B.E. Thompson: Gem of the T209 Contentnea Set

As a collector of all sorts of early cards, I’ve had my hand in a lot of sets. I can’t say that includes the T209 Contentnea cards, though.

I’ve been familiar with the cards for a long time. There are two different sets and they feature southern minor league baseball players. But much like the similar but easier-to-find T212 Obak cards, most of the names in them are not all that well-known. That, along with the rarity and size of the sets, has always made it easy to avoid for me. While the first set contains only 16 cards, the black and white photo set has more than 200.

All of that said, the sets certainly have passionate collectors. Michael Peich has an excellent resource on the T209 sets, which you’ll find here.

And I recently purchased one of these cards and thought it was as good a time as any to dive back into the mystery surrounding it.

The B.E. Thompson Card

While I’ve not generally chased these cards, there’s always been one from the set that I’ve wanted. And it’s a card that, on the surface, doesn’t look like it belongs at all.

Baseball players are the focal point of the sets, but the most intriguing card is actually for a non-player. One card in the set pictures an older man dressed as Uncle Sam named B.E. Thompson.

Who is B.E. Thompson? While there are many theories, I’m not sure any have been firmly proven.

At the moment, however, a man named Benjamin Thompson, as identified in this Net54 thread, is the subject most often named. Thompson was identified as a farmer, but while it has been speculated that he may have supplied tobacco to Contentnea, again, that has never been proven to my knowledge. Heck, I do not know that it’s even been 100% proven he was a tobacco farmer, though that idea certainly makes sense.

After all, if one is trying to think of reasons for being in the set, being a tobacco farmer supplying product to Erwin-Nadal for their Contentnea Cigarettes seems plausible. But, at the moment, that’s all it is — just a plausible theory.

The mention in that Net54 link as Benjamin Thompson seems accurate. Thompson was not only living in Wilson at or around the same time, but also had the middle initial of E. If there’s a smoking gun, it would seem to be that.

So, we’ve got an old man that was a farmer and dressed as Uncle Sam, so far, with few leads towards anything else. And unfortunately while there have been a lot of ideas over time, nothing has been concretely proven.

Wilson? Wilson?

The other notable thing about Thompson’s card is that it includes a team designation — specifically Wilson. The full name of the team was, appropriately, the Wilson Tobacconists (or Wilson Tobs, for short). Wilson was a Class D team playing in the Eastern Carolina League. As is the case today, as a minor league team, the franchise moved around quite a bit. Only their first three years were spent in that league. Throughout the club’s history, they spent time in various classifications of minor league ball and played in five different leagues.

The 1909 and 1910 Wilson teams were both pretty good. In 1909, they won the league under manager Earl Holt. The 1910 team finished second in the league behind Charles McGeehan.

Those names are important because that makes it clear that Thompson was not the manager of Wilson’s team. So what was he? Unfortunately, as stated, that isn’t clear. About the only tie that is known is that, the same Benjamin Thompson cited in that Net54 post apparently lived in Wilson.

He could have had an active role in the team or perhaps was even just a locally-famous fan, which is what this Wilson County Library site calls him. That site, by the way, doesn’t just call Thompson a super fan — they state that he was ‘Wilson’s greatest baseball fan.’ Whether that’s based on trying to piece together information themselves isn’t clear. But there’s, unfortunately, no other supporting evidence on Thompson or his life there. The references to him, in fact, are cited as hobby references online.

Tobacco farmer? Fan? Both? Neither? The reality is that, unless more concrete evidence is found, B.E. remains largely a mystery that folks have tried to piece together.

A Special Offer?

The back of Thompson’s cards are practically as intriguing as the front.

While the backs of other cards in the set indicate that the players featured are from the Virginian minor leagues, Thompson’s card reads much differently.

Thompson’s cards state, “Be Sure and Save B.E. Thompson’s Picture” as well as, “Ask Your Dealer About It.”

Over time, many collectors have associated the card with a redemption offer of sorts. That, of course, was quite common as many sets offered prizes in exchange for cards. However, no known prize is associated with these cards definitively. While they seem to allude to being given something in return, it isn’t clear what that something might be.

As Peich speculated in that earlier link, the prize could have been for an album with pictures of the cards. According to Heritage, there may be only three known examples of this album. But that would fit since the album included pictures from this set and not the other T209 series.

Another notable thing about the backs of Thompson’s cards is that there are at least four different versions. Two are a printed and stamped version of the Factory No. 12 designation, a third type is without that designation, and a fourth includes the factory designation, but with a printed rectangular border.

The fourth type, with a rectangular border, seems worth a quick mention. While once thought of as a rare type, I’ve come across three in basic searches online. On the surface, it appears to be not much rarer (if at all) than any of the other back types.

Rarity

In terms of rarity, the card is not an easy one to find. Now, all T209s are somewhat rare. And it is a little difficult to assess its rarity in comparison with the others in the set, given that these are valuable enough (generally starting around $2,000 for low-grade examples) to warrant grading them, no matter the condition. By comparison, other T209s of common players are not graded quite as often.

The set also has some notoriously difficult cards to find that appear for sale less often than Thompson’s. That said, it is a very tough addition, even if it is not technically rarer than most in the set. To date, a grand total of only 11 have been graded by PSA.

This card has been in existence for more than 100 years. But while the man pictured on it would have been well known when these cards were issued, the reason he appears in the set has unfortunately been lost over time.

Nevertheless, this is right in my sweet spot of collecting. Aside from building sets, these sorts of rare, oddball one-off cards are some of my favorites to collect.