1-of-1 Unique T206 Ty Cobb yellow brown scrap

July 16, 2024

1-of-1 Unique T206 Ty Cobb yellow brown scrap

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Thank you for stopping by my channel. In this video, I would like to show you a one-of-a-kind T206 Ty Cobb Red Portrait card. Before I go into details, I want to tell you where this unique Ty Cobb scrap came from.

Back in August 2004, there was a group of 29 T206s offered by Mastro Auction. In those 29 cards, every single one has a unique look. They are obviously from a collector with a passion for collecting printing anomalies, or they were from a family who worked in the printing factory back in the old days. All the cards have uneven edge cuts, and many of them have back damages and appear to have been in a scrapbook at one time. Also, a few of them have very interesting back appearances, indicating they were used as printing tests. Anyways, they were all considered junk back then and were supposed to be destroyed but somehow survived and have been kept for more than a hundred years.

Of those 29 cards, 18 have a fully printed Sweet Caporal 350-460 subjects back. However, on their card fronts, they have only gone through four printing processes: yellow, brown, black, and red. In recent years, cards with these appearances are called yellow-brown printing scraps. For these yellow-brown printing scraps with Sweet Caporal 350-460 subjects back, they can be found with 35 card fronts since they were printed in the same series, theoretically meaning they were from the same sheet. I have put together many videos that talk about these yellow-brown printing scraps; please watch them if you would like to learn more about them.

Anyways, out of these 18 cards in that lot, one of them has a very unique appearance that looks different from the other yellow-brown scraps, which is the Ty Cobb Red Portrait. When I say it has a unique appearance, it's because all yellow-brown scraps have either a yellow background or just a blank white background. But this Ty Cobb card has a red background, which stands out from the rest of the group. Because of that red background, one could argue this particular Ty Cobb would not be part of the yellow-brown scrap group. However, if you study the rest of those 34 yellow-brown scraps, you would notice red can also be found on some of those cards since the red color was used in team logos, the color of lips, the color of belts, and on their jerseys. It just so happens that Ty Cobb is the only card with a red background in the group. One more thing I would like to point out is that the majority, if not all, yellow-brown scraps are missing their facial skin color. You can also see this Ty Cobb yellow-brown scrap has the skin color missing and has a very pale look. Obviously, Ty Cobb’s Detroit jersey color is also missing shades of other colors, making it less grey compared to a regular Ty Cobb red portrait card.

Another piece of information I would like to add is that many of these yellow-brown scraps can be found with multiple specimens. However, this Ty Cobb yellow-brown scrap is the only one I know of. Are there more specimens out there? It is possible, but I have never seen any images of a similar Ty Cobb scrap to confirm any siblings out there. If there’s any rumor of another one existing, I would not believe it until I see images of it. Also, please do not misidentify Ty Cobb cards with orange backgrounds as Ty Cobb yellow-brown scrap. I truly believe those Ty Cobb cards with orange backgrounds are all caused by color fading or a different shade of red applied as a background color, causing a lighter red that appears as orange.

Anyways, if you think T206 Ty Cobb backs are ultra-rare since there are only 25 known specimens out there, then if you compare those with one-of-a-kind Ty Cobb yellow-brown scrap, Ty Cobb backs are not that rare after all.

I hope you like this video and learn something about this Ty Cobb red portrait yellow-brown scrap. If you have a Ty Cobb scrap like this, please let us know. I would like to see it to confirm its existence. If you would like me to go over the rest of the T206 error cards in that auction lot from 20 years ago, leave comments below, and if there is enough interest, I will make a video to talk about them.