Progress towards the front/back master T207 set - or at least the bulk of it. Roughly speaking, the 200 cards of the T207 set fall in two classes:
- Recruit - 150 players, 5 variations for 155 cards
- Broadleaf - 50 players, 1 variation for 51 cards
Cards are restricted to one class or the other - there is no overlap. There are a subset of cards in the Recruit-class that were issued with an Anonymous Factory 3 back, but that is the only apparent caveat to the prior statement. It doesn't change the fact that those are Recruit-class only, and does not imply that they might also be found with the other Broadleaf-class backs.
In the numbers below, confirmation for me implies that I have a report from a knowledgable source that I know/trust, or visual evidence from a photo/scan that a front/back combination exists.
Recruit-class
- Recruit Factory 240, 606 - all 155 cards each
- Napoleon - only 145 currently confirmed
- Anonymous, Factory 3 ( a.k.a. Anon3 Recruits) - 49 currently confirmed, possibly 50 expected*
Broadleaf-class
- Broadleaf - all 51 cards confirmed
- Cycle - 50 cards confirmed
- Anonymous Factory 3 - all 51 cards confirmed
- Anonymous Factory 25 - 48 cards confirmed
- Red Cross - 14 cards of 13 player are known.
For my pursuit of this 'Master/Master' and for both my sanity and pocketbook, I have excluded:
- The Lewis no-emblem - examples are confirmed with only Broadleaf and Anon Factory 3 backs to date.
- The Red Cross back - the uniqueness all but 1 of the 14 known cards makes it neither feasible nor interesting.**
End of Quest
As of late summer, the pursuit of this master/master has been abandoned. Final tally 676/704 cards:
- Recruit 240 and 606 complete at 155 cards each
- Broadleaf, Cycle and Anon Factory 3 (broadleaf-class) all complete at 50 cards each
- Anon Factory 25 - 43/50
- Napoleon - 126/145 presently catalogued
- Anon Factory 3 (Recruit) - 47/49 catalogued
That effort was only pursued in earnest (at the exclusion of other collecting) from 2011-2024, though the T207 collection itself was built mostly starting in 2006. A few cards (4) were purchased as early as 1991, 3 of which remained in the collection until it was broken up.
* - The Anon3 Recruits have been the subject of much speculation over time. Before the early 2000's, it was hypothesized that the Anon Factory 3 back was the only one that could be found on any player. Survey work published in 2004 (T. Newcomb, VCBC v 37,38) indcated that was likely not the case, listed 22 and hypothesized that 50 was a more likely number of members in that grouping. Only 49 have been confirmed to-date. The VCBC survey publication and accompanying text is the source of the naming conventions used in this description.
** - The Red Cross back is somewhat shrouded in mystery, or at least mystique. See the https://www.louisianacards.com/t207.html page for more details