James Arnauld Lafitte played the 1909 season with the Macon Peaches of
the South Atlantic League before moving on to play with the New Orleans
Pelicans of the Southern Association in 1910. Since this issue features
LaFitte wearing a Macon uniform, we know it was issued in 1909, the
first year of the T206 set. This example features LaFitte, wearing a catcher's mitt, reaching back with his throwing arm in front of a yellow sky which fades into peach and then green in the background. The bold, beautiful colors give this card tremendous eye appeal, making it easy to look past the card's minor flaws. Rounded, chipped corners and a small bit of paper loss above LaFitte's right shoulder explain the card's technical grade, which exhibits light tobacco staining on the back but doesn't interfere with the Old Mill text.
LaFitte's is one of the harder-to-find issues of the T206 set, being part of the tough Southern Leaguer subset. PSA has
only ever graded 118 total examples of this Old Mill back version of the
LaFitte, with
only twenty-eight receiving a
higher grade than the VG-EX 4 offered here.