As always, I had a long look at the most recent Vintage Non-Sports Auction. I often make purchases in these and, more times than not, come away with something unusual. This time, it was a collection of small transfers with ties to the T51 Murad College Sports set.

I’ve marked these with the ‘New Discovery’ tag here. Though, truthfully, I do not know if they have been identified in recent years or not. They do not appear to be located in Jefferson Burdick’s American Card Catalog and I have not seen them before with the exception of a single Facebook post — more on that in a bit. I’ve also not been able to locate other information on them, so that would be welcomed by any reader.

A lot of four transfers came up in the auction. If you’re a product of the 1980s and earlier, you’ve probably heard of that term. But if you’re a bit unfamiliar with them, transfers are a bit like stamps. They could be applied to a target surface, such as paper, clothing, or other items (even including your skin). Transfers were also somewhat popular in the early 1900s into the 1920s and they were sometimes made featuring the images of trading cards.

These four transfers, for example, feature images from the 1909 T51 Murad College Sports set — a 150-card series featuring generic images of athletes paired with actual schools. The T51 card for Williams College, for example, depicts basketball and is viewed by many as the first true card for the sport.

The lot produced backward images (so that when applied, they would appear right side up) of four transfers — Columbia (shot put), Cornell (rowing), Harvard (track and field), and Pratt Institute (ice skating).

Like other transfers, these were printed on thin paper. They are almost virtually the same as their T51 Murad College Sports card counterparts, as shown here. This is the card for Pratt, for example, matched with the transfer.

The transfer, of course, is a backwards representation of the card minus the border and the text identifying it as part of the College Series. The picture, pennant, and college seal are all present. There are two things that stand out beyond the mere image representation.

First is the presence of print guide marks to help the printer center these transfers on a sheet. Second, the transfers have an additional name of the school printed in red or blue ink. Sometimes it was added once and sometimes twice. This is notable because some of the names are not printed in reverse like the rest of the image. It’s almost as if it is to help the user or the printer to more easily identify it.

How many are in the set and which T51 images were selected for the transfers? Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to those questions, though I am hoping a checklist emerges if someone has seen one.

However, I do not believe all 150 T51 images were used, and that is because of one of the transfers in the lot.

The transfer for Harvard was included in the lot. But while Harvard is in the set and represented by the sport of football, the transfer of Harvard actually uses the image that is found on the T51 Murad card for Dickinson.

Shown here is the T51 Murad card of Dickinson and the transfer that was created for Harvard. It is obviously the same image, only with the Dickinson flag and seal being replaced by a Harvard flag and the Harvard name.

This would not have likely been an error because the images were taken directly from the original T51 cards. Rather, my hunch is that the entire 150-card was not reproduced for the transfer set and that the issuer simply wanted to include the more popular schools (like Harvard).

That of course doesn’t explain why the Harvard card simply wasn’t used. But for whatever reason, we’ve got at least one example of a transfer in the set that is not a 1:1 representation of the cards in the T51 College Sports card set.

While there are many mysteries, we do have a little bit more information. Shortly after I wrote about these cards, a follower on Twitter reached out with a link to an old Facebook post showing more of these. While a maker still has not been identified, we can confirm there are at least 15 in the set. In addition to my four, that link shows transfers for Princeton (rowing), South Carolina (golf), Michigan Agricultural (farming), West Point (military), Yale (rowing), Penn (tennis), Colgate (football), Mount Union (boating), Adrian (hunting), Juniata (fishing), and Occidental (rifle shooting).

The transfers were also made in Germany, with that partial word at the bottom of the sheet. That, of course, makes sense, as other transfers of American sports were indeed printed in that country. Like the 1923 German Transfers set of baseball players and boxers, those sheets included the same Made in Germany tagline — as do other similar series’ of generic athletes. While we don’t know exactly who made many of these German transfer series, we can at least pin them to that country, helping to explain why most of them are fairly rare here.

The T51 Murad cards were distributed with packages of Murad Cigarette products. But how these transfers were distributed or by whom is a mystery to me. Other transfers were often issued in complete sheets or strips as opposed to just one at a time.

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