[martindl]

Sorry for the OT post and for bringing back so many bad memories, but I couldn't let this go without sharing. From the most recent issue of Antique Week and on the front page no less, albeit of the second section.



Chance find turns out to be one-of-a-kind
WASHINGTON, Va. – When veteran collector/dealer Marshall Barkman was flipping through the leaves of a recently purchased album of tobacco cards he found, in a very literal sense, a feather of a different bird.

“I was just poring through it when I saw this card with real feathers on it,” he says. “I looked at it closer, and noticed there was a watercolor in the background. I’ve been collecting old cards for over 20 years and had never seen, or heard, of anything like this … but here it was.”

The feather was that of a Ptarmigan, small chicken-type birds that normally live in northern climes. The card, printed in Austria, was marked La Marquise Cigarettes Nature Series. Little else, other than its designation as “No 3,” was made available.

Barkman went to his normal research sites; but, could learn very little. Finally, after striking out with all the major card dealers in the world (no one had ever heard of actual bird feathers affixed to a trading card), Barkman hit pay dirt with an expert from the non-sports side of the Sports Collector Digest.

The cards have been only recently discovered, he said.

“The set has a total of 30 or 35 cards and each card has a designated number and a bird on it,” according to Barkman. “The cards were going to be released in cigarette packs but never were. There have only been seven other cards found.”

Each one of those cards found has been a singular event; no two cards are alike. In 1997, an online auction house sold three of these cards – a Blue Backed Paroquet, a Red-Head Duck and a Trumpeter Swan (all with their representative feathers attached) – for $40 apiece. At the time of the transaction, however, next to nothing was known about the card series. It has only been within the past few years that the cards have received published recognition.

“My hunch is there is only one of each card that would make up the master set,” Barkman says. “I think, ultimately, that the cards were too expensive - or time consuming – to produce and the company scratched the idea.”

That would leave only the one “master set” – or prototype – of the cards in existence. And, how that one master card made it from Austria to an age-old album in Pennsylvania is anyone’s case.

“Who knows where these cards came from? Barkman asks. “They could have originally come from one of the workers at the plant; been passed down through the family of someone who found the set discarded … anything is possible … sometime I’d like to find out … that’s what makes the hunt so exciting.”

Barkman, who deals exclusively in baseball cards and art, is always out “beating the bushes,” he says, at shows, flea markets, auctions, wherever fresh material is apt to surface. He’s made some credible finds, he says, but it’s finding the “truly rare” that satisfies his collecting appetite.

“Even though I have found items that are worth $10,000 to $100,000, those are not one-of-a-kind finds,” Barkman says. “I don’t know what the value of something like this is – who can say, if it’s the only one? I’m not interested in selling it. I mean, it’s the rarest thing I’ve ever found … or probably ever will find.

“Just to think that in the past 100 years, I’ve found the only Ptarmigan card from this rare set … and I wasn’t even looking for it … it’s incredible. It just goes to show you the rare stuff is still out there … you never know where it is lurking.”

Eric C. Rodenberg

4/30/2010