Several previously uncataloged cards have popped up recently. In March there was a post made on the N54 message board about a small personal collection from Louisiana. One of the cards from that collection was a T207 Red Cross Jacques Fournier. In April, REA had a T214 Victory Rube Oldring, Dots Miller, Bender (no trees), and Jack Warhop listed in their Spring 2016 auction. The same REA action also had a T215 Red Cross Steve Evans. It still amazes me that 100+ years later there are still new finds popping up. I have made revisions to my set checklists to include these cards. This brings the T214 (90 Designs) from 62 up to 66 known cards... only 24 more to go!
A couple of weeks ago, my wife an I made a trip to New Orleans to run in the Saints Kickoff 5K. Since the run was early Saturday morning we decided to get a hotel room Friday night. My wife just happened to book a hotel one block from a couple of the old tobacco factories. A layout showing our hotel in relation to the old factories: The old Liggett & Myers building is now a law office and houses the Austrian consulate. The old People's Tobacco building is a warehouse and a parking garage. All of the windows are blacked out so I couldn't get a peek inside. Here's a shot showing the close proximity of the two buildings. The brown building in the foreground is the old People's Tobacco and the tan colored building at the end of the photo is the old Ligget & Myers building.
The main purpose of this site is to document cards associated with Louisiana. With that in mind, I thought it would only be fitting to include some information about the "Louisiana Find". In August of 2010 a poster with the handle GeorgeD made a post on the Full Count Forum that caught the attention of collectors everywhere: "I have a Louis Lowdermilk Red Cross as well as 6 other Red Cross brown background cards." Lowdermilk is already the rarest card in the T207 set, but to find one with a scarce Red Cross back would seem almost impossible. Of course everyone wanted to see scans and George was able to produce them. George went on to explain that he was 81 years old and from Baton Rouge, LA. He said that the cards had belonged to his uncle who died in 1936. George found the cards in his grandmother's attic around 1940 and later came across them in his mother's attic after she died in 1992. There were 94 cards in the "Louisiana Find" that included: forty-six T207, all rare cards in the set, including eight with Red Cross backs; thirty T215-1 Red Cross; four T215-2 Red Cross; eleven T213-2 Coupon; and three E105 Mello Mints. Here is one of the original scans from the Full Count Forum thread: Recently I was able to pick up the T213 Heinie Wagner shown in the middle of the scan above. Before these cards were auctioned off by Robert Edward Auctions in 2011 they were sent off to SGC for grading. The Heinie Wagner card now resides in an SGC 20 holder with an inscription on the flip marking it as part of the "Louisiana Find".
This is an exciting day for me. I was able to pick up a W573 with a Cafe' Du Monde ad back. As of this time there are only 3 known Cafe' Du Monde cards. I was able to get Leon to give me this card for his very special "I don't want to sell" price. It was definitely more than I would have liked to give for this card but it might have also been my only opportunity to ever acquire one of these. I plan on sending it off to SGC to get encapsulated. This one will NEVER leave my collection.
Thanks go out to all who provided source material for this site. I spent many hours searching through threads on Net54baseball.com and found a ton of important information regarding Louisiana "type" cards. I am especially grateful to Ted Z. for his checklist threads. One thing I've learned about some of these Louisiana issues is that checklists are hard to find and often times conflict with one another. Ted Z. has made a great effort in compiling known cards for many of these sets.
I also spent many hours searching the web for articles about the companies that manufactured and distributed these little pieces of cardboard a century ago. Most of them have been bought, sold, or have become defunct in the years since they inserted these cards into their products. I have done my best to sift through the old writings and compile all of the relevant data. Thanks to Laurel Dorrance for lending me some valuable information regarding the history of L. Frank & Co. It is my intention to "grow" this website as new information becomes available. As recent as late 2013 there were cards discovered that were previously unknown to collectors so there is always a chance that more discoveries will be made in the future. If you have any information that you feel would be beneficial to this site please feel free to use the contact tab to get in touch with me. Thanks, Zach |
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