For those unfamiliar with 1909-11 Obak (T212) cards, they are essentially the West Coast counterpart of the T206 set. Released over the same three-year period, the set includes 426 different cards comprising 271 different subjects across the Pacific Coast League and Northwestern League.
For the most part, artwork was very similar to T206 in terms of the typical poses and backgrounds found, though my own West Coast roots require me to assert heretically and perhaps without basis that T212 is overall the more attractive set.
Among the highlights of my previous article (and Google Sheet) on the T212 Obak set was this breakdown of the set’s subjects.
- 1909 – Introduction of 76 new subjects
- 1910 – Introduction of 119 new subjects and reuse of 56 subjects from 1909
- 1911 – Introduction of 76 new subjects and reuse of 99 subjects from prior years
In this current article, my focus will be on the artwork used to depict these subjects.
1909
From what I can tell, the 76 cards in the 1909 release reflected entirely original artwork. Contrasting with both the T206 cards released the same year and the T212 cards of subsequent years, the 1909 T212 cards have a dreamy quality about them that suggests, at least to me, 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, hence required new artwork. As for the 56 subjects repeated from 1909 to 1910, there was certainly the potential for a recycling of artwork, give or take the ten players who had changed teams from one year to the next.
Regardless, no such efficiencies were enacted, the result being that the set introduced new artwork for all 175 subjects in the 1910 issue. These 1909 and 1910 cards of Walter Nagle offer as good an example as any.
1911
It was finally in 1911 that the situation got a little more interesting. Here the release included 99 subjects from earlier years, 96 of which had previously appeared in 1910 and 3 of which had previously appeared in 1909 only.
The smaller of these two groups, the three subjects with prior cards in 1909 only, saw new artwork across the board. Among other things this meant that all 76 images from the set’s debut year were essentially “one and done.”
As for the 96 subjects that had cards in 1910 as well, a key factor in image reuse was whether or not subjects changed teams. For the 74 subjects who remained on the same team in 1911 as in 1910, the set simply recycled prior images, presumably to save time, money, or both. The 1910 (left) and 1911 (right) cards of John Bassey illustrate this.
As for the remaining 22 subjects (i.e., the ones on new teams), an efficiency-minded approach would have involved little more than a costume change, as is seen here with 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 (different in garb only) players apart from Castleton.
That left 19 new-teamers for whom the card makers splurged on total makeovers.
The 1910 (left) and 1911 (right) cards of Harry Stewart provide a nice example.
Ice Cream Paint Job
The 1911 Stewart card also showcases an artistic style new to the 1911 set, marked by what resembles dripping paint or perhaps melting ice cream. Though it’s possible there’s a technical name for this in the art world, I’ll go with “ice cream paint job,” paying tribute to the catchy 2009 Dorrough song of the same name.
There are nearly two dozen such cards in the 1911 release, including two of the sets most coveted cards, Buck Weaver and Ten Million.
Whether they are the work of a single (probably new) artist added to the team or multiple artists is unknown to me. There are enough differences in style to make me think multiple, but then again what are the chances of two avant-gardes taking the job the same year?
1911 Obak Cabinets
In 1911, collectors could trade coupons from 50 packs of Obak cigarettes to obtain large cabinet photos of any of the set’s 175 players. In each case, the cabinet featured the source photo for the player’s tobacco card, though sometimes the image was 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 suggestive of running in to catch a fly ball.
Among other things, the cabinet photos serve as a reminder that any on field or outdoor imagery (sunsets, grass, etc.) in the T212 set came solely from the imagination of the artists since the photos themselves were taken indoors by studio photographers.
As a fun side note, the number of packs of cigarettes one had to smoke (or at least purchase) to obtain enough coupons for a complete Cabinet set was 8,750. Dividing by 365, that works out to just under 24 packs a day! Given the math, it’s no wonder the total PSA population for this set is 3. And that’s not 3 complete sets; that’s 3 cards total!
