T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Here's the thing, though. They are not finished cards. No matter who they show or how unique, they are not part of the set and therefore of limited utility to a card collector. A premium item to be sure but not the world-killers one might think. $5,000 for a boxing card or card-like item is rarified territory, probably no more than a few dozen cards would draw that price. The actual cards of Donovan and Corbett might not top $5k at auction; I could see them pooping out around half of that. I've had this same issue with original art and proofs from other sets: they just don't sell for what they "should".

I think the seller made a mistake terminating the eBay auctions. I doubt they will net more consigning to an AH. I am certainly not a buyer at those price levels and you are not either, I suspect. That doesn't leave a whole heck of a lot of lunatics willing to spend like drunken sailors on these items.

I don't normally compete at the higher tiers of the hobby; when it becomes about money it's not much fun. I have no idea what they 'should' go for. But I'm absolutely a buyer at those levels; the Beecher and Moore went to ~$2,000 because that was my and another bidders bid (who knows how high they were willing to go though; we were both over $2,200 on Dempsey when it got yanked and that was my placeholder). I'd happily pay $5K for the Corbett. The last Corbett went for like $1,750 before the juice and before the hobby explosion off memory. 8 pre-production examples for $5K would be a significant bargain in my eyes.

I'd be awfully shocked if the gentleman who bid at minimum $2,083 on Beecher would value the Corbett under $5,000. Corbett and Donovan, from their transactions I am aware of, are like ~100x a common cards price. Obviously that shrinks greatly in this price tier, form and situation, but I would be absolutely shocked if they netted less than 2.5x a common card in pre-production form.

As the $2K price was achieved with, the bidding suggests, only 3 people aware of what they actually were, I don't know if his decision was good or bad. It would seem unlikely he will lose a lot by yanking them. The only way he really loses is if it turns out only myself and the other bidder value them like this, and he consigns to an auction house that 1) the other bidder or myself does not see or 2) he picks one I have ethical qualms with and refuse to do business with for any item, which constitutes a lot of them. Otherwise, I don't see how he can lose, he'll likely have both of us competing again, but this time we won't be the only ones in the loop as they will be listed properly. On the other hand, I'm not sure there's much room to go up much more for the seller to recoup the increased fees charged by an auction house. We would need at least a third bidder to add a not insignificant percentage to our bids to make it much more profitable for the seller at the end of the day.

I really hope I am wrong and these aren't worth much and the other bidder disappears and decides he messed up, so that I can get them cheap and justify keeping them all to my grave. I'd rather get them all to display on my wall in a recreated sheet than have some expensive cardboard. I highly doubt I'm going to get any more than the 13 I have at this point after the Beecher and Moore results, though.

[Pat R]

Is it fair to assume the sheet was at minimum 34-36 inches wide?

[G1911]

We have:

3 bottom panels

3 top panels (one is clearly a corner).

3 panels x 4 cards x 2.5 inches = 30 inches, without the white margins.

Assuming all T220-1's are one sheet, which is not for sure yet, it would have to be about 34-36 inches at minimum.


For scorekeeping, we also have:
4 right panels (counting Jordan again, since he is obviously the top right corner)

0 left panels

9 panels that do not show clear evidence of being an edge, but as they are handcut (albeit pretty cleanly) some may have had the white frame cut off and thus cannot just be assumed to be interior panels.



A 5x5 layout of panels would be 16 edge panels, 9 interior panels, counting in my head. A different layout would probably be a sheet that either 1) didn't have all 25 cards or be 2) be very large.


I'm back home from vacation on Saturday to try and piece more together of the 13 I have access too to see what connects. Jackson and Lavigne vertically connect, Edwards and McGovern do horizontally.

[Pat R]

Thanks Greg. There is some information from that timeframe on possible sheet sizes used.

Full Obak sheet 31 x 23 1/2

18 card strip E91A approximately 27 inches

T206 plate scratches indicate a 34-36 inch sheet

[G1911]

I'm not up to speed on the plate scratches. I've seen the Obak and AC setups. I don't think they are the same printer, but I don't think that printer is known. I may be a little behind more recent discoveries though.

If we come up with a sheet about this wide, it would gives us 3 panels in a row, making it unlikely these are all from one sheet.

Before this find, my suspicion was multiple size sheets were used, and layouts were different for small format and large format cards. Large format cards seem to repeat top to bottom, and also horizontally. Small format cards don't seem to have been printed in blocks, but with a card repeating only vertically.

It's interesting we have only one corner piece and no left panels. I suspect either the sheet is huge, some of the interior-looking panels are trimmed to cut the white border, and/or The E229's fit into the same, large sheet.

I hope what we may learn from this is helpful to other sets in the ATC/AL partnership. I have some uncut T25 strips as well showing different cards adjacent to each other in a large format, different from T220-1 and T218-3.

[Pat R]

Yeah I was just pointing out the ability and possibility of them being printed on a large sheet.

I've seen some mention that the Obaks were printed by Schmidt Lithograph and it was mentioned in post #9 in this older thread that they used some similar lithograph presses as American Lithograph.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...773#post842773


There's also some information on the sizes of some of the presses used by ALC in this thread

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=125899

[G1911]

I'm not sure how the press sizes a decade prior will relate to the sheets, and produces quite a range of possibilities there.

Is there a source or evidence for Schmidt printing T212? the post here says they "used similar presses", and Obak is mentioned only once in passing without relation to Schmidt using my fancy command F. I presume the printer of T212 was the printer of T224/T229 based on the stylistic resemblances.


I can add T29 to the list of probably block-subject printed sets from miscuts. T25 is not in block format, T29, T218-3 are, most don't have cards cut so bad we can tell, or uncut material. 25 subjects on a sheet makes a lot of sense. If it was this way, I've seen no evidence of double printing to compensate for the Donovan and Corbett getting yanked from their sheet(s) very, very early on.


On a related printing note, does anyone know what happened to the second ledger that surfaced? Lelands sold it for $8k a couple years ago, it had information on T220 among other sets, but only a small sampling was shown in the listing (https://auction.lelands.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=976570). There may be some clues in here if its owner is willing to divulge. Much of the evidence that would help piece things together appears to be silo'd; there seems much more out there and extant than is talked about openly.