This week I’m excited to team up again with Jamie Blundell to tell the story of quite possibly the coolest T206 ever printed. Dubbed the “T206 Rosetta Stone” by net54’s resident T206 Freak, Johnny V., this card is truly one-of-a-kind. Whatever you choose to call it, it’s clearly the most impressive example of T206 Printer’s Scrap in existence. Its simple front gives no indication of the craziness awaiting you on the reverse.
The front features Southern Leaguer Dom Mullaney of Jacksonville. The back has so much going on that it’s almost impossible to pick up with the naked eye. Here is a full list of everything printed on the back of this card:
- Brown Old Mill back (The rarest of all T206 backs)*
- Upside Down Miscut Piedmont 350 back showing parts of 4 backs
- El Principe de Gales back
- Upside Down El Principe de Gales back
- Upside Down ghost image of Cy Young (Portrait)
- Yellow ink pass for Cy Young (Portrait)
- Yellow ink pass for George Mullin (Throwing)
Below is a really cool graphic made by T206 collector Chris Browne. He isolated each individual component of the back for easier viewing.
This is one of my favorite T206s in the entire hobby. It’s crazy to think this card survived all these years, while none of the other cards from the same sheet did so. Someone must have salvaged the sheet this card was printed on, cut up the cards, and saved them. My guess is the main reason this particular card survived while others didn’t is the image of Cy Young on the back. I can imagine most of the other cards being discarded due to being both exceedingly strange and depicting a nondescript Southern Leaguer. The presence of Cy Young on this card no doubt elevated it to a higher status within the collection it resided in.
Multi-strike backs are rare enough, but the fact this one features a Brown Old Mill back and a Cy Young ghost (not to mention everything else) makes it an unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime card. Since the T206 Wagner already staked claim to the term “Holy Grail”, I think “Rosetta Stone” is a fitting nickname for this incredible specimen.
Unlike many T206s whose provenance is a mystery, we can trace this card from its current owner all the way back to its original owner.
Timeline:
- In 1970, this card was purchased by a nostalgia shop called Little Nemo’s in Queens, New York from the original owner’s family.
- This card, along with around 180 other tobacco cards was purchased from Little Nemo’s by Tom McMorrow, the future owner of East Hampton Auctions on eBay.
- In 2008, after owning the card for 38 years, East Hampton Auctions listed the card for auction on eBay. In an effort to promote the listing, he made the video below and posted it on YouTube, where it still resides. Mr. Mullaney (and friends) was won by the owner of the net54baseball.com forum, Leon Luckey, for a final bid of $9,750.
In addition to the video, Tom gave a little more information about the card’s history in the auction description, which was captured for posterity by the website, t206museum.com:
“This card was one of about 180 purchased in a shoebox from a nostalgia type store on Ascan Avenue in Queens, NY named Little Nemo’s back in the early 1970s. The store had just purchased them from original owner’s family. The collection was fairly typical for what a boy growing up in New York area would have collected back in 1911, weighted towards Hall of Famers (three Cobbs, at least five McGraw, several Matty, quite a few New York Giants in the group) all in Gd to Ex condition with a few lower grade, no reverse stock loss on any, and nothing out of the ordinary but for this one. It looked like a normal kid’s collection of baseball cards, much like the Topps cards I had collected in the 1960s. This card was probably obtained by that child back in 1911 the same way kids obtained their cards for generations, by trading, flipping, or straight out of the pack.”
-T206 Museum July 9, 2008
- In August 2015, the Leon Luckey collection hit the auction block via Heritage. On August 13, 2015, with a final hammer price of $19,120, the “Rosetta Stone” found a new home in the collection of Jamie Blundell.
If you’ve been reading this site for awhile, you may remember the article I wrote with Jamie about his incredible T206 Ty Cobb Back Run. If you missed it, that article can be read by clicking on the link below:
The Greatest T206 Back Run Ever Assembled: Ty Cobb Red Background Portrait
It’s really surprising to me that the market wasn’t stronger for this card when it sold at auction. In my opinion, it’s much more desirable than any of the other Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers. Don’t get me wrong, any Brown Old Mill is an amazing card, and isolating the Brown Old Mill back by itself is arguably more pleasing to the eye. I just feel the Rosetta Stone has a mystique unlike any other card, save perhaps the Eddie Collins With Bat Proof.
Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers are incredibly rare. They are all hand-cut and were not distributed in cigarette packages. The prevailing theory is the printers used brown ink by mistake, and scrapped the sheets. The cards were then cut up and saved either by one of the printers themselves, or perhaps by kids from the neighborhood.
A few Brown Old Mill Southern Leaguers have sold publicly in the years since Jamie won the Rosetta Stone. I was surprised to see a couple of them sold for more than the Rosetta Stone:
Sid Smith SGC A sold for $24,000 in REA Spring 2015 auction
J.R. Helm SGC A sold for $14,400 in REA Spring 2016 auction
Dutch Revelle SGC A sold for $20,400 in REA Fall 2017 auction
I want to thank Jamie for sharing the story of this amazing card, and for providing me with much of the info presented above, which helped me put together the ownership timeline.
*Or the 2nd rarest if you consider the Ty Cobb back to be a T206