First post to the sub. Picked up a few T201 over the last month. Been collecting since I was young. These are super interesting to me because they’re 115 years old and I’m holding history in my hands. Also unique in their being the first cards with stats.

Chance Yellow $720

Rucker Port. $295

The Chance is an error from PSA on the flip showing Cycle reverse, it's a sweet caporal. Yellow background is flawless with excellent color.. Centering perfect on both..Rucker unique colors are superb. Prices are net to me.. Thanks for looking

Vintage pins priced as marked, grab them both for $100 w/free shipping BMWT.

Each add $5 MBWT

PayPal G&S or Venmo

So I recently acquired what I believe to be an original 1910’s uncut sheet of tobacco silk Military/Orders medals cards. I was able to find exact matches of individual cards online but the bottom and top of each card would have half that cream colored border on them where the specific brand of cigarettes was named. Now if this is an uncut sheet like I’m hoping, then it would make sense that the brand of cigarettes, such as Godfrey Philips or Clix Cigarettes, would be absent. It also seems someone took it upon themselves to stitch a decorative boarder around it to turn the sheet into more of a decorative art piece (assuming period done). I was able to find a couple of other uncut sheets of tobacco silk cards online but none with this particular subject matter. Does anyone have any better insight on this possible discovery? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Top row: 1888 Beautiful Birds of America
2nd row: 1893 Beautiful Birds: New Series
3rd row: 1904 Game Birds
4th row: 1915 Useful Birds of America (1st)

SOLD

I have about 80 more birds or so if interested, holler.

PayPal or Venmo accepted

This was listed for $125 with zero bids as the auction was ending. A day prior I put in a lowball offer not expecting them to accept it. With about 30 seconds left until it ended I get a notice that I won! Hey, nowadays it seems like a good deal to snag a decently graded T206 for under $100

If you were just starting out and had $1,000 to spend, how would you build your collection?

These three cards are the extent of my collection and I know $1,000 can easily disappear into one card, but I’m not really ready to do that. I’d rather use it to start building a collection.

I’m not a big fan of graded cards and much prefer a card with a story. I just learned about Merkle’s Boner, so I’m definitely on the lookout for a Fred Merkle now.

I’d appreciate any insight, recommendations or even cautionary tales for that $1,000.

I have a soft spot for odd-ball baseball stories. Charles "Gabby" Street secured his place in baseball lore through jaw-dropping stunts, defensive mastery, and a delightfully eccentric career.
 
On August 21, 1908, he stood at the base of the 555-foot Washington Monument to catch a baseball dropped from the very top. Clad in civilian clothes, Street endured fourteen failed attempts before cleanly snaring the fifteenth ball. The baseball accelerated to roughly 95 miles per hour, striking his glove with 300 pounds of force. The viral stunt—originally born from a mere $500 wager between fans—became so famous and inspired so many dangerous copycats that authorities permanently barred the monument's observation windows.
 
On the diamond, Street was defined by his elite defensive skills and a paradoxically quiet rookie demeanor, which earned him the ironic nickname "Gabby" before he eventually grew into a non-stop talker. These traits cemented his deep relationship with Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson. As Johnson's preferred personal catcher for the Washington Senators, Street’s steady glove and sharp tactical mind perfectly complemented the "Big Train’s" legendary fastball. Their exceptional chemistry formed the backbone of Washington's defense.
 
Street’s career later took bizarre turns. While managing the St. Louis Cardinals in 1931, the 48-year-old inserted himself into a game for a single at-bat, striking out nearly twenty years after his previous Major League appearance.
 
 Decades later, this mix of talent and eccentricity earned him modern pop-culture immortality in the 1992 The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat". When Mr. Burns draws up a wish list of historical baseball ringers for his softball team, he confidently requests Street to be his catcher, forcing Smithers to awkwardly point out that the old sergeant had been dead for forty years. From monument catcher to cartoon cameo, Street remains a uniquely captivating figure in sports history.

Picked up from a FB contact.

I’ve been trying to find some rarity information on the Eddie Collins but nothing to really be found. I can’t find anything about orange. Help? It’s mine but currently at Beckett getting graded.

Would trade my raw Mallen and Ronan for players I don’t have - condition not super important.

Back is a little rough, but it will do until I find an upgrade!

Before & After...

A cheap $2.25 card from Greg's on ebay that I won. I wanted to freshen it up and give new life to a 100+ year old card. I can't do anything about the missing paint on the front but I did remove some stains and improved on the massive creases. The back came out great though!

Many years ago, I became fascinated with the 1909 S74 Silks. My collection is small, only 11, but four are in the HOF (Chief Bender, Clark Griffith, John McGraw, and Rube Marquard). In addition, I have Fred Merkle and Fred Snodgrass from my collection of "ballplayers who had one bad day" in a good career — Snodgrass dropped a fly ball and we all know of Merkle's boner. Finally, I recently acquired Hans Lobert — "Hooked on Hans" will be a later post.

Given how delicate they are, I am surprised that so many of them still exist. Produced by the American Tobacco Company around 1909–1911, these miniature portraits were printed on fabric rather than cardboard and inserted into packages of popular tobacco brands including Helmar, Old Mill, Red Sun, and Turkey Red.

Measuring roughly 2 by 3 inches, each silk was hand-cut, so sizes and margins vary from piece to piece — part of their handmade charm. The imagery was adapted from the iconic T205 "Gold Border" card set, rendering each player in a single ink color against the woven silk background.

Each piece was originally issued with a small paper advertising label affixed to the reverse, promoting the tobacco brand that carried it — most often Old Mill, Red Sun, or Turkey Red Cigarettes. Because that flimsy paper was so easily peeled, soiled, or lost, it's absent from the great majority of surviving silks, and an example that still retains its original advertising back is a scarce and especially desirable find for collectors.

Only one of my cards has a backing. The photo is included.

There's a social dimension to these silks that's easy to overlook: they were aimed in large part at women. Some historians believe the fabric inserts were a deliberate marketing strategy meant to draw women toward the tobacco brands — and perhaps, in time, toward smoking itself — in an era when it was not yet socially acceptable for a woman to smoke openly.

In the near term the approach was indirect: women were encouraged to gather the silks from husbands, brothers, and friends who used tobacco, building brand loyalty across the whole household. And the companies didn't leave it to chance — they distributed literature suggesting what to do with a growing pile of silks. Rather than let them languish in a drawer, women stitched them into decorative goods for the home: quilts, throws, pillow tops, table covers, purses, even curtains.

One Lorillard premium envelope promised the silks could be made into "beautiful table covers, pillow tops, bed spreads, and many other useful and ornamental articles for home decorations."

Tobacco-silk quilts from this period survive in museum collections today — a reminder that these little fabrics led a domestic second life the ballplayers pictured on them never imagined.

The issue is cataloged in two forms: white silks and the scarcer colored silks, comprising just over 200 subjects in all. The checklist reads like a Hall of Fame roll call, featuring Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young, and other legends of the Deadball Era.