Some of my pickups this week.
More Silvers, because why not? A T225 I needed for my master set run, and 3 more T227's. Klaus is an upgrade, Coulon I had one of, and Wolgast gives me all 3 of his possible back types. The Gans and Donovan's are upgrades.
3 of the cards are something special. The Coburn may or may not be a proof. It's a blank back, missing his name, and has what seems to be a cutting line at the very top of the card. I've never seen another like it, happy to have it as a centerpiece in my T220 silver collection. The McAuliffe next to it might be a proof; it's missing the silver layer, probably handcut (the edges so worn down it's hard to be certain it originally was handcut) and also blank backed. The McAuliffe is just like the cards on the sheets I discovered a couple months ago. Both are unique items. T220-1 Silver is my favorite set of cards, so unique cards from it are about as cool as cool gets in my book. Very happy to add these to my set.
The Jack Johnson doesn't look special at first, but it's not much more common than the unique cards here. Until very recently, I had this as a probable no print with the Hassan, Series 2 notation, factory 30 back until another collector showed me his Johnson with this back. factory 30 backs are tougher than 649, but this back is not notably difficult with any of the other 50 subjects on which it is found. I strongly suspect, though cannot quite prove, that the green pose Jack Johnson was mostly printed on it's own sheet separate from the other cards after his late addition to the series 1 checklist and rule-breaking continuance into series 2. SGC 4.5's are usually out of my price range, but when very rare items are encountered one can't be picky about keep to the Fair's. I highly doubt the hobby will ever put much value on non-Tolstoi backed T218's, no matter how truly rare (this combination is tougher than Johnson Blue with a Tolstoi, easily), but for me it is a major pick up because of the back. And by far the most I've paid for a T218. This puts me at 621/632 cards to complete the master set, with the most difficult cards crossed off. 1 tough Mecca cards, 8 Tolstoi's, and 2 commons I just haven't grabbed left to complete. Very happy it's owner was kind enough to let it go to a new home where it will hopefully reside for decades in an eventually completed master set.
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