It's actually pretty surprising it took this long for Chipper to become the card of the week. I could switch the format of this blog to "All Chipper, All The Time" and still be able to post at my current rate for 3-4 years. I got a lot of Chipper cards. Nothing fancy enough to compete with the Supercollectors out there, but what I lack in patches, 1 of 1s and autos, I make up for in sheer volume. This here is my newest Chipper card, do you know what it is? If you said yet another one of those Topps retro cards, then you are correct, sir. This week's Card of the Week is actually last week's card of the week, for Topps' Trading Card History giveaway at Hobby shops. For those of you who have a hobby shop close by that's actually a good hobby shop and doesn't charge their customers for HTA promos or sell them all on eBay, this is the card you could get for free with a purchase of a Topps pack last week. If you didn't get one, just ask the good hobby shop owner about it and maybe they'll be nice and let you have it anyway. If not, there's always the ones on eBay.So now we know what it is, but what is it? Well it's Chipper on a very simply designed card with a very dark background. Flip the card over and we see Trading Card History TCH31 T-207 and a write up on Chipper's career. OK, so if Topps can be trusted, we can assume that this is copying the T-207 design. So what's that? A tobacco card like T-205 or T-206? That is correct! This is a set put out in 1912 that is the same size as the T-205 and T-206 sets but is generally a little scarcer that the other two. The set is known as the Brown Backs due to the distinctive background. The backs of the cards are very simple, they have the player name up top, a bio of the player taking up two thirds of the card in the middle and an advertisement for a tobacco brand at the bottom. An ad for Recruit Little Cigars is the most common, but five other brands are known. The set is not as popular as the T-206 and T-205 sets due to a weak player selection and a somewhat drab look to the cards, but it's still considered one of the "big three" Tobacco sets of the era. It's also a gold mine for Team collectors as there are a lot of obscure players with few or no other cards from the period. Here's what an original T-207 card looks like:
This here is Irving Lewis, who supposedly played for the Boston Braves (or the Rustlers, as they were known in 1911). Collectors familiar with the set just did a double take. Irving's card is one of three insanely rare cards out of the set, the other two being Ward Miller of the Cubs and Louis Lowdermilk of the Cardinals. The scarcity might be a reflection of their careers. Miller didn't play in 1911, but came back in 1912 to play a few years including a very good stint in the Federal League. Lou Loudermilk pitched only 20 games in the majors and poor Irving may have never made it at all. I can't find even the slightest information about his career anywhere online on in any of my books. The only matches for "Irving Lewis" in an online search bring up an author, a philosopher and some guy named Scooter. The cards may have been pulled early in the run or simply not replaced after a printing plate broke since they were such fringe players. Loudermilk is easily the scarcest and by far the most valuable card from the set, but Irving trumps him by having a variation as seen in this article from the Spring '84 edition of the Baseball-Hobby card report:
Irving's card (already hard to find) can be found with a Braves logo on the sleeve and without. Since the team was known as the Rustlers in 1911 before changing their name back to the Braves in 1912, the logo variation was probably printed later to reflect the change. Why the change was made on a player that was extremely short printed and never played a game in the majors, I couldn't say. Before you ask how the heck I managed to get one of the rarest baseball cards in existence, the truth is I got it out of an early 80's Baseball Card Collector kit. Possibly the same kit where I got the magazine I scanned that article from. Here's the back of the card:
Simple and to the point. A classic example of early 80's reprint sets. Cards like this is where I first learned about and became fascinated by the early tobacco and bubblegum baseball cards. How could you not be fascinated by this boring little card where the original is somehow worth 700 dollars? (Nowadays you're looking at more like three to four thousand) Plus since Irving never quite made it to the Show, his T-207 cards and subsequent reprints are the only cards of him at all. I'm glad Topps chose Chipper in a T-207 design to kick off their card giveaway program because it allows me to highlight and correct the most glaring problem with their otherwise excellent Trading card History set. Here's a scan of the back:
There's a whole lot on there about Chipper, but nothing at all about what the heck a T-207 could be. The "Brown Background" label isn't even mentioned. It's really not so much a Trading Card History set, but a Trading Card Design set, which is a shame. There's a lot of interesting information out there on these old sets, more than enough to fit on the back of a card. I'm collecting this set this year and I've decided to show off my collection by posting each of them throughout the season and helping Topps out by filling in on the History part. Topps couldn't link to an awesome T-207 gallery of the original set on the back of their card, but they could point out that one of the best cards in the set is one of White Sox third baseman Buck Weaver of Eight Men Out fame. These old style cards are much more fun to pull when you actually know about the design used on the card.
