The T206 white bordered cards are considered by many collectors to be the stairway to heaven of baseball cards. The cards didn’t quite get to the level of popularity that stairway did on the radio because of their short printing run. Over time the value of the T206s have multiplied, just like the number of times that you skip over stairway when it comes up on shuffle. The T206 cards were only printed and released for three years (1909-1911) and there weren’t a set number of cards that were produced, thus making some player cards more valuable than others. Another reason why some cards still hold tremendous value over others is due to the brand that is printed on the back of the cards. The American Tobacco Company owned 16 different brands at the time, multiply that times the 520 pictures that was printed on the front and you can easily understand why a “full set” is basically impossible to find. However there are many small “subsets” of T206s that can be made, so if you are trying to create your own interesting mini collection of T206s we’d love to hear about it in the comment section below! A couple of weeks ago a nice collection of T206s was sent into the offices of Just Collect and sold on consignment. The collector that sent in the T206s has been a long time customer of Just Collect and knew that he wasn’t going to find better consignment rates and service. The T206s that he sent in are his lower end duplicates, which is mind boggling considering how much the first wave sold for ($4,859.06) on Ebay this past week! The highlight of the first set of auctions was not surprisingly the highest selling card of the group. Per vintagecardprices.com the last time a Mordecai Brown (portrait) with a PSA grading of six, was sold was last December, when it fetched $471 at auction. This past Sunday on Ebay the card sold for $579.88.
Even The Owner Is Looking To Collect Leighton Sheldon, the owner of Just Collect, saw one T206 card in the first set of auctions that really caught his eye, a George Merritt PSA 4. It is a nice card, but not a higher end T206, so I was curious to know why he had an interest in the Merritt card. “I’m thinking about starting a collection of players from theJersey CityandNewarkteams,” Sheldon said. It would be a nice piece of history to have, considering that Sheldon currently resides in the city of HobokenNJ, which is the birthplace of baseball. In order to complete his mini collection these are the cards he is going to have to find: Jersey City : Jack Hannifan, George Merritt, Bill Milligan, Dan Moeller Newark : Joe McGinnity, Larry Schafly, Bud Sharpe The PSA 4 Merritt sold for $78 on Ebay this past Sunday. If you have any T206s or tobacco cards that you want to sell outright or on consignment, we here at Just Collect are always buying vintage cards so give us a call at (732)-828-2261 or email Leighton@justcollect.com. Follow Just Collect on Twitter @justcollect Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/justcollect Watch our Youtube channel: youtube.com/justcollect
