T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by G1911

The fish cards are T58, which are pretty common but certainly not the most common. T59 must have had a larger production run. T206 did. T205, T42 I think did. Other single or low-number of brand sets must have had 20,000,000 done if T58 is 40,000,000, like T29.

I checked Reader's book again, to make sure my memory of the calculation was right. He says 370,000,000, but honestly I think the methodology of this estimate is fundamentally wrong. It all starts on extrapolations from the Piedmont cigarette production run in 1910, and assuming that every pack had a T206 card. Then the rough percentage of t206's that are Piedmont are used to guesstimate what the total run is, and assumes the same rate of packing out for the months in 1909 and 1911 in which T206 was apparently issued.

The problem is that the starting point is the flawed one; it is factually wrong. This is acknowledged at the end that "on the other hand, actual circulation may have been considerably lower. It has been reported that in 1910 and 1911 bird and fish subjects were distributed in some Old Mill, Piedmont, Sovereign and Sweet Caporal packs instead of baseball subjects. This would likely have meaningfully reduced the number to T206 cards circulated".

Of course, "been reported" is saying it lightly - we know this beyond any reasonable doubt. Piedmont absolutely and undeniably issued other sets during this time, not every Piedmont pack had a baseball subject. This "would likely have meaningfully reduced..." again turns a long known fact into a conjecture, as if it is a possibility instead. The overstatement of Piedmont, based on a version of events that is not true, and on which every subsequent calculation is based, means the estimate is not reasonable.

T206 is more common than T58, personally I doubt there are 9 or 10 for every T58 but my opinion isn't data. T58's just aren't put up for sale as much because they're worth .40 instead of $25 for poor commons. I can sell my whole box of `1,500 T59's for, if I'm lucky, as much as a single T206 Mathewson super print. Thus eBay is littered with cards worth selling, and pickup threads are filled with baseball stars that cost more and thus get more positive attention and responses.

It's difficult to extrapolate because we see certain items far more often than others for reasons that have nothing to do with scarcity. Maybe it is about right, but if it is, it's not about right for the reasons that it was calculated from.

I agree that it's hard to put a number on how many T206's were produced but I think it might be a more accurate to compare them with cards from the same timeframe that we can put some kind of production number on.

How do you know the fish cards in the Fullgraff book are T58's?

We do know from the ATC ledger that T206's were packed with T58's one each per pack as follows

Piedmont - began packing 1 fish (T58) and 1 ballplayer 4-18-10 Discontinued pack fish 8-24-10 continue packing 1 ballplayer.

Sovereign and Sweet Caporal share the same dates - began shipping 1 fish and 1 ballplayer 4-23-10 discontinue packing fish 8-29-10 continue packing 1 ballplayer.

Comparing the T206's to the T58's we know for sure that they started packing T206's in July 1909 in some brands and continued packing them in some brands until the summer/fall of 1911.

So the T206's were distributed for 6-7 times longer than the T58's in 5x more brands than the T58's and from what we do know shows that there was 1 t206 packed with every T58 that was distributed. There are also ads that show there were 2 T206's packed in some packs and also in Polar Bears.

Now if the 40 million fish cards are T58's we don't know for sure if that's all that were produced we just know that's what was produced by Brett lithograph at a particular time.