[Chicago206]

I think its fantastic that a ranking order of back scarcity exists for the 15 different cigarette companies of T206. What would be even more useful would be a list that included the relative scarcity as expressed in a quantitative multiplier. I am aware that something similar to what im talking about has been tried before in regards to pricing. I'd love to see the same theory applied to actual surviving populations though. While the task would no doubt be purely speculative, I havent a problem with that since many facets of this hobby are merely very educated "guesses" anyway.

The info that interests me is the disparity between cards on the scarcity list. For example, its fairly safe to assume that the gap difference between a BL460 (#3) and an Uzit (#4) is significant, while the gap between an Uzit (#4) and a Drum (#5) is extremely narrow, and possible even non-existant if you believe the 2 cards are equally scant.

Is there a way to quantify these discrepencies by using some type of "multiplier" system. You could theoretically start with the Old Mill brown and assign it a number "1". If you can make an accurate assumption that perhaps 12 of these are known to exist, then the BL460 (with about 40 known copies) would get assigned a number "3", hence making the BL460 about 3x more common than the OM brown. You could then make reasonable estimates of other backs thought to still survive, lets say 300 Drums for instance. We could then assign Drum the number "25", which would make it 25x more commonly found than the OM brown, and about 8x as common as the BL460. And so on and so forth.

As I stated earlier, this project involves alot of estimates and guesswork, but thats the nature of the hobby anyway. The list im talking about shouldnt/wouldnt go all the way down the 38 card subset, but may be useful for the top 15-20 on the scarcity list. I would LOVE to know, for example, approximately how rare a red Hindu is in relation to an Uzit, or an AB460. Does anyone else think this type of list would be fun and or helpful to the hobby?