Old-Time Philadelphia Collector Ted Colzaretti, T206 Wagners, T207 Lowdermik, Buses…

​Ted Colzretti was one of the truly great and extremely active old-time collectors of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. And he lived sooo close to me (in Philadelphia), yet sooo far, as I was in the suburbs and nowhere near old enough to drive. He was happy to write letters, but he had no interest in dealing by phone. Even reaching him by phone was very difficult (almost impossible). On top of all that, Ted Colzaretti was an elderly gentleman. And I was a 12 year-old-kid. So, despite his close proximity, he was much more challenging to deal with than collectors I could easily reach and make deals with by phone (which was just about every other collector!)  He was from a different era. In my mind, dealing with him was like magically dealing with someone from the distant past (think the TV show Time Tunnel). 

​Ted Colzaretti’s letter to me dated December 1, 1973 opens with:
“Robert, you will find out when you are in this hobby awhile that sometimes you may have to wait a long time before completing some deals, you must be a bit patient, I know that you are young and are very anxious to acquire as many of these cards as fast as you can, but you will find out that this is not that simple….”

This well-intentioned advice absolutely 100% went in one ear and right out the other. I knew he meant well… but I also knew… that he didn’t understand!…There was no better time to communicate and make deals than NOW!  And nothing has changed to this day. I have always been rewarded by NOT waiting, by trying to be respectfully proactive and making things happen. (Note: Adult collectors sometimes called this “being a pain in the ass.”)
 
 
My impatience as a youngster was recognized – I should say EMBRACED - even by myself (how could it not) and worn like a badge of honor. In my eyes this was not a flaw at all..actually, it felt like a superpower! There were SO many deals to do, SO many collectors to track down, SO much to learn… All things being equal, I knew that impatience (combined with my sincere interest and enthusiasm) was a key ingredient to success, helping me to be more productive, learn more, and do more deals. With a phone I could cram what an old‑timer would call years of wheeling and dealing into a couple of weeks.

In time, as I bought collections that had taken decades to put together, I soaked up a lifetime of card knowledge with each collection in days. Then did it again with the next collection. And the next. I believe I was learning this stuff faster than anyone had before. It was a perfect storm: I was obsessed with old baseball cards, cards were finally starting to be worth real money, and there were more vintage collections sitting in closets and basements than ever. Once cards had value, every one of those collections had to go somewhere, and a lot of them ended up, in part or whole, being sold through me.

With Ted, every transaction crawled along at the speed of the mails. Or slower. He was old, “old school.” I understood and was respectful that not everyone wanted to move at my pace. So, though not my highest priority, I did still try to accommodate a few old-timers (and myself) and do deals by mail if I really HAD to, especially if there was some dealing excitement to the exchange.
  
Eventually (in 1983 I think, but it could have been 1984, after his passing) I bought the entire Colzaretti collection from the family with Bill Mastro. I put up all the money (as usual) because Bill just didn’t have the money for big deals in those days, in part because he was such a big collector. But he more than carried his weight with knowledge, negotiating skills, and selling to his customers to help recoup the cost. The collection cost an astounding $85,000 (which is a lot of money today but even more in 1983!) I should add, just in case it sounds like I was complaining about putting up all the money, that I never had a problem with this. It was a non-issue. I don’t remember how it came to be that he was in the deal but I think we both were aware of the collection and when it actually came to be available, it just made sense. Otherwise, one of us might have gotten the entire collection, and the other nothing. And having Mastro in the deal actually made it less risky, more fun, and more likely to be successful quickly because he brought so much to the table. As a bonus, he was even a customer for anything he wanted for his collection.

​Long before buying the collection, though, Ted Colzaretti and I did manage to do quite a few significant deals. When I ran across this hundred‑dollar check for a T207 Lowdermilk (see memo field), I could remember that purchase vividly and instantly. One hundred dollars was a big deal for a single card in 1974 and probably the most a T207 Loudermilk had ever sold for to date in the history of the hobby.
In 1974, Lowdermilk was universally recognized as one of the true hobby trophies—just a half‑step behind the famous “Big Three”: Wagner, Plank, and Lajoie. In the American Card Catalog, Jefferson Burdick usually gave every card in a given set the same price, but he broke this rule for a few giant rarities. Wagner was an eye‑popping $50 and Plank was $10, while T206 commons (which in those days included Ty Cobb and all the other stars) were just 10 cents each. In the T207 set, the ONLY card Burdick singled out for extra value was Lowdermilk. 

Lowdermilk’s legend is still recognized, but its price hasn’t kept up with the Big Three or even some other T207 rarities. If you look at grading‑company population reports from the last few decades, you can see more Lowdermilks have been graded than some other tough T207s. It’s still a rare card, just one whose reputation is a little bigger than the reality due to Burdick long ago citing it as the only higher value rarity in the T207 set. If Burdick had access to today’s grading population data, he probably would have identified a number of T207s along with Lowdermilk for rarity and higher value, not just Lowdermilk. But in the hobby’s imagination, Lowdermilk will always be the face of the T207 set. Planks, Wagners, Magie Error cards, Lowdermilks, W600s and cabinet cards and every rare card known to the collecting world passed through my hands, some countless times. This is how I learned about cards.
    
As long as I’m rambling freestyle…
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Colzaretti had an immense collection. Far bigger than I could have ever known when I was dealing with him by mail. No one has everything, but he had an astounding collection and massive duplication in many “meat-and-potato” sets. Thousands of T206. Thousands of cards from virtually every regular Topps and Bowman set from 1948 up through the mid-1960s. He obviously bought a lot of his more recent cards when they came out. He also bought countless vintage card lots in Charles Bray’s card auctions, year after year, all the way back into the 1940s. Bray was the first card auctioneer and in the early days of the hobby, an institution. Ted’s old hobby papers included all of Bray’s old mimeographed mail auctions, with all of Ted’s original bidding notations and even all of his auction invoices (some of which I still have!)  

​Ted also had nonsport cards by the thousands (especially 1880s to 1910s) as Charles Bray regularly offered  these in big groups. T206 Wagner? Yes, he had a T206 Wagner.  The condition, frankly, was a little off. I can’t remember exactly every flaw, but something was unattractive about the bottom border with Wagner’s name and team - maybe a surface tear affecting a few letters that had been crudely “fixed” with a pen. I’m sure there were other problems but the bottom border had a serious issue. When I bought the Wagner it was basically a burden to purchase: the family wanted to sell everything and they were well aware Wagner was very valuable (unfortunately they were not as knowledgeable about condition, which was not anywhere near as important in the early 1980s as today, but if a card had serious enough issues, of course this would impact value).
 
I remember counting this Wagner at $4000 and just wanting to get my money back on it. I immediately called Barry Halper because he was always happy to buy trophy cards like T206 Wagners, Planks, Magie Error cards, and 1933 Goudey Lajoies in any condition. It didn’t matter how many he had. He got a kick out of having them. The more the merrier! I told him about the problems and that if he wanted it for $4000, it was his. Even though I’d pay more than a million dollars for this card today, at that time I was kind of relieved when he bought it! I just didn’t want it.
 
Where is that card today? What happened to it? I happen to know: Very shortly after Barry Halper bought it, he told me he gave it to the Hall of Fame as a gift because “they didn’t have one and they should have one.”  They still have it, of course, but many years later, before Barry sold his collection, he let the Hall of Fame buy various items they wanted, and they wanted his much nicer personal single T206 Wagner. I believe Barry said he priced it at $400,000 at the time. It was in very nice shape. Today that card would be worth well over TEN MILLION DOLLARS! Today they have both but for many years the Hall of Fame had only one T206 Wagner, and it was Ted Colzaretti’s Wagner.
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I’m going to try to move on to the next post because the way this one is evolving it is barely staying on topic in any way!  I am grateful to have had the privilege of actually dealing with collecting pioneer Ted Colzaretti. Thinking back, I don’t recall anyone else ever telling me they ever dealt with him. It was clear from his hobby correspondence that in earlier years he communicated with collectors from his era – mostly by mail of course. One January 1955 letter from Charles Bray (pictured below) refers to a planned meeting at Walter Corson’s house; I have no idea if Ted went but Charles Bray’s letter left me with the impression Ted had gone to other card meetings in the past. 

I am also grateful to have actually spoken with him on the phone a few times about cards. I called him a hundred times or more! and actually got to speak to him maybe six times tops. I don’t know anyone else who ever told me they spoke to him on the phone even once. But even though he was so close geographically, I never got to meet Ted in person. I don’t know if any collectors of my era did. No one ever told me they met him. When I called, the phone would almost always just ring with no answer. On rare occasion a woman picked up (as I recall, his daughter) and all but a few times I remember she would tell me he was not home, and that he was out all day “riding the buses.”
 
I remember this very well because I thought “RIDING THE BUSES??? WHAT IN THE HECK DOES THAT MEAN? WHY?” and I imagined him, an elderly gentleman, just enjoying riding around as a passenger in a city bus all day. I never asked for any clarification because I thought it would be rude. She would say this like it was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe it was, for all I knew!
In fact, just as I am typing this, I researched online if “riding the buses all day” was a “thing” in Philadelphia that some elderly people were known to do in this era, and I was very surprised to read that it was! Here’s just one quote found on this well documented topic from a research project on the history of Philadelphia:
“There is no neat statistic on “all-day riders,” but the policy environment absolutely encouraged older Philadelphians (65+) in the early to mid-1970sto use buses frequently, including for socializing, staying out of the house, or “riding around” because it was free, climate-controlled, and relatively safe. Given that this was widely publicized as a benefit of the new lottery funded program, the image of older people riding SEPTA buses much of the day in that era is grounded in real conditions, not just folklore.”  
It’s kind of comforting to learn this because for over 50 years this was an unsolved mystery in the back of my mind. I know what I was told, but it just didn’t make any sense to me and I always wondered if somehow I misinterpreted something. I did not!

Thankfully he was not always on the bus. He had time to write and, armed with nothing but great perseverance and a phone, I actually got to talk to and deal with this legendary collector who was a contemporary and peer of Jefferson Burdick and Charles Bray and Walter Corson. I loved that.
 
I hope you have enjoyed reading this rambling and barely proofread post as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

Robert Lifson