1903 E107 Breisch-Williams Type 2 Rube Waddell Rookie - The ONLY PSA-Graded Example!

Sold For:

$6,300

Year:

1903

Auction:

2025 Spring

Lot #:

290

Category:

Prewar Baseball Cards (1900-1941)

Offered is a very attractive example of Hall of Famer Rube Waddell from the scarce E107 Type 2 series. The E107 Breisch-Williams caramel card of Waddell is recognized as being his rookie card (only W600 and M101-1 predate but both are large-format issues). Waddell is noted as one of the greatest pitchers of his era, winning twenty-plus games in each of his first four seasons with the Athletics, leading the league in strikeouts during seven of his thirteen years in the league, and retiring in 1910 with a 2.16 career ERA. This is an E107 Type 2 card, one of just a handful of Waddell known to exist and the ONLY example that has ever been graded by PSA! E107 Type 2 cards are considerably rarer than Type 1 cards. Type 2 cards are printed on much thicker stock, with blank backs, often have narrower borders than Type 1 cards, and appear to be hand cut. For this reason, grading companies encapsulate them as "Authentic - Trimmed" as opposed to assigning a numerical grade, as seen here by PSA. In the past, some collectors have thought that Type 2 cards may have been cut from an advertising piece, but the fact that a Type 2 specimen with an overprint reading "The Breisch-Williams Co." has been discovered, and that Type 2 examples have been found in original-owner collections of Type 1 cards, strongly suggest that E107 Type 2 cards are a standard production issue. The card is crisp and clean with a bold portrait image, even wear on the corners, and a few tiny chips of paper loss on his chest. The blank-back is entirely clean. The card has a Good appearance. This is a very significant card, as a rare type card, as an E107 Hall of Famer, and as the rookie card for Rube Waddell.