With new baseball card sets arriving frequently, familiar brands returning year over year, and new names tested from time to time, collectors consistently debate which are the best.
Some define this term based on monetary value, while others focus on aesthetics. Some are clean-cut, straightforward products, while others tout a long stream of parallels—cards that are mostly the same but have differing features like serial numbering, different-colored foils, or other features.
Though these parallel cards officially began in the early 1990s, they owe their origins to the T206 cigarette set.
Created by the American Tobacco Company (ATC), T206 (the catalogue number assigned) is one of the most challenging sets for any collector to put together. Large bankroll aside, T206 cards have a wide array of variations that make the product seemingly impossible to recreate.
First things first: When ATC created its baseball cards, it did so across several tobacco product brands. These include Sweet Caporal, Broad Leaf, Sovereign, Cycle, and, most interestingly, the Ty Cobb brand.
The one that collectors are likely most familiar with is Piedmont. The Honus Wagner card, considered the most desirable in the entire baseball card hobby (albeit out of reach for virtually every collector), made Piedmont famous. This rarity may give the average collector the impression that the entire brand is scarce, but this is far from the case.
“Ironically, Piedmont are the most common cards,” Peter Calderon, Sportscard Expert with Heritage Auctions, told WorthPoint.
The Wagner is actually a key identifier for the set. Because the Pittsburgh Pirates legend demanded that his card be removed (the reasoning behind the ask is a source of controversy), the Piedmonts give context for their age and distribution length.
“Their value is kinda like a base value,” Calderon explained. “Because cards like Wagner have that brand, we know cards destined for ‘Piedmont’ backs were printed first.”
Adding to a Legacy
The T206 series ran for three years: 1909, 1910, and 1911, rather than being a brand that renews each year like a modern baseball card set. Instead, the ATC made a living set with new players each year. As a result, the checklist not only grew but the backs changed to reflect growing set size, with the most significant number being the rarest and most valuable.
Brands like American Beauty can be found with 150… 350… and 460 “Subjects” on the back, and overall, are a tough brand to find. The “460 Subjects” backs are noticeably rarer, Calderon asserts. “The same is true for Sovereign Cigarettes.“
Adding to the chase is that some brands were introduced later in the run instead of at their start. “Cycle Cigarettes and Broad Leaf can be found with 350 Subjects and 460 Subjects, and again, backs with 460 Subjects are tougher,” Calderon adds.
There’s one more trick in the book: ink variations. This wrinkle has also been broken down. Hindu cigarettes, with ads printed in brown, are very scarce but are far more common than Hindu cigarettes, with backs printed in red ink,” Calderon explains. “Lenox Cigarettes with ads printed in black are very scarce but are considered common compared to Lenox Cigarettes backs printed in Brown ink, which are extremely rare.”
There’s also one more variation: factory. Remember—this was early 20th-century production. Print houses weren’t on every corner, and those that did operate were stacked. The cards were required to show their origin.
Got it so far? Good. Because here comes the added wrinkle to the T206 saga—the fronts.
Earlier, I described how each series added a new run of players to the product. The addition is true, except there were some repeat performers. This pattern is expected—you can’t put a highlight player in one year’s cigarette inserts and not in subsequent editions. Thus, you see some players appear with multiple images. Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Joe Tinker, and Cy Young are among the elite names that dot the set’s humongous checklist on as many as four occasions.
So what does this all total to? David Hall, renowned as another T206 expert, said the following in a PSA blog:
All told, there are over 5,200 different confirmed T206 player back combinations, with several new confirms added every year. Research experts estimate that the possible back variations represent a total of 5,753 possible individual cards. As of this writing, the actual number of confirmed backs, series, and factory variations is 5,251.
Here’s the bad news —that article was published in 2015, so if Hall’s prediction is accurate and more T206 treasures were unearthed over the last decade, then the master checklist has grown.
Getting in the Game
Now there is a bit of good news for collectors. T206s, for all their ballyhoo, are reasonably accessible.
Yes, finding a decently graded (or gradeable) T206 baseball card for anything close to your bottom dollar is a pipedream, but the entry point for these cards is very collector-friendly. In my 35 or so years of collecting sports cards, I’ve picked up two T206 cards, and neither cost me more than $25. That’s a criminally low entry fee into one of, if not the most iconic baseball card set of all time.
Is it worth picking up a few T206s and getting a few of the back variations for your collection? Absolutely. These are cards that are all but guaranteed to never go down in value. Will they increase? There’s always the possibility, but even if they don’t, it’s hard to argue with plunking down an Andrew Jackson or two to acquire a piece of baseball card history.
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Jon Waldman is a Winnipeg-based writer. He has written for Beckett, Go GTS, Canadian Sports Collector, and several other hobby outlets over his two decades in the hobby. His experience also includes two books on sports cards and memorabilia. Connect with Jon on Twitter at @jonwaldman.
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