Px7 disk, P2 pins, and S74 silks question–Rustlers

[nolemmings]

Can anyone confirm for me the existence of a Boston National Leaguer who is not designated as a Rustler in the Px7 disk, P2 pins, and S74 silks sets? Any Boston Doves, Braves or just Nationals?

It dawned on me that it has long been known the team was the Rustlers only for the 1911 season, named after their owner, who acquired the team in December 1910 and died almost a year later. Nonetheless, these sets are generally checklisted as having been issued as early as 1909 or 1910. I have contacted a couple of collectors who confirm that all of their Boston players from the senior circuit are tagged as Rustlers, and the hobby resources I have checked say the same. It seems to me that either these were not produced at all until 1911, or if they were, some deliberate choice was made to exclude all Boston NLers until a subsequent printing in 1911. The latter makes little sense, and while the team at that time was horrid, one would expect at least one representative to be included in the initial offering.

Excuse me if this has been discussed before, but if so I could not find it. So can anyone confirm a non-Rustler from these sets or offer some explanations as why these are not a 1911 and early 1912 issue?

[spec]

Todd,
I checked all the Boston-NL P2s and PX7s and all carry the nickname Rustlers. In PX7 that includes Cy Young, who didn't move from Cleveland to Boston until Aug. 19, 1911.

[nolemmings]

Thanks Bob, especially for the info on P2. The Px7 Young as Rustler is relevant, because he does not appear in the set with any other team, but does show with Cleveland in the P2 and S74 sets. Still and of course, he was with Cleveland for most of 1911, so those sets could have printed earlier that year.

Notably, one of the three other Rustlers in the px7 set, Al Bridwell, also came to Boston during the 1911 season and his disk shows Rustlers, unlike his pin and silk that have him on the Giants. However, the other two Px7 Rustlers, Ferguson and Mattern, were with Boston all three years 1909-11, so their disks would have claimed a different Boston name if issued prior to 1911. They do not. Bridwell was traded to Boston July 22, 1911, so like Cy Young his silk and pins could have been produced earlier that year.

I am getting more and more confident that the Px7s were first produced in 1911, and will add info about that later. However, because I do not collect the silks and pins actively, I am hopeful others like Spec will chime in with their findings and opinions about those sets. This could also provide insight as to the production timeline for T205. I also would invite comment about T332 Helmar stamps, which are considered to be from 1911 and which do show Cy and Bridwell with their Rustler designations.

Thanks for your consideration.

[BobC]

Hi Todd,

I can positively confirm that there are no players listed in either the S74-1 white silks or the S74-2 colored silks that played for the National League team in Boston listed as anything other than as Rustlers. Which brings up some interesting questions as to when these two sets were originally distributed, in conjunction with the distribution dates for the other sets you were also looking at.

The S74-1 white silks were definitely issued before the S74-2 colored version silks, based on some of the changes between players/teams shown between the two sets. When I first started collecting silks I seem to remember hearing somewhere that the white version silks were possibly first distributed in 1909, but believe that has been satisfactorily disproved and sometime in 1910 is the accepted start date. So the current thinking is that the white silks were distributed in 1910-11, and the colored version silks started distribution in 1911. And for reference, the T205 set has been determined to have a 1911 start date as well.

There are a few players that help to bear this out. First is Harry Steinfeldt, who was with the Cubs from 10/24/1905 until he was sold to St. Paul of the American Association on 4/5/1911. St. Paul subsequently turned around and then traded Harry to the Boston Rustlers on 5/25/1911. The Rustlers then released him on 12/16/1911, and he never played in the majors again. Harry is shown on the white version silks as a Cub, and then only as a Rustler on the colored version silks. (There are some S74-1 checklists that indicate there should also be a white version silk of Steinfeldt with the Rustlers, but that has since been proven that one does not exist.) And in the T205 set, Steinfeldt is also only shown as a Cub, the same as in the colored silks.

There is then a trade directly between the Cubs and Rustlers that took place on 6/10/1911 that involved several players, but for our purposes, most notably Johnny Kling and Peaches Graham. Kling went from the Cubs to the Rustlers, and Graham just the opposite. In the white version silks, Graham is shown with the Rustlers while there is no white version silk of Kling at all. (As with Steinfeldt, there are some checklists that were showing a second white version silk for Graham with the Cubs, but that has also been pretty much proven to not exist either.) Then in the S74-2 colored version silks, Kling is shown only with the Rustlers, and Graham only with the Cubs. And in the T205 set, Kling is also only shown as a Rustler, but interestingly enough, Peaches Graham is shown on two different cards as both a Cub and a Rustler.

Because of the dates of these trades it seems fairly certain that the S74-2 colored version silks didn't start getting produced till at least the middle to latter part of 1911. And because of the two different Graham cards in the T205 set, it would seem to indicate that the T205 set was released early in 1911. Most likely after the S74-1 white version silks started being produced, but before the S74-2 colored version silks started coming out.

One last item that may have some relevance is that it seems odd that Kling was not issued as a white silk, but was in the colored version silks. I know they expanded the number of subjects in the white version silks from around 90 to the 120 that appear in the colored version silks, but I wonder if the fact that Kling took off the entire 1909 season had anything to do with them not putting him in the S74-1 white version silks? Interesting thing to note is that he took a year's leave of absence after he ended up winning the world's pocket billiards championship after the 1908 baseball season ended. He also invested in a hotel and billiard emporium in his hometown of Kansas City, MO and worked on getting that going during the year off. When he didn't repeat as billiard champion at the end of 1909 he apparently went back to play for the Cubs in 1910 then.

Hope this helps with your research.

[nolemmings]

Thanks Bob. Your findings verify what I learned from another avid s74 collector as to the Rustlers. Frankly, I have long been skeptical that Old Mill churned out T206, the entire T210 series, and S74 Silks (plus reportedly some non-baseball cards) all in 1910.

As for the Px7 Domino disk set, my research thus far shows all but two of the 129 subjects are designated with the teams they played for at least part of the 1911 season. The exceptions are Eddie Phelps, who appears as a Cardinal but who was sold to Toronto in mid-December,1910, and Sam Leever, aging Pirate pitcher whose disk says Pittsburgh but who soured on his contract offer in 1911 Spring Training and chose to play for Minneapolis. An early 1911 production date would at least explain the inclusion of Leever. As for Phelps, he had been the Cardinals starter in 1910 and enjoyed one of his better seasons; moreover, he would return to the big leagues in 1912 and 1913, so there was still gas in the tank. Because nearly all pre-war card sets include the odd subject who retired or had been exiled to the minor-leagues, it does not seem an egregious error to have included Phelps in the PX7 roster in 1911.

There are other indicators of a 1911 first-production date for the disks. In addition to Cy Young already discussed, Clark Griffith is shown only with the Senators, where he signed in October 1911. His pin and silk show him with the Reds, where he managed through September. Why no earlier disk of Griff (or Cy)? Paddy Livingston was on the A's for the 1909-1911 seasons, then sold to Cleveland in December, 1911. Both of his disks put him on the Naps.

Jack Rowan is interesting. He was traded with Dode Paskert from the Reds to Phillies in November, 1910, but only lasted a matter of months in Philly before moving on to the Cubs in August, 1911. Paskert's disks show him with the Phillies, again supporting a 1911 issuance, but both of Rowan's PX7 offerings are with the Cubs, suggesting a much later start for the set that year.

The only major outlier to the 1911 start date is Pat Moran, whose thin-faced disk states he is a Cub. For years this has been used as the measuring stick for concluding that the set began in 1909, the last time Moran played in a Cubs game. I believe the disk is simply a “mis-corrected error” or oversight by the producer. Of the seven variations known to PX7, six of the "thin-faced" versions either correct or update information for the subject, suggesting they were printed after the full-faced variety. Moran goes the other way, for some unknown reason, taking his correct 1910-11 info and placing him back on the Cubs from 1909. A head scratcher of sorts, but since this is the only significant obstacle to finding a 1911 origin for the disks, I choose to consider it a fluke-- for now anyway.

[RCMcKenzie]

I was looking at all the s74's in Hunt's the other day. I bid on the Red Suns and was the underbidder. I just assumed T205's came first, and T202 and S74 and Art stamps came later.

[BobC]

Good research Todd. I think you may be right about the Moran being an error or outlier. That does seem to have happened occasionally with various early issues. I know with the S74-1 white silks they show two versions of Tony Smith, one with the Superbas (Brooklyn), and the other with the Rustlers (Boston). Except, Tony Smith never played with any Boston team, let alone the Rustlers, in his major league career. Instead, it has been assumed that his Boston Rustlers silk was a mix-up with Harry Smith, who did play with the Boston Doves from 1908 through 1910. Oddly enough, Harry Smith played 70 games in 1910 for the Boston Doves before being placed on waivers. He was then picked up off waivers by the Brooklyn Superbas on 9/21/1910 and became a teammate of Tony Smith. But apparently Harry Smith never actually played in a game for the Superbas before the end of the 1910 season, and then he was out of major league baseball and never played in another major league game anywhere after 1910. So the fact that the two Smiths actually ended up on the same team for even such a brief time could help to explain the possible error and confusion of the white version silk of Tony Smith on the Rustlers. Neither of the Smiths was an everyday star player, and could have easily been mixed up by someone producing the silks who just looked at the last name. And the Smith-Rustlers silk only exists as a white version silk, and as far as I know, only with blue ink on the front of the silk. S74 silks, both white and colored versions, were printed with three different color inks on the front, blue, brown and a sort of red/rust color. The rarity of finding a Smith-Rustlers silk, and the fact that it only seems to have been printed using just blue ink on front, would tend to indicate that the error was quickly caught and corrected, thus making a Smith-Rustlers silk an extreme short print.

Noting that whichever Smith was supposed to have been shown played with a Boston team would seem to indicate that the white silks first came out in 1910, and acknowledge Harry's time with the Boston Doves. But the fact, as you noted, that the Boston team wasn't sold until December of 1910, and not renamed the Rustlers till after that, indicates even more strongly that the S74-1 white version silks probably didn't get produced and issued until 1911, not 1910 or earlier as was previously thought. So that would seem to show that both silk versions, and the T205s, all came out in 1911.

Having said that, it still appears that S74-1 white version silks preceded the S74-2 colored version silks and T205s. The changes between teams and players from the white silks to the T205s and colored silks appears to bear this out. Also as additional evidence, there are known to exist what are considered 5 silk colored "proofs". These are of a colored material, on a plain paper/cardboard backing, that is not the same as the actual satin material used to make the S74-2 colored version silks that were distributed. Also they are smaller in size than both the white and colored silks issued and did not include a tobacco brand and factory number at the top and bottom, but are the exact same images as shown on the white and colored version silks. In fact, these silk "proofs" are the exact same size as the T205 cards. These appear to have been some kind of test samples of what they could have possibly used to produce the colored version silks, but didn't. What seems to make it clear that these were produced after the white silks had already been released, but before the colored silks were produced, is that of the 5 different known "proofs" of Archer, Doyle, Kling, and a double of Phillippe, Archer and Kling only appear in the colored version silks, not at all in the white version silks. Plus, the Kling "proof" shows him on the Cubs and not the Rustlers, and in the colored silks he is only shown as being a Rustler. And since neither Archer nor Kling were ever issued as a white silk, it would seem to make sense that these "proofs" were created after the white silk production had already begun.

What may add a little confusion to the T205 issue is that Kling is only shown as a Cub on his T205 card, just like on his only existing silk "proof", despite being shown only as a Rustler in the S74-2 colored silks issue. This is despite his trade from the Cubs to the Rustlers in June of 1911. This doesn't necessarily provide evidence that the T205 set may have been issued after the S74-1 white version silks, and then before the S74-2 colored silks were issued, either. The fact that Peaches Graham, who is on the other side of that same trade, is shown as both a Cub and a Rustler on two separate T205 cards, may just show that card producers were lax and didn't always pick up all the player/team changes and updates when producing these sets. Which is what then makes it difficult to definitively determine exact issue dates for a lot of these sets based solely on players/team combos shown in them. Also, because of the size similarity between these silk "proofs" and T205 cards, and the single existing "proof" example of Kling with the Cubs and not the Rustlers, I wonder if these "proofs" may have more to do with the T205 issue than the S74-2 issue. You can see images of some of these silk "proofs", including the Kling-Cubs one, on the s74silk.com site, along with other info on the speculated issue dates for the silks. Keep up the great work with your research and be sure to let us know what else you discover.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by RCMcKenzie

I was looking at all the s74's in Hunt's the other day. I bid on the Red Suns and was the underbidder. I just assumed T205's came first, and T202 and S74 and Art stamps came later.

You would think so, but the evidence of the T205s coming later, at least after the S74-1 white silks anyway, seems pretty convincing. But there always seems to be new info coming out. For example, you mentioned the Red Sun silks in the Hunt's auction. Well many people consider Lew Lipset's Encyclopedia of Baseball Cards as a definitive guide to vintage, pre-war cards, which it truly is. The copyright date I believe is 1983, which isn't really that long ago. Yet, when Lew wrote about S74 silks in volume 3 of his encyclopedia, he only mentioned them issued with three different different tobacco brands, Turkey Red and Old Mill, the most common, and the extremely rare Helmar. There was no mention of Red Sun silks at all, which seems really odd that no one, especially Lew, knew of them as recently as 1983. Obviously many examples of Red Sun silks have come into the market and been made known since then. In fact, they have now been proven to be much more abundant than Helmar silks, for which I believe only a handful of white silks with Helmar backs still attached are known to exist.

Now I am not as familiar with the T202s and Piedmont Art Stamps as I am with the S74 silks and T205s, so I wouldn't definitively say exactly when those other two issues were first produced and issued in relation to the silks and T205s. It would just seem natural that the images would have been produced for a popular card set first, and then copied and carried over to other oddball sets like silks, stamps, and triple-fold cards. The SCD catalog always showed the T202s as being issued in 1912, and the Piedmont Art Stamps in 1914, which would seem logical. However, just looking at T202 card #32 - Clarke Hikes For Home, with Al Bridwell and Johnny Kling on the end panels, both Kling and Bridwell are shown on the panels as Rustlers. This is despite the death of owner William Hepburn Russell on 11/21/1911, whose last name sportswriters of the time kind of turned into the Rustlers team name. Much like the prior team name of the Doves was derived from the last name of the Dovey brothers that owned the team before Russell. Right after his death, Russell's shares in the team were bought up by a group including an alleged Tammany Hall politician, that put future HOFer John Ward in as President. I found a Boston Globe article online dated 12/21/1911 where Ward came out and said he wanted the team to going forward be called the Boston Braves.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/2455...-boston-globe/

This was a veiled reference to New York's Tammany Hall political machine. Jim Gaffney, one of the new Braves owners, was a New York alderman and alleged member of the Tammany Hall machine. And politicians who were affiliated with Tammany Hall were often referred to as "braves" because the Tammany Society, as the political group was officially incorporated, was originally named after a Delaware Indian chief. So if as early as 12/21/1911 the President of the club was saying in the Boston Globe that they were changing the team's name to the Braves, why would they still be using the Rustlers team name for T202 cards supposedly not issued till 1912? Unless the producers of the T202 cards just didn't care they were wrong, or had already started production of them for the upcoming 1912 season when the ownership and name change took place and just didn't want to incur the time or expense to make the changes.

As for the 1914 issue for the Piedmont Art Stamps, this issue date does seem accurate as to my knowledge there are no Boston Rustlers in the set, and it also includes some of the Federal League players, which was a rival major league that was formed early in 2013 and lasted as a rival to the National and American leagues until the end of the 1915 season. So the Art Stamps were clearly issued after the silks, T202s, and T205s.

Until/unless some tobacco company documents can ever be found that note exact dates to start the distribution of various sets and issues that we are looking at, we'll never be 100% sure when they exactly started to be issued, but it can be fun trying to figure it out.

[nolemmings]

Bob, thanks again for your help and the link to the S74 website. I am leery of venturing far from my lane, especially into sets that have a devoted and well-developed collector base that likely has answered many of my questions both long ago and often. But if such knowledge is out there, I must just be missing alot of it.

Having focused on the Px7 disk set for awhile now, I was a bit embarrassed in failing to notice that all Boston NLer’s were Rustlers and that this pointed to a 1911 origination date, especially since I penned an article in OC just last December suggesting 1910. Then it occurred to me that the pins and silks sets appeared to show the same thing, and wondered why this had not been explored, to my knowledge anyway. It just seemed that everyone considered 1909 or 1910 as starting times for these sets, even when there hasn’t been any advertising or other evidence from that time period to support it. Apparently no one has pulled a disk, pin or silk from a cigarette pack or knows of anyone who has done so, nor are there any news accounts or store photos discussing/showing these “cards”. Again, I could be absolutely wrong, but I have yet to see any evidence of distribution dates, and I read this board fairly regularly. Maybe everyone can set me straight and keep it all in this thread for later reference.

I am not sure I agree that the S74 white silks preceded T205 in 1911, although I will give it further thought and wait to hear more. For one thing it always made sense to me that the cardboard T205s would have entered the market before the ancillary sets that used the same pictures on different materials. Also and in that vein, T205 had a card of Addie Joss when all the others did not. We all know that Joss died in early 1911, and his T205 makes mention of it. I just thought that the plan was to include the Cleveland hurler, who was popular and very talented, and T205 offered tribute even though he had passed. I also figured the others came later and left Joss out because of his death, especially as their blank or advertising-only backs could not convey the tragedy and it might be poor taste to include him. Speculation for sure but it made sense to me.

In looking at these issues some more, I do agree that T202 was drawn up and ready for production by the end of 1911–at least the artwork and player selection were ready. It is of course considered a 1912 release, and the information contained on the card backs properly dates it as such. Still and as noted, the team name Rustlers appears on the fronts of the Boston NLers, and that team name basically went away when Mr. Russell died in late 1911. The card backs do not appear to use the team nickname, and it is clear the write-ups came later. Interesting to me is the T202 card that shows Jack Knight and Walter Johnson. I wonder who was originally intended to be the other player with Knight?

[BobC]

Todd,

As I had said in an earlier post, I agree with you in that you would think that the T205 card set would have been produced first, and then the ancillary sets like silks and stamps would have followed using those same images then. That was why I went to the trouble of mentioning about things like the Kling-Cubs "proof" silk and the oddity of the white silk of Tony Smith-Rustlers and the late 1910 date when Harry Smith ended up with Tony Smith as a teammate on the Superbas as a possible explanation as to how they could have confused Tony for Harry and mistakenly produced a white version Rustlers silk of Tony when it was Harry that had played for the Boston team in 1910. In looking back at all this detail again between the players and teams shown on the S74-1 white silk, S74-2 colored silk, and T205 sets in trying to determine exactly when each of these were first produced and distributed, some interesting things suddenly started showing up.

First off, it seems like all the players involved in the team changes between the white silks and the colored silks, and then carried over to the T205s, only include Cubs and Rustlers players, and no others. In just the white version S74-1 silks, the checklist shows three different players supposedly playing for two different teams. Peaches Graham with the Cubs and Rustlers, Harry Steinfeldt with the Cubs and Rustlers, and Tony Smith with the Superbas and Rustlers. In the cases of Graham and Steinfeldt, it has since been pretty much disproved that either of them actually had white version silks on two different teams after all. Graham does not actually have a white version silk of him playing for the Cubs, to whom he was traded on 6/10/1911. And Steinfeldt dues not actually have a white version silk of him playing for the Rustlers, to whom he was traded on 5/25/1911. (Steinfeldt was actually sold by the Cubs to St. Paul of the American Association on 4/5/1911, and then St. Paul traded him to the Rustlers on 5/25/1911.) So in the S74-1 white version silk set, both of these players are only shown with the teams they played for in 1910 and started the 1911 season with. Then in the S74-2 colored version silk set, both of these players are only shown with the teams they were traded to after the 1911 season started. The third player, Tony Smith, actually was shown as playing for two different teams in the S74-1 white version silk set, but that appears to possibly be an error when Tony was maybe confused with another player with his same last name, Harry Smith, who was picked up off waivers from the Rustlers by Tony Smith's Superbas team on 9/21/1910. And as previously noted, that error was apparently quickly found and corrected as a Tony Smith-Rustlers silk is very rare. And this is borne out in the colored version silk set then as Tony Smith is only shown in that set as a Superba. (Some checklists mistakenly show his S74-2 colored version silk as Happy Smith, which is an error as the actual S74-2 silk is of Tony Smith.)

And then in the S74-2 colored version silk set, there are no players that are shown on more than one team. So based on all this it is obvious that the S74-2 colored version silk set did not get produced and issued earlier than the latter half of 1911, and that it was clearly produced and distributed only after the S74-1 white version silk set was released.

Moving over to the T205 set, there are numerous players that have more than one different card in the set, but only two of them are because that player is shown on two different teams, Peaches Graham and David Shean. And guess what, the two teams that both of them are shown on are once again, the Cubs and Rustlers. Already mentioned Graham's trade from the Rustlers to the Cubs on 6/10/1911. In David Shean's case, he played for the Boston Rustlers for all of 1910 and then was traded to the Cubs on 2/25/1911, and played the rest of 1911 with them. And that matches up perfectly with his silks as he was only shown as a Rustler in the S74-1 white silk set, and then only as a Cub in the S74-2 colored silk set.

But that got me to thinking about other players that had moved between teams during 1911 that weren't being shown on multiple T205 cards like Graham and Shean. Most notably I was thinking of Johnny Kling and Harry Steinfeldt. Kling was on the opposite side of the 6/10/1911 trade also involving Peaches Graham, where he went from the Cubs to the Rustlers. But Kling is only shown on a Cubs card in the T205 set, doesn't appear at all in the S74-1 white silk set, does appear as a Cub on the unusual S74 colored "proof", and then finally appears as a Rustler in the S74-2 colored silk set. Harry Steinfeldt went from the Cubs (through St. Paul) to the Rustlers on 5/25/1911, but is only shown on a Cubs cards in the T205 set, also only as a Cub in the S74-1 white silk set, but finally as a Rustler in the S74-2 colored silk set.

I couldn't figure out why these players were being treated differently with some on multiple teams and others not, till it suddenly jumped out at me. For these players that switched teams, they were being shown in the S74-1 white silk set with the team they played on in 1910, and then in the S74-2 colored silk set with the teams they played on in 1911. Which is probably a big reason why the white version silk set was thought to have been first issued in 1910. But then when it came to cards of these same players in the T205 set, if they had played with the Rustlers in 1910 and then moved to the Cubs in 1911, they originally issued a T205 card of them with the Rustlers, and later issued an updated card of them playing with the Cubs. But for those players who initially played for the Cubs in 1910 and then moved to the Rustlers in 1911, they only issued their T205 cards showing they played for the Cubs, but then never updated them to show they had moved to the Rustlers. So when it comes to the T205 set, it appears whoever was producing it made sure to reflect the Boston National players as Rustlers when the team name changed at the very end of 1910, but then had a negative bias against the team going forward and didn't bother to show changes for anyone going to the Rustlers during the 1911 season. Meanwhile they had a positive bias for the Cubs and made sure to create an additional card in the T205 set to show players that moved to the Cubs team during 1911. That seems very strange and have no idea why whoever produced the T205 cards did that. Maybe someone involved with the set was a big fan of the Cubs, or the city of Chicago itself.

It still doesn't really help on whether or not the white version silks or the T205 cards came out first, since both sets included the Boston Rustlers that weren't using that name till December of 1910 at the earliest. So that would tend to indicate that both sets may have started production sometime in 1910, but likely neither were actually finally and released until sometime in 1911. Of course, it is also possible that either or both of the S74-1 and T205 sets could have been produced and released in 1910 without any Rustlers players initially. They could have then added the Rustlers players to subsequent production runs after 1911 started then. I doubt we'll ever be able to get a definitive answer, but I'm leaning more towards the S74-1 white silks and the T205s being produced and released at about the same time, most likely in the beginning of 1911 at the earliest. Because of the Rustlers players, and no mention of any of them as a Boston Dove, that seems to make the most logical sense.

You did mention something about not ever seeing any ads or publications that showed dates or timing of when any of these sets may have been issued. Did you see the Red Sun advertisement on that S74 site I pointed you to by any chance? It is on the home page and shows an ad for Red Sun cigarettes from a 5/20/1911 copy of the New Orleans Times Democrat newspaper. In the ad there is a a blurb that indicates they are now putting baseball and actress satins in the packs. It is just to the left of the big number "5" in the ad. And since the colored silks were never issued for Red Sun cigarettes, this ad can only be referring to the S74-1 white version silk set. So there is confirmation that the set was at least being distributed by that date. Fun stuff!

[nolemmings]

Thanks Bob, I had missed that ad for Red Sun.

At this point, I am satisfied that the t205 and its related sets did not get released to the public until 1911, although the design and set composition may have been developed at the end of 1910. The Px7 disks appear to have been released last, not long after the P2 pins. The initial T205 cards and S74 silks came out beforehand, with the white silks preceding the colored. Changes or additions were made to all of these except the colored silks(?), meaning there were multiple printings, likely at various times. The T205 design and artwork were done in advance of the biography and stats on the back, as can be discerned by reading the text and seeing mention on multiple occasions of trades and action that occurred after the 1911 season was underway.

I still tend to believe that T205 in its initial form preceded the white silks, although the timing is close and my degree of confidence is not overly high. The ad for Red Sun silks has them available in May, 1911, but they of course could have been out for awhile, plus, they are the scarcest of the white silks and other brands may have distributed theirs earlier. The T205 Addie Joss card mentions his funeral in 1911, which took place April 17. Fred Beck’s T205 card shows him on the Rustlers even though he was traded from that team in February, 1911–the card back notes the trade but the silk of course has no similar story to tell, even though it too shows the Rustlers. Neither was corrected to show Beck’s new team in Cincinnati or the Phillies team he joined in July, 1911, although it is noteworthy that the card made no mention of the second trade, giving us a likely window for production, and no color silk was made for him. In sum, there remain a lot of unanswered questions, and I am just glad I have my initial question about a 1911 start date to look like its confirmed.

[BobC]

Todd,

All great research. I'm with you and think the S74 white silks probably came out in 1911, or near the very end of 1910, about the same time as the T205s as well. As to which actually came out first, we'll likely never know for sure, but they did precede all the other sets using the similar images.

And regarding Beck's T205 and why they didn't show him with either the Reds or the Phillies after two different trades he went through in 1911 is odd. But as I was speculating, it seems that the only team they bothered to show a new card for the players in the T205 set was when they went to the Cubs. There was something about the Rustlers and the Cubs. Whoever was originally putting the T205 set together to produce made sure initially that anyone with the Rustlers in 1910 through the start of the 1911 season got shown as a Rustler on their card. But they only bothered to do a second card with their new team if they got traded to the Cubs. So whoever made changes to the set after it first started getting produced must have liked the Cubs. Go figure.