I’m pleased to bring you another fun guest article from my friend Scott Gross. Thanks Scott! Enjoy!
If you’re lucky enough to get a Baseball card, you would like to think the producers would get your name spelled correctly. Well, with T206s, that was not always the case. Of the 524 cards in the set, there are 24 misspelled names. Maybe that isn’t so bad considering that T206s were one of the first, and certainly biggest issues of the day. Also, these were cheap advertising, so getting them into circulation could easily have been more important than 100% correctness. Have to cut them some slack.
The list below was taken from the grand website t206resource.com (as well as Print Group information). I did exclude three names off their list. Two McGraws and LaPorte. In my opinion the gaps between McGraw and Mc Graw, and LaPorte and La Porte are not significant misspellings.
Of course, the most famous misspelling is that of Magie. This mistake was corrected very early on in Print Group 1(to the correct Magee). So early that the Magie card is much rarer, and sought after by many T206 collectors. My first thought when thinking about this article was Magie/Magee was done just because he was the only Print Group 1 card. Figuring that the producers wanted everything done right in this initial printing. This is not correct. In fact, there are eight other misspellings in Group 1.
Now, arguably most of these are not household names. Good, decent players, but maybe not good enough to double check them in production. The one that jumps out at me the most is Brown/Browne. He was about the same level of player as Magee. Both were everyday outfielders for non-pennant winning teams, and had similar stats between 1904-09 (Browne, NY National, 275 BA; Magee, Philadelphia National, 291 BA). So why was Magie corrected and not Brown ? Who knows !!!
Another oddity is the trio of Goode, Livingstone, and Violat. Where the correct names are, in general, more popular spellings. Almost had to go out of their way to be wrong. However, with most others, the different ways of spelling are probably close to even. I wish I had an old phone book (remember those ??!!) to verify that.
The ones I find the most interesting are those who have multiple cards, and yet have both correct and incorrect spellings:
Nicholls hands on knees is correct in his first printing, then incorrect (Nichols), on the subsequent batting pose. The same for the initially correct Willett batting, which was followed by the incorrectly spelled Willetts (throwing). Just couldn’t leave well enough alone. The most bizarre, is Mullen/Mullin. Who goes from correct (Mullin throwing) in Print Group 1, to incorrect (Mullen portrait) in Group 2, then back to correct (Mullin with bat) in Group 3.
Finally, let us not for get good old Harry Lentz, who’s correct name is Sentz. At least the others are recognizable …………….. “Sorry, buddy, we misspelled your name!!!!!”
Written by Scott Gross