Cardboard Keepers - T206 Red Sox!

Time for the next installment of "Cardboard Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

For this installment we go way back to feature some of the oldest Red Sox cards in my collection, from the infamous T206 tobacco card set!

We'll start things off with my newest acquisition, and a card that has yet to see the light of day on the blog until now, Heinie Wagner!  There are two different versions of Wagner T206 cards out there, with this one being the "Bat on Left Shoulder" variant as indicated by the PSA label.  This is one of my better-condition T206 cards for sure, a real beauty.

Heinie was a longtime member of the Red Sox, winning four World Series championships as a member of the club including the 1912 championship when he served as team captain.  He later served as the team's manager for the 1930 season as well.  He was known for being a strong fielder, who was fleet of foot.  In fact, his 141 stolen bases in a Red Sox uniform are still good enough for Wagner to hold 5th place on the team's all-time leader board at the time of this post.

Clean Sweet Caporal back on this one.  I don't pay attention to the many available back variants in this legendary set, I only hope to acquire one card of each Red Sox subject regardless of the brand name on the back.  Speaking of which, I'm inducting not just this card to the Cardboard Keepers collection, but also the other seven Red Sox I have from this set that have already been shown here in the past.

In alphabetical order by subject, here are those seven cards...

Red Kleinow is my personal favorite due to that awesome mask!

It's easy to see why this set remains one of the most prized baseball card releases in existence, more than 100 years after people were pulling these little gems out of cigarette packs.  These eight cards absolutely deserve a spot in this project!

That's 26 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 974 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!