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My big splurge at the recent Valley Forge baseball card show was the purchase of three Phillies cards from the 1909-11 T206 tobacco card set. I found a dealer selling very old baseball cards, found three Phillies cards I wanted/needed and then made what I felt was a fair offer for the three-card bundle. The dealer accepted my offer and these three 110-year-old cards joined my collection.
There are 13 unique Phillies cards in the T206 set, not including back variations, and I now have seven of them. I'm more than half way there to a Phillies team set. These three cards are fairly beat up with rounded corners, but there's no paper wear and the fronts and backs of each card are clean. The Fred Jacklitsch card has a Sweet Caporal Cigarettes back, while both the Kitty Bransfield and John Titus cards have Piedmont backs.
Bransfield played 12 years in the Majors, with seven of those years with the Phillies between 1905 and 1910 when he was their primary first baseman. He was a career .270 hitter and he briefly served as an umpire following his retirement as a player. His 1911 Turkey Red card features the same posed position as this T206 card, and he also appears in the 1911 T205 set with the Phillies.
Catcher Fred Jacklitsch was with the Phillies between 1907 and 1910, appearing in 231 games and hitting .222 while serving as a back-up to regular catcher Red Dooin. He also appears in the 1911 T205 set as a Phillie, as well as the somewhat rare 1909 E92 set with either a Croft's Cocoa or Nadja Caramels advertisement on the back.
The dealer had the John Titus card in a sleeve with a "Mustache Man" sticker on it. Of all the subjects in the 524-card T206 set, Titus is the only player featured with a mustache and as a result his card is a little more popular among casual collectors of tobacco cards. Primarily a right fielder, Titus played for the Phillies between 1903 and 1912, hitting .278 over 1219 games. He also had a Phillies card in the 1911 T205 set, but he appears in that set without a mustache.
4 comments:
Very cool. I don't know when I'll start checking out the Dodgers available from this set but I'm looking forward to it.
That's awesome. I really need to see what it would take to make a run at the Red Sox team set!
Without giving away the whole purchase price deal you made, how much was the dealer asking for John Titus? It's surprising how much higher that card is than the rest of the commons--you can find some good discussions of it on various baseball card boards.
Titus is one of two ex-Phillies from St. Clair, PA (population 2,856--birthplace of my mom and home for most of the 90 years starting in 1917 to my maternal grandparents). The other is Joe "Socks" Holden, who was a friend and neighbor of my grandparents and also was the father of US Congressman Tim Holden. He never had a card issued, but I do have a signed Rowe postcard of him. Also, for many years Socks was an independent insurance agent, and my grandfather used a bottle opener that said "Compliments of Joe 'Socks' Holden" on it--I wish I had that! I once asked my grandfather about John Titus, but he had never heard of him. Titus died during WWII, and I guess fighting the Japanese was a bigger concern for my grandfather back then.
According to the Trading Card Database, there are 27 (!) Dodgers/Superbas cards and only 13 Red Sox cards.
Steve - The original "ask" for the Titus card was $185 . . . which I actually thought was a pretty good price based on what I had seen before for the card. I was happy to get the card, along with the other 2, for what I felt was a fair price and the dealer came away pleased too.
Great story about 'Socks' Holden!
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