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For a complete description of this item, click here. Presented is one of the most exceptional and highest-graded examples of the rare T206 "Slow Joe" Doyle, N. Y. Nat'l (hands above head) error card in the collecting world! This exciting, newly discovered example is graded and encapsulated VG+ 3.5 by SGC. The T206 Doyle error card is by far the rarest card in the T206 set. It is more than ten times rarer than the T206 Honus Wagner. This error card was uncatalogued and completely unknown until the 1970s, when legendary dealer Larry Fritsch, while sorting through thousands of T206s, first discovered it. No one had ever noticed the card before, which is understandable given its great rarity. Fritsch kept his discovery as quiet as he could but naturally drew attention to the card when for years he advertised extensively to purchase any and all T206 Joe Doyle hands-above-head cards in the hopes of finding more examples. For many years, Charlie Conlon and Larry Fritsch were the only collectors known to have this extreme T206 rarity. Over the past thirty years, several additional examples have been discovered. To the best of our knowledge, only ten authentic rare Doyle cards exist: five graded by PSA (one VG+ 3.5, two VG 3, and two GOOD 2), two ungraded (presumed authentic), one by SGC (the offered example), one by BVG (VG-EX 4, previously SGC Authentic), and one ungraded in the collection of Senator Richard B. Russell housed at the University of Georgia. Though various population reports might suggest otherwise, we believe that errors are responsible for this and that the offered example is at or near the top of the known population of authentic Doyle error cards. This example is entirely new to the collecting world and has with it, as most all exciting discoveries do, an interesting and fortuitous backstory. For more than 100 years, the offered card sat undiscovered in the passed-down collection of a North Carolina man born in 1900. That man, our consignor's maternal great-grandfather, would roam the streets of his hometown, gathering cards from smokers, newspaper men, and fellow adolescents. As a result of his efforts, he amassed a collection of more than 1,000 tobacco cards, ranging from T205 Gold Borders, T206 White Border, T209 Contentnea, and T210 Old Mill, as well as countless non-sport subjects issued during the same time period. As this boy became a man and started a family of his own, he had two daughters who showed no interest in the two scrapbooks of cards he kept from his childhood. The next generation produced only girls who felt similarly about these cards, but one of those girls would go on to have a son who consumed all things baseball as a young boy. That boy, ironically enough, was the son of two high school sweethearts - one of whom was the granddaughter of this opportunistic collector and one of whom was a descendent of the founding family of the American Tobacco Company, which produced the T206 cards and set into motion the idea of collecting these colorful tobacco cards. Approximately twenty years ago, the son was shown the scrapbooks and told that they'd be his one day. All he knew about at that time was the famed Honus Wagner card, and a quick review of the collection did not yield any Wagner prize. Disappointed but intrigued, he tucked away the cards until he was old enough to take responsibility for them himself. As with the generations before him, he didn't give them much thought until 2022, when news of a booming baseball card trade piqued his interest. Armed with more knowledge about the history of baseball, he looked through the scrapbooks and was delighted to find multiple examples of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and dozens more Hall of Famers. He checked again for the Honus Wagner card, but this time, he researched what other cards might hold value from the T206 set beyond the big names he recognized. Now, looking for Eddie Plank, Sherry Magie, and others, he took note of a Doyle card in the lower left of one page. Staring back at him was the extremely rare variation of this otherwise innocuous-looking New York Giants player. After calling in some additional sets of eyes to confirm what he was seeing, he set off on a torrent of research on what to do next with this very special card. His research led him to dealers, collectors, and auctioneers alike, all of whom shared his excitement of this newfound discovery. There was, however, one issue that needed to be addressed: the Doyle card, as with the entirety of the rest of the collection, was mounted into two 1910-era scrapbooks. Finding a trustworthy and capable party to assist with the removal was the key next step in his process. After much research and consultation, Graphic Conservation Company, a professional art restoration and conservation company with a specialty and focus on all paper items, was selected to handle the project. Weeks of process testing on some of the non-sport cards provided valuable insight into the manner in which the cards were mounted. After perfecting the process, the Doyle was cleanly removed from the page on which it had lived for over 110 years. Graphic Conservation performed no other cleaning or conservation type work on the card, leaving it in virtually the same condition as when it was diligently added to the scrapbook by the original collector. SGC, as part of its grading process, was briefed on the work done to remove the card and reviewed it thoroughly to ensure it met the company's standards for grading. At a glance, without thinking about what the card is and why it is rare, we could see a collector looking at this card and thinking that a few letters difference between the standard Joe Doyle card and this rare variation would ultimately be insignificant. But these letters did not just mysteriously disappear. The "Nat'l" was intentionally removed from the plate by the printer to correct an error. An important and fundamental point to understanding the nature and significance of the rare T206 Doyle is that the rarity of the NY Nat'l variety is due to the printer's removal of the "Nat'l" - not adding it. The image on the hands-above-head Doyle pose is Joe Doyle of the New York Americans. But when the card was first printed, Joe Doyle, as seen on the rare error card, was listed as with the New York Nationals. This was the error that set this change in motion. And it was actually a pretty understandable error: Larry Doyle played for the New York Nationals; Joe Doyle played for the New York Americans. The manufacturer of the T206 set got the two players mixed up, which resulted in this monumental error card.