2021 April Premium Card Auction Ending April 24
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/24/2021
Graded FR 1.5 by PSA. Hall of Famer. "Sweet Caporal"-branded back. Whenever a pitcher's greatness is judged, whether it be Mathewson or Maddux, the incomparable Walter Johnson is always used as a benchmark. The tall, lanky righthander owned one of the most explosive and deceptive fastballs in the game. As one of his contemporaries said about him, "You can't hit what you can't see." At the time this card was produced, Johnson was just starting to get into his groove. Coming off of a losing season in 1909, when he still posted a phenomenal 2.21 ERA, Johnson won 25 games while striking out 313 men in 1910. From 1910 through 1919, he amazingly amassed at least 20 wins every season and led the league in strikeouts in all but one of those years. His ERA climbed above the 2.00 mark only once! All of this for a horrible offensive team that provided minimal run support and not one pennant in any of those grueling seasons. One can only imagine what Johnson's wins total would have been, if a standout team had been backing him up! This T205 "Gold Border" card of Johnson is – from a frontward perspective – an exceptional treasure. Its borders are, indeed, deeply metallic in presentation with just scattered areas of routine edge wear and mildly eroded corners. Colors in the image and its surrounding graphics are intense and magnetic. Regrettably, though, the cardback has suffered severe disfigurement while, somehow, maintaining an amazingly high degree of legibility. Fair condition.