How I Got the Tinker Card

In yesterday's post, I shared the oldest cards in my collection and touched on the story behind almost each and every one of them. There was only 1 card that I didn't explain how I got, the 1911 Joe Tinker tobacco card. As soon as it was posted, I received multiple comments asking how I got such an old card of a Hall of Famer, which was when I realized I never explained how I acquired the card in the first place.

However, I didn't explain how I got it then because I actually didn't know how. It was my dad who got this card many years ago before I was even born. So, I knew I had to ask him how he got the card when I was on the phone with him today in order to share it here on the blog. 

Upon further inspection, I discovered a couple things about the 1911 Joe Tinker card. 1. That card, along with the 2002 Topps 206 card above, are the only cards I own of Joe Tinker. 2. I corrected myself from yesterday by stating the card is from 1911, not 1912. Finally, the 3rd thing I learned is all about the most important thing, how I got the card in the first place.

When I asked my dad how he got this card, he simply told me someone gave it to him, to which I was incredibly shocked. Apparently, the guy who gave him the card was a Cardinals fan and didn't want to have this Cubs card in his collection. Maybe he didn't know what it was worth or didn't know Joe Tinker is a Hall of Famer. I don't know, all I know is that I wouldn't give away a baseball card this old, even if it was a player from the Red Sox's archrival, the Yankees. Still, it's how I got this card in the first place, so I'm not complaining one bit.

As you can see, the card back says Piedmont which was one of the tobacco product brands that had their names on the backs of these cards. There were other brands too, like Sovereign, Brooklyn, and Polar Bear. I don't know this because I have so many cards from the set. I know this because of the 2003 Topps 205 set.

The 2003 Topps 205 minis were designed to emulate the original tobacco cards, even down to the card backs. In the remade set, there were also a variety of brand backs. Polar Bear was the most common, with Sovereign and Piedmont being somewhat rare and Brooklyn being very rare. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure there were others, but those 4 are the main ones that I can recall.

So yeah, that's how my dad got the Tinker card for our baseball card collection. It's a pretty neat story, especially when you consider that the likelihood of something like that happening again is very low since anyone can quickly look up the value of a card like that nowadays and sell it to make a bit of money. Unless, of course, they're feeling very generous.