Hopefully the Last BIG Hurdle

 When I picked up a T206 Willie Keeler back in 2023, it was with a mental note that it'd be the last graded T206 I'd pick up. I had falsely assumed that the rest would be easy commons of no-names.

Plus the only graded T206es being the Hall of Famers in Jack Chesbro and Willie Keeler was more than perfect for me. Until very recently.

Because enter Slow Joe Doyle.

Believe it or not Doyle presented me with a case (pun intended, suffer) where a slabbed copy was probably my only real option.

To be clear there's an actual reason which is that the raw unslabbed copies were far more expensive. So expensive that I made the choice that if I'm going to pay that much, I needed the added assurance that it's legitimate and went for a graded/authenticated one.

Which then ties into another reason I needed a slabbed copy.

Error Variation, Scan Courtesy of T206Resource

For those who are unaware, in the T206 collecting space there is a "core four" of sorts that are considered the scarcest cards in the set. Well okay, T206Resource refers to it as the Big Four but as an accountant I already use that label for KPMG, EY, Deloitte and PwC, so I will call it the core four.

One of them is an error variation of Doyle. There was a very early print run that incorrectly identified him as a player for "N.Y. Nat'l" (the then-New York Giants). Rumor has it that it's because the American Tobacco Company mixed him up with then-Giants player Larry Doyle. This error was corrected and the fixed/more common version just has an an empty awkward void.

The error variation is a lot scarcer as the number of known copies in the world are still estimated to be in the single digits. As you can guess it's very expensive. Back in 2023 the auction house REA held an auction where the final selling price was $1.3 million dollars.

So with that context in mind. I knew that the T206 of Doyle would need to go the graded/authenticated route this time. It was imperative to me to have a authentic slabbed copy that properly labels it as whatever version it is.

Because apparently it also goes into smaller details like "hands above head" or "N.Y. .." or whatever. Quick fixes by people at the printing company likely not paid enough to care from a time when these were seen as worthless pieces of paper have led to insane nerd semantics a century later.

Even the grade bears out that this is authentic but has "color added" which means there were some touch-ups somewhere on the card. I don't know where but I also don't care because the authentic part is the ONLY thing that matters to me. A card that's this old and this related to another card that's worth over a million dollars like this is subject to fuckery. It just is. So you have to go for just purely authentication reasons and be content with that.

But it was the last big nerve-wracking piece I needed, and now I'm finally at the 15/20 mark (75%). With the last five Highlanders I need being commons of players not even the most diehard Yankees fans have ever heard of.

For the record that's not a complaint. I'm glad I'm finally at the point where the rest are no-names and commons. I wish I had had enough focus and foresight to tackle Doyle a lot faster, but getting Chesbro when I did kind of covers my ass just enough.

Thank goodness the Highlanders back then were a terrible ensemble of mediocrity. Imagine being a Pirates or Tigers or Athletics or Giants fan trying to assemble those T206 team-sets.

Speaking of which, I wonder if someone like njwv would consider the Doyle variation to be part of the Giants team set that he'd have to consider getting. On top of, y'know, all of the different Christy Matthewson and John McGraw variations. Oy vey. Thank you Chesbro and Keeler for being lowkey Hall of Famers.

15/20.

We're finally getting close. Dare to dream.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.