Getting Closer to T206 Phillies Team Set

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.

1887-1909 Phillies Want List

1909-11 T206 Doolin (portrait)

Yes, this want list is absurd.

But having recently gone through the exercise of putting together want lists for the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, I thought I'd finish off the universe of Phillies baseball cards by starting at the beginning.  I don't expect to visit or update this post all that often, but here we go.  If nothing else, this may be a good source for reprint cards needed.  I would think this list is incomplete and I'll add to it as needed.

1887 Allen & Ginter's World's Champions (N28) - #9 Mulvey
1887 Buchner Gold Coin (N284) - Andrews (hands together in front), Andrews (catching), Bastian, Casey, Clements, Farrar, Ferguson, Fogarty, Irwin, Mulvey (hands on knees), Mulvey (hands together), Wood (fielding), Wood (stealing a base)
1887 Gypsy Queen (N175) - Buffington (bat at side), Casey (hands at chest), Casey (left arm extended), Clements (with bat), Clements (hands on knees), Dailey, Ferguson (hands at chest), Ferguson (right arm extended back), Ferguson (tagging player), Ferguson (with bat), Fogarty (bat on shoulder), Fogarty (fielding fly ball), Gunning (stooping to catch), Gunning (bending hands on knee), Irwin (batting), Irwin (fielding), McCarthy (catching), McCarthy (sliding), McCarthy (with bat), McGuire (batting), McGuire (catching), Mulvey (fielding), Wood (batting), Woof (throwing)
1887 Kalamazoo Bats (N690-1) - Buffington, Casey, Devlin, Farrar, Ferguson, Fogarty, Gunning, Irwin, Irwin/Maul, Maul, McGuire (throwing), McGuire (catching), Mulvey, Wood, Wright

1887-90 Old Judge (N172) 
Have - Farrar
Need - Allen, Andrews, Bastian, Bastian/Schriver, Buffington, Casey, Childs, Clements, Dailey, Decker, Delahanty, Ferguson, Fogarty, Gardner, Gardner/Murray, Gleason, Gunning, Hallman, Henry, Hoover, Kelly, McGuire, Mulvey, Sanders, Schriver, Tyng, G. Wood, P. Wood, Wright

1887-89 Old Judge Cabinets (N173) - Allen, Clements, Cross, Ferguson, Fogarty, Gleason, Gunning, Irwin, Mulvey, Wright
1888 Allen & Ginter's World's Champions (N29) - #2 Fogarty
1888 Goodwin's Champions (N162) - #1 Andrews
1888 Yum Yum Tobacco (N403) - Buffington,  Ferguson, Fogarty (catching), Fogarty (throwing), Thompson, Wood

1895 Mayo Cut Plug (N300) - Cross, Delahanty, Haddock, Hallman, Hamilton

1903-04 Breisch-Williams (E107) - Douglas, Doyle, Gleason, Hallman, Mitchell, Sparks, Thomas, Zimmer
1906 Fan Craze N.L. (WG3) - Dooin, Doolin, Duffy, Nichols, Pittinger, Thomas
1908-10 E102 - Dooin, Magee, Knabe

1909 Croft's Candy (E92) - Dooin, Doolin, Hartsel, Jacklitsch, Knabe, Magee
1909 Croft's Cocoa (E92) - Dooin, Doolin, Hartsel, Jacklitsch, Knabe, Magee
1909 Dockman & Sons Gum (E92) - Doolin, Hartsel, Magee
1909 Nadja Caramels (E92) - Dooin, Doolin, Hartsel, Jacklitsch, Knabe, Magee
1909 Ramly Cigarettes (T204) - #15 Bransfield
1909 S74 Silks - Dooin, Doolin, Foxen, Shean, Titus

1909-11 American Caramel (E90-1)
Have - McQuillan
Need - Bransfield, Corridon, Dooin, Grant

1909-11 Colgan's Chips Stars of the Diamond (E254) - Bates, Bransfield, Doolin, Knabe, Paskert, Rowan, Sparks, Titus

1909-11 T206
Have - Bransfield, Doolin (batting), Doolin (portrait), Doolin (fielding), Jacklitsch, McQuillan (ball in hand), Titus
Need - Coveleski, Dooin, Knabe, Magee (portrait), Magee (with bat), McQuillan (with bat) 

1910-1919 Phillies Want List

Baseball Card Show Report - Valley Forge 5 (featuring Don Money)

1961 Bazooka #1

Getting closer to a complete set

1909 T206

Doug and I made the hour-long trek to Valley Forge on Saturday morning so that he could spend the entirety of his allowance and birthday money at the Philadelphia Sportscard & Memorabilia Show. With only a few checklists in tow and no real plan in place, we decided we'd both enjoy a morning of free-style pickin' and just see what we could find.  Doug made out great, obtaining quite a few certified autograph cards for his growing collection, including his two new favorite treasures - the very impressive, and very thick, on-card, gold-framed autographs of Aaron Nola and Maikel Franco from the 2016 Topps Gold Label set.  He's still trying to figure out how best to store and display these cards.

He was also very pleased with the addition of two Hall of Fame rookie cards to his collection - a nice 1983 Topps Wade Boggs (for $2!) and a nearly destroyed 1975 Topps Robin Yount (for $1).

Here's a summary of what I picked up:

• A nice stack of 1971 Topps cards for my set, including the Willie Mays card.
• 1977 and 1978 Phillies Media Guides.
• Only a few Phillies cards - 1961 Bazooka Art Mahaffey (shown above), another T206 Phillies card (Mickey Doolan, fielding, Piedmont back) and a few signed Phillies Alumni Photo Cards (post coming soon)

2016 Chachi Valley Forge Autographs #5

One of the highlights of the day, at least for me, was meeting former Phillies and Brewers third baseman Don Money.  Money was the sole former baseball player signing at the show.  I printed a copy of a newspaper article featuring Money and my Dad from 1970 (see below, my Dad is the Coach) and I asked him to sign it.  He graciously obliged and noted that the photo looked to be "at least a few years old."  He was also kind enough to pose for a photo with Doug.

Memory Lane

Valley Forge 1 - September 2010 - Thinking of my Dad
Valley Forge 2 - October 2012 - Doug's first baseball card show
Valley Forge 3 - September 2014 - Meeting Darren Daulton
Valley Forge 4 - September 2016 - Phillies acquisitions and 4 Phillies Legends
Valley Forge 5 - December 2016

1909 T206 George McQuillan (Ball in Hand - Piedmont Back)

I recently achieved a significant milestone at my place of employment and I decided to celebrate the only way most 41-year-old men in my position would.  I bought an old, semi-expensive Phillies baseball card.

I guess I'm now a bit of a George McQuillan master collector, as this is my second card of the Phillies pitcher, both of which date from 1909.  I wrote at length about McQuillan when I added his American Caramel card to my Phillies collection three years ago.  This is also the second T206 card in my Phillies collection, as it joins the Mickey Doolan card I purchased a little over a year ago.

Similar to what I did when I posted the Doolan card, I wanted to share McQuillan's entry from the highly recommended book, The T206 Collection - The Players & Their Stories.

$611 and My First T206

For the first time since 2008, I decided to save up and buy as many boxes of Topps Heritage as reasonably possible when the set was released in March.  I checked around and found a decent deal on six hobby boxes at Blowout Cards, so I pulled the trigger and the boxes were mine.  My wife, my oldest son and I took our time with the boxes, and it probably took us a little over two weeks to open every pack.  It was early May before I got around to sorting and checklist-ing the cards, and I posted my want and trade lists on this blog back on May 3rd.

One of the cards I listed as trade bait was the throwback uniform variation card of Derek Jeter.  Fortunately for me, reader Steve F. alerted me immediately to the card's scarcity and I listed the card on eBay with a starting price of $0.99.  The card sold a week later for $611, making it the single most expensive baseball card I ever owned, albeit briefly.

It's not my place to judge a collector who would spend $611 on a purposefully short-printed card that's less than three months old.  But to say I was absolutely stunned that the card went for that much is a huge understatement.  I decided to use a small portion of the proceeds to buy a vintage Phillies card and the card at the top of this post is what I ended up adding to my collection for about $25.

The T206 set, released between 1909 and 1911, is considered by many to be the crown jewel of vintage baseball card sets.  The 524-card set contains perhaps the most famous baseball card of all-time - the T206 Honus Wagner.  Fortunately, I'm not a Pirates team collector, so I have no need to add the Wagner card to my collection.  

The Mickey Doolan card seen here is one of three Doolan cards to be found in the T206 set.  Specifically, this is the "batting" with Polar Bear back variation of the Doolan card.  It's actually the second contemporary card of Doolan's in my collection, as Matthew from 14,000 Phillies sent me Doolan's T205 Gold Border card a few years ago.

I was going to do a brief write-up on Doolan and his career, but the excerpt below from the fantastic book, The T206 Collection - The Players & Their Stories, said everything I would have wanted to say.

Thanks to Topps, Derek Jeter, and a super collector willing to part with $611, I have my first T206 Phillies card in my collection.  Perhaps there's still enough left over from my proceeds to hunt down a second . . .

1909-11 American Caramel (E90-1) George McQuillan

Reader John recently alerted me to a bunch of auctions on eBay from a seller "selling an obsessive fan's gigantic PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES card and memorabilia collection dating from 1990-1990."  Thanks to the head's up, I've added a nice assortment of older Phillies cards to my collection on the cheap, including the beauty displayed here.

The corners are rounded, and there's a slight crease in the lower right corner, but it makes me incredibly happy to add a 100-year-old+ card to my collection for the price of a blaster of 2012 Topps Heritage.

The Set
In The American Card Catalog, Jefferson Burdick assigned the E90-1 designation to this set, with the "E" indicating the cards were sold with caramel products.  The American Caramel Co. of Philadelphia included these cards with sticks of caramel candy between 1909 and 1911.  The backs of the cards indicate there are "100 Subjects" within the baseball series, but the Beckett database shows 120, while my 2001 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards shows 118 in the set.

The Player
George Watt McQuillan was born on May 1, 1885 in Brooklyn and he made his Major League debut with the Phillies on May 8, 1907 at the age of 22.  He's best remembered for starting his career by pitching 25 scoreless innings - a record that stood until it was broken by the A's Brad Ziegler in 2008.  McQuillan's first full season with the Phillies, 1908, was his best season by far when the righty went 23-17 with a 1.53 ERA over 48 games.  He also struck out a career high 114 that season and his '08 stats placed him as the second best pitcher of the year behind Christy Mathewson.  (Before I noticed the little "p" on the bottom of McQuillian's card, I assumed he had been a slugger given his pose with the bat.)

McQuillan pitched with the Phils between 1907 and 1910, earning the nickname "The Giant Killer" for his dominance over the New York Giants.  Following the 1910 season, McQuillan was part of a blockbuster eight-player trade with the Reds.  He spent three seasons with the Reds and Pirates before coming back to the Phillies for the 1915 and 1916 seasons.  In 1915, he was a part of the franchise's first National League championship although he did not pitch in the World Series against the Red Sox.  Health problems curtailed McQuillan's baseball career and there's a very informative biography at the SABR Baseball Biography Project that tells of McQuillan's sordid fall from grace.

McQuillan is still the franchise's all-time leader in ERA (1.79), WHIP (1.02) and hits allowed per nine innings pitched (6.93).

The Cards
There are seven Phillies cards featured within the E90-1 set:

• Kitty Bransfield (blue sky background) - Bransfield with the team's primary first baseman from 1905 through 1910.
• Kitty Bransfield (pink background)
• Fred Clarke - Hall of Famer Clarke is erroneously listed as a member of this Phillies on his E90-1 card, even though he spent his entire 21-year career with the Louisville Colonels and the Pittsburgh Pirates.
• Frank Corridon - Corridon went 59-48 between 1904 and 1909 with the Phillies.
• Red Dooin - Dooin was the team's main catcher for 13 seasons between 1902 and 1914.
• Eddie Grant - Grant played third base for the Phillies between 1907 and 1910.  He was killed in action during World War I in the Argonne Forest in France.
• George McQuillan

So if you include Clarke's card in the tally, I'm a little over 14% of the way to a complete team set!