Scarce 1900 Copes Card #27 - John E. Laidlay

      From the rarest of all golf sets, the 1900 Copes Tobacco is truly the pinnacle of all golf cigarette card sets.  The Sports Market Report magazine published by PSA has declared this set the Holy Grail of golf card sets.  This offering features card #27 J.E. Laidlay in Beckett BGV 4 condition. How rare are 1900 Copes cards? Only 298 total copes cards have ever been graded by market leader PSA from this difficult set of 50 despite the fact that this remains the most valuable set to date.  That's an average of only 6 known graded cards for each issue in this set.  "Common" cards in poor condition have been known to still sell for hundreds of dollars, and only 2 complete sets have ever been assembled even though it is a relatively small set.  Presented here is one of the most desirable cards for this great set - the card of John E. Laidlay.  Laidlay wont the British Amateur twice, in 1889 and 1891.  He is also well-known by golf historians as the golfer who first used and achieved success with the overlap grip which is used by over 90% of golfers today.  The grip, which is often attributed to Harry Vardon, was actually used by Laidlay before Vardon and J.H. Taylor supposedly learned it from Laidlay.  Simply put, 1900 Copes golf cards are virtually unheard of, and we've only seen a handful offered for sale in the past decade.