intermingle. For example, a player with a Recruit back will not also have a Cycle back. There are also the Anonymous and Red Cross backs as well. I believe Anonymous cards can be on players in either of the two groups while Red Cross is limited to those with Broadleaf/Cycle backs.

In terms of rarity, Recruit is the easiest while Red Cross is the toughest. Others are somewhere in the middle. Other than Red Cross, Napoleons are maybe the ones I see the least of.

Assuming you're talking about the Broadleaf series? If so, Broadleafs are the easiest and cheapest. Anonymous are tougher, but it doesn't seem like people care much, and they sell for a similar price as the Broadleafs. Cycles are tougher and people really like the design, so they sell for more. How much more is hard to say. Hopefully someone else who has a little better handle on it than I do can jump in and help.

Just to keep the ball rolling, Recruit factory 240 is more plentiful than Recruit factory 606, probably by a ratio of somewhere between 3 to 1 or perhaps 4 to 1. As far as I can tell this has no or sometimes minimal impact on the pricing of the factory 606 cards.

All other backs I generally ignore.

Brian

In short, no one really cares, the player on the front either comes with one of the tough back or he doesn't(Anonymous being the only outlier), thus you have to price according to who is on the front. I can recall when Rath and Rasmussen were tough, and Speaker and Saier, and Donln and Downey and so forth, but alas the set collectors are nowhere to be found anymore, so no great price push for them. The Cycle seems to be the only one with a premium of the tougher ones, due to the bright red back.

Totally agree with this. I’ve bought t207’s quite a bit over the last five years or so and really there is no back premium except for cycles. In terms of rarity I concur that napoleons are much more difficult than non t207 collectors believe. Most peg it as the second easiest back after recruits but I think this is just because the set is uniquely broken into recruit/nap players and bl/cycle/anon players with the recruit/nap players being much much more common then the latter. The proportion of recruit to nap is insane though... I would guess even low triple digits. Some would scoff at this but I truly think it’s the case even factoring a large find or two (including hoarding). I think rarity goes recruit/bl/anon3/cycle/anon25/nap/red cross. Would love to hear any diehard t207 collectors, if they even exist anymore, thoughts on the subject.

And of course Red Cross backs carry the highest premium but there are only around 15-20 known.

The player I collect (Grover Hartley) is in the Broadleaf/Cycle/Anonymous section. I learned this at National, and appreciate you confirming. Is the Red Cross a guaranteed back for that the Broadleaf/Cycle/Anonymous, or is it more if the subject has a Red Cross, they would also only have those 3?

Grover Hartley is the player I collect. 15th toughest card I believe in the set? Doesn't bode well for me with trying to place valuations on his cards.

Interesting. Are the Anonymous factories also specific to each set? The Hartley anonymous I've seen is a Factory 3 (also, BL & Cycle).

The anonymous backs seem to be scattered through both groups, at least the factory 3's. I have several from both (Leach from recruit/nap and Almeida from bl/cycle). For the 25's, I only have one and it's from the bl/cycle group (Herzog).

The player I collect (Grover Hartley) is in the Broadleaf/Cycle/Anonymous section. I learned this at National, and appreciate you confirming. Is the Red Cross a guaranteed back for that the Broadleaf/Cycle/Anonymous, or is it more if the subject has a Red Cross, they would also only have those 3?

Your latter point is the correct one. To date, there are only around 15 or so of the Red Cross cards that have been confirmed. I believe all of the known ones found are Broadleaf/Cycle guys. But because so few Red Cross cards are known, it can't really be considered a guaranteed back for those players.

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.

Very much in agreement with all of Ron's points. I finally completed my set after about 5-6 years of effort and it remains my favorite of all pre-war sets. The interesting player selection (a large percentage of the players, including multiple HOF'ers, appear on very few, if any, other tobacco cards...some on no other contemporary cards at all), the challenge in completing the set, the great player write-ups, and the completely unique look and feel of it make it number one in my opinion. I've never really understood the lack of love for the set. Perhaps the relative lack of top-tier HOF'ers or the drab color scheme are turnoffs for some, but I love the design and, as difficult as a bunch of these are, I'm quite thankful that I didn't have to chase a Cobb, Wagner, Mathewson, etc.

Oy!
 

Absolutely agree with both of your points, Ron and Marc, and good to hear from you - figured some of the other more recent set completers would chime in.

Marc, - those of us on love side of '...its love vs hate with this set...' are probably in the minority, but its also number one in my book.

Ron, you probably know this better than anyone, but even finding several of these cards (outisde the ones you have listed) at VG/Ex-Ex is a real challenge, much less better than that ... and those are primarily the Recruit class! The fact that they're also (generally) in the "Anon 3" class is no coincidence, I suspect.

Always fun to see "new-to-the-hobby" cards and quality cards appear, as they do from time-to-time. Keeps things interesting.

--
Mike

George Mogridge was a key pitcher for the only Senators team to ever win a World Series. At age 35, his 1924 regular-season record was 16 - 11, which included 13 complete games. In the 1924 WS, Mogridge was the starting and winning pitcher in Game 4. Manager Bucky Harris, "The Boy Wonder," was in a quandry as to whom to start in Game 7, as WaJo had already lost in his two starts. So, Harris started journeyman Curly Ogden in a successful ploy to get John McGraw to start the lineup he used against right-handed pitchers. Ogden pitched to two batters, getting one out, whereupon Harris brought in lefty Mogridge, who pitched the next 4.2 innings, allowing only one earned run. This kept the Senators in the game until they tied the Giants in the 8th inning and won it in the 12th inning with WaJo being the winner in relief.

So, here's my shameless plug. I collect cards of all the 1924 Senators. I am seeking a Mogridge T207 with the Anonymous Factory 3 back - thanks in advance to anyone who can help me. I do have the other three known Mogridge cards which are pictured below:

YES!

Add me to the list of crazy people trying to complete this set. I love the obscure players

Mogridge
 

Tough, tough cards, Val, awesome!

Mogridge is (IMO) one of the top 10 in difficulty and you've got some really nice examples. Funny thing, I just picked up the Anon 25 to complete the back run. All my images are on a system that's tanked at the moment or I'd follow suit.

Will help if I come across one - best of luck!

Mike

Mike, thanks for the kind words.

I just took a look at your T207 Napoleon HOFer subset. Very impressive!