And when I read this....
"Finally looking at these cards gives me a smile when I see the cocky attitude some of them have--leaning on the bat"
I think of this:
Not until 1969, with Topps' 664 card base set, was there a greater offering of baseball cards since the 1910 Old Mill red border T210's.
Truthfully, the white border tobacco cards can be assembled if the collector has money. With plenty of money the cards can be acquired in lots and near sets. With eBay and the internet a set can be assembled fairly quickly, if money is no object, so long as the collector defines his stopping point, 518, 520, 523 or onward. These cards have a powerful, magnetic draw. The era, the players, the stories (of both the players and the cards), the colors... I can see why these are MUCH more popular than the red border Old Mills.
With the T210s, a fellow can focus on a single team and that in and of itself can be quite a challenge. A series can take a while. And all 640, that's been done; it has been done much less often than completing T206s.
I understand that they all look alike to some folks, and that many collectors don't recognize hardly any of the players. Those, and the other reasons mentioned, are why T210's weren't the first set that caught my collecting attention. So I think we T210 collectors understand where you and most collectors are on T210's, Scott; it's just that we T210 collectors caught the bug. It's similar to learning to like strip cards.
I've sold almost all of my T210's, other than the series 6 cards, so I could focus on those. I decided I'd never get close to 640. Being a Kentuckian is part of why I kept the series 6 cards. A couple of weeks ago I was in Lexington's library, looking at microfilm of old 1910 papers, and making photocopies. I'd like to set out the 1910 season of the Bluegrass League in a book. Tickets for the games were 50 cents. That seems high for 1910, but fans still turned out. Now Bill, which one was arrested for being disorderly when???
