Beginning A South Atlantic League Collection
 

Hello all,
In 2012 I began collecting autographed baseballs. Nothing amazing or valuable, just players I loved growing up. To date myself, my favorite auto in my collection is Dale Murphy. Life being what it is, I stepped away from collecting for several years. I'd like to begin again with a bit of focus. I'd like to focus my collecting on the early South Atlantic League and more specifically, teams from my state of South Carolina. I'd be grateful if any of you could recommend a starting point. Are there any books, websites, forums, etc. that I can use to educate myself on the topic? Many thanks for your time.

After seeing your post, I dug through my collection to see if I could find anything from the South Atlantic League. I came up with three things, an early '50s Augusta Tigers cap, a late '50s Columbia Gems cap, and a team photo of the 1955 Columbia Redlegs, with a pre-rookie Frank Robinson.

Love the early Robinson and Columbia cap! Thanks for taking the time to pull and post! Any advice on research avenues?

I assume you are aware of the T210 Series 1 cards, which feature all Sally League players. It is one of the less difficult series of T210 to finish, and is very representative at 75 cards. I had several but sold mine in the past year or two, keeping only one for type-- alas, it is not a player from a SC team:
https://photos.imageevent.com/imover...10-1piarce.jpg
but here's one I used to own:
https://photos.imageevent.com/imover.../t210jones.jpg

I was looking at the T210 Series 1 cards this morning. They were the inspiration for my post! Having zero experience with tobacco cards, I wasn't sure if that was a reasonable starting point for a novice.

If I was focused on collecting memorabilia from the Sally League, I would type "Sally League" or "South Atlantic League" into the eBay search engine. Make sure you have quotes around the phrase you're looking for. I would refresh the search often. I would also search for teams by putting the city (with quotes around it) AND "baseball" in the search window. It's amazing what eBay can turn up with some creative search engineering.

+1 ^^^ This ^^^ is how you do it.

I’m building T210 Series 2 team sets for the Portsmouth Truckers and Norfolk Tars in the Virginia League. It’s fun, not too difficult, and not overly expensive (relative to the era). (If anyone has any for sale (or any other Portsmouth/Norfolk cards) please message me!)
I’ve tracked down independent publisher type books on both teams (Arcadia Press) and one on the Virginia League (Maverick Publications) from 20-40 years ago and found copies on eBay and Abe Books. Some creative searching of team/player names on google, SABR, and TCDB may also unearth some info. With google’s help I found someone’s PhD dissertation on the history of minor league baseball in Richmond, VA going back to the mid 19th century.

Adam and Brian, the Old Cardboard web site may be useful to each of you with respect to the cards of players on certain teams that you are searching for.

The small T209-1 Contentnea Cigs set includes one Spartanburg, SC player: https://www.oldcardboard.com/t/t209/t209gal1.asp

The large T209-2 Contentnea Cigs set has has several cards of players on SC teams as well as the Norfolk & Portsmouth teams: https://www.oldcardboard.com/t/t209/t209list2.asp

The small and scarce E222 A.W.H. Caramels set includes 2 cards of Portsnouth players and 1 card of a Norfolk player: https://www.oldcardboard.com/e/e2/e222/e222list.asp

Thank you for the great advice. I've already seen a couple of interesting pieces.

Thank you for the info. I look forward to checking out the site! Can you recommend any literature or sites that would be helpful in learning about tobacco cards in general?

Adam, I would again refer you to the Old Cardboard web site. Here's the link to OC's list of tobacco cards, and by clicking on the individual card sets you will obtain basic info about these sets, player checklists, and card images (some sets have card images for all the cards in the set): https://www.oldcardboard.com/cardSetList.asp?GroupID=2

Thanks Val! Agree about the Contentnea series. I haven’t started on that set yet – want to make progress on some other sets first but it’s on my list and Adam should consider it as well. I wasn’t aware that the E222 Caramels had Portsmouth and Norfolk players! Admittedly, I haven’t seen many cards from that set in general, but I just added them to my master list. Some things are harder to find than others. For instance, I’ve seen several Colgan’s Chips of Charlie Babb with Memphis but haven’t seen one with him playing for Norfolk yet. It’s on checklists though so there are some out there somewhere.

(Unfortunately, my computer’s anti-virus software doesn’t let me access the Old Cardboard site. Says it’s a phishing risk and blocks it. I can get to it on my phone but it’s not as user-friendly on that small of a screen so I haven’t spent as much time exploring that site as others. Will have to see if I can figure out a work around.)

PS - Sorry to hijack your thread Adam!