For those unfamiliar with it 1909-1911 Obak (T212) cardsthey are essentially the West Coast counterpart of the T206 set. Released over the same three-year period, the set contains 426 different cards covering 271 different topics in the Pacific Coast League and Northwestern League.
For the most part, the artwork was very similar to T206 in the typical poses and backgrounds I encountered, although my own West Coast roots require me to heretically and perhaps baselessly claim that T212 is the more attractive set overall.
Among the highlights of my previous article (en Google Spreadsheet) on the T212 Obak set was this overview of the set’s topics.
- 1909 – Introduction of 76 new topics
- 1910 – Introduction of 119 new topics and reuse of 56 topics from 1909
- 1911 – Introduction of 76 new topics and reuse of 99 topics from previous years
In this current article, I will focus on the artwork used to depict these subjects.
1909
As far as I can tell, the 76 cards in the 1909 edition reflected completely original artwork. In contrast to both the T206 cards released the same year and the T212 cards of subsequent years, the 1909 T212 cards have a dreamlike quality that, at least to me, suggests that the artist(s) involved did not contribute to these other sets.
1910
Of the 175 cards added to the set in 1910, 119 depicted brand new subjects, requiring new artwork. Regarding the 56 subjects repeated between 1909 and 1910, there was certainly a potential for a recycling of works of art, regardless of the ten players who changed teams from one year to the next.
Regardless, no such efficiencies were made, with the result that the set introduced new artwork for all 175 subjects in the 1910 edition. These 1909 and 1910 cards by Walter Nagle provide a good example.
1911
It was finally in 1911 that the situation became a little more interesting. Here the edition included 99 topics from earlier years, 96 of which had previously been published in 1910 and 3 of which had previously been published only in 1909.
The smaller of these two groups, the three subjects with only previous maps in 1909, saw new artwork across the board. This meant, among other things, that all 76 images from the set’s debut year were essentially “one and done.”
As for the 96 subjects who also had cards in 1910, a key factor in image reuse was whether or not the subjects switched teams. For the 74 subjects who remained on the same team in 1911 and 1910, the set simply reused previous images, presumably to save time, money, or both. John Bassey’s 1910 (left) and 1911 (right) maps illustrate this.
As for the remaining 22 subjects (i.e., those on new teams), an efficiency-oriented approach would have involved little more than a costume change, as seen here at Royal Castleton in transit from Los Angeles to Vernon.
Perhaps surprisingly, such an approach was only taken three times, with Pug Bennett and Emil Frisk being the two DIGO players (different only in attire), apart from Castleton.
That left 19 new team players for whom the card makers spent money on total makeovers.
Harry Stewart’s 1910 (left) and 1911 (right) cards provide a good example.
Ice paint job
The 1911 Stewart card also shows an artistic style new to the 1911 set, characterized by what appears to be dripping paint or perhaps melting ice. While it’s possible there’s a technical name for this in the art world, I’m going with “ice paint,” a tribute to the catchy Dorrough song from 2009 with the same name.
There are nearly two dozen such cards in the 1911 edition, including two of the most coveted cards in the set, Buck Weaver and Ten Million.
Whether it is the work of a single (probably new) artist added to the team or multiple artists is unknown to me. There are enough style differences to make me think of several, but what are the chances of two? avant-gardes take the job the same year?
1911 Oak cabinets
In 1911, collectors could trade coupons for 50 packs of Obak cigarettes to obtain large cabinet photos of any of the set’s 175 players. In both cases, the case featured the source photo of the player’s tobacco card, although the image was sometimes rotated, perhaps to create the illusion of action. For example, John Kane of the Vernon Tigers was necessarily upright in his portrait, but has a forward tilt on his card, suggesting he is running in to catch a fly ball.
The cabinet photos serve, among other things, as a reminder that any field or outdoor images (sunsets, grass, etc.) in the T212 set came solely from the artists’ imaginations, as the photos themselves were taken indoors by studio photographers.
Just a fun side note: the number of packs of cigarettes you had to smoke (or at least buy) to get enough coupons for a complete cabinet set was 8,750. Dividing by 365 equates to just under 24 packs per day! Considering the math, it’s no wonder that the total PSA population for this set is 3. And those are not 3 complete sets; that’s a total of 3 cards!
#Investigating #image #reuse #T212 #Obak #set