The 1900 Cope's Golfers set is the preeminent early golf card set. The rare tobacco card set is often compared to baseball card collecting's T206 set from 1909-1911, which famously features the iconic Honus Wagner card. But only the most advanced collectors realize that the 1900 Cope's Golfers set is exceedingly more rare than the T206 set. In total, PSA has graded over 250,000 T206 cards, but only 2,119 total cards in the 1900 Cope's Golfers set. The mysteriously short printed Honus Wagner baseball card has 36 examples graded by PSA, each of which is worth over $1 million. The most sought after Cope's Golfers cards are those of Young & Old Tom Morris, which have seen a similar 55 and 56 copies graded, respectively, but are currently worth a tiny fraction of its baseball counterpart. 

Offered here is a high grade near-complete set of 47 of the 50 total cards from the 1900 Cope Bros. & Co. Cope's Golfers tobacco card set. The cards in this lot represent 94% of the legendary Cope's Golfers set, and is only missing 3 cards that are offered in individual lots in this auction (Old Tom, Young Tom, Allan Robertson). All 47 cards in this lot have been authenticated and graded by PSA (at considerable expense). Even more impressively, many of these cards have received high grades from PSA, including 23 PSA 7s and 15 PSA 8s. The average grade of these 47 cards is 6.85, which would likely make this set somewhere around the Top 5 on the Cope's PSA Set Registry if completed with the 3 missing cards.