Description

One of pre-war baseball collecting’s most spectacular and sought after sets is the T3 Turkey Red “Cabinets”, produced in 1910-11 by the American Tobacco Company. These 5 3/4″ x 8″ cardboard “cabinet” cards were premiums available in Turkey Red and other brands of cigarettes. Any one of the 126 different cabinets (100 baseball players and 26 prominent boxers) were offered through a coupon redemption program. This full color lithographed cabinet of the Red Sox’ Harry Niles retains stunning color and detail, and comes with the Turkey Red advertising back (a few different checklist backs, in addition to the advertising type, and even blank backs, were produced). The ad backs were produced at the end of the promotion, omitting redemption instructions in the earlier part of the print run, and are considered harder to find than the various checklist backs. Niles played 14 seasons of pro ball, including nine in the majors. Today star players demand many thousands of dollars, and higher-grade material is very rare owing partly to the fragile nature of the larger format.

Graded 2.5 GD+ by PSA. This is one of only 34 examples graded by PSA (1 of 2, 25 higher).

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