Quote:
Originally Posted by Jobu
Wow, they just keep on coming! Has the huge number of these had any influence on the market for them?
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I think so - particularly for the lower condition/quality versions. They were headed north of $2,000 for awhile there, with a couple of reported sales exceeding that amount. Now they still regularly fetch between $1,000 and $1,500.
Also, like I said, we had one guy hoarding them for awhile, and he managed to get 15 of them. If he ever divests himself, that will certainly have an impact.
The internet allows us to keep track of them all in one place in a way that would've been impossible years ago. The perception that a signed T206 Rube Marquard card was scarce, only up to a few years ago, is hardly defensible today.
I think the importance of pointing these out is about showing how relatively difficult any other player is to find on a signed T206 card, which, given Marquard lived until 1980, shows how most of these were almost certainly acquired in the 1970s. Doyle, Snodgrass, and Livingston are available, but even Doyle is still at about 1/3 of the total known Marquards. It helps that Marquard was a Hall of Famer, which drove substantial interest in his autograph. In this respect, a comparison of Marquard to Crawford -- the latter of whom I would guess has less than 10 signed T206 known -- is probably the best comp, in terms of autograph availability. Crawford died 12 years earlier than Marquard in 1968. Ironically, with the Memory Lane auction earlier this Spring, the Huggins and Scott auction this summer, and one I purchased from a private collection in January, three new Crawfords (all batting pose) were identified in just the last 6 months. It does seem like the exorbitant prices for these little gems is finally bringing them out of the woodwork!