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The Day a RARE T206 Eddie Plank Card Was Discovered by Just Collect

Fairy Godmother Leaves Rare Baseball Card Treasure

June 28, 2023

Hidden in family closets for decades, hundreds of 1909-11 T206 tobacco cards were stored, never seeing the light of day. Among the treasure in the closets was one of the rarest cards in the world - the T206 Eddie Plank. Today we look back at the Fairy Godmother Discovery.

The T206 baseball set is one of the most known and sought-after set in the hobby. Between 1909 and 1911, tobacco companies advertised on the backs of these baseball cards, and placed card inside of their products. When you were a kid, you would tear open a Topps wax pack and find a stick of gum with your cards. Your grandparents would find their baseball cards in packs of cigarettes!

T206 TOBACCO CARD SET FACTS

Found in a variety of tobacco products between 1909 and 1911
The first mass-produced set of baseball cards
524 cards in the set
38 Hall of Famers featured - variations bring the total to 76 cards of Hall of Famers
16 different backs featuring the tobacco companies

You may be aware of the most famous baseball card - the T206 Honus Wagner. While the Wagner card the most recognizable card, there is another ultra-rare card in the set that is also quite valuable: Eddie Plank.

If you're not familiar with grading, a professional company with authenticate and grade the condition of a card on a scale of 1 to 10. To date, PSA, one of the top grading companies, has only authenticated and graded just 79 Eddie Plank T206 cards. For comparison, PSA has graded 98,591 of the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.

Roughly 100 Eddie Plank T206 cards are known between the ungraded and graded count in the world. When our owner, Leighton, received an e-mail from a gentleman wanting to sell his collection of baseball cards, his jaw dropped when he saw the images. There it was - an authentic T206 Eddie Plank.

THE FAIRY GODMOTHER FIND

Eddie Plank T206

Each weekend, Alice, a resident of Malden, MA. would visit her friends for dinner. Alice was the Godmother to her friend's son. When Alice passed away in 1990, her Godson was in charge of the estate. He brought his own son, Kevin, to clean out Alice's home. It was then the two men learned Alice had a brother, Arthur, that passed on his card collection from when he was a child in the early 1900's to Alice. The Godson inherited cardboard gold.

Tucked inside an envelope, hidden in a hat box, in the the closet were 366 different T206 cards! Among the haul were more than 60 Hall of Fame players including multiple cards of Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, and more stars such as Tris Speaker and Cy Young . Not aware of the value of the collection, the cards were continued to be stored in family closets. Until recently, Kevin had stored them the same way Alice did - right there in his closet. In the closet was the Eddie Plank card you see above. Plank is in his Philadelphia A's uniform, painted with a blue background behind his portrait. There are a few creases and paper loss on this iconic card, but it is authentic and one of the roughly 100-known Plank cards in the world.

Just Collect proudly purchased the entire Fairy Godmother find including the Eddie Plank card back in 2016. This is one of our favorite purchases. We often tell you to look in unexpected places for baseball cards. Inside Alice's hat box was a card valued at more than $100,000 today!

To see the entire story and video, you can read the original post HERE.

We are always buying vintage cards and collections. Earlier this year, we purchased a collection of over 400 T205 and T206 cards you can see here. Whether you have one of the other 100 Eddie Plank cards in the world, a Ty Cobb card, or Mickey Mantle cards, we'd love to hear from you. We always offer a FREE appraisal!

WE ARE ALWAYS BUYING

Just Collect is always buying vintage sports and non-sports cards from 1879 to 1979 as well as select modern cards. If you have a collection that you are considering selling, contact us today to discuss or get our industry-leading purchase offer. If you have a collection that you want appraised, please contact us and we would be happy to discuss your collection and help you understand the real cash value of your collection in the current marketplace. Check out the Just Collect Buy List.

We always offer a FREE APPRAISAL for your collection here at the Just Collect site. Just click here:

We offer may ways to evaluate your cards other than or using our website, too.

Travel to Us

If you can make the trip here like the son from my hometown did for this collection- we can make a deal at the office. We once met a father-son duo that drove eight hours from Virginia to meet us to sell a Michael Jordan rookie card stored in Tupperware since 1986 - great read here.

Come to convention

We keep a LIST of card shows we'll be attending. Come stop by the Just Collect table and chat.

Meet in-person

If you have a valuable collection and want us to come to you, we'll hop on the next plane out.

Meet in New York City

We have another location in New York you can meet us at; read all the information here.

SHIP your collection

If you choose to mail your cards for an appraisal, we will evaluate your cards for FREE still. If you choose not to sell the cards, we'll ship them back shipping fees paid by us! We can offer our FedEx account with 2-day shipping, fully insured, all covered by us. Simply contact the office to set up this option.

OUR BUYING PHILOSOPHY

We've run into a wide range of people and collections over the last 25 years. Although Just Collect is known for buying vintage sports cards and especially vintage baseball cards, we are also extremely interested in buying non-sports cards, too!

Every collection and every collector is different and we treat EVERY collection with the respect and attention that we show for our own collections. We understand that many have put their heart and souls into building their collections. So when you're ready to sell, we understand the feelings that you're going through and will work with you to help you reach a decision that is a WIN/WIN, because if you're not happy, we're not happy.