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warshawlawI have many cards that meet the "rare" test. Most are obscure, unfortunately, and therefore don't meet the "demand" test except from specialists. Now, get two specialists feuding over a card and the sky's the limit. For example, any 1928 PCL Exhibit has to be considered rare. I have been following this set for years and have seen only a couple of sets and a few assorted singles for sale. Any card from the set has to be considered to have a population well under that of the T206 Wagner. Yet with the exception of Averill and Reese, reaction to them is lackluster. Turning to the second part of the equation, I agree that there are also quite a few "common" cards that are anything but. I cannot even begin to express the challenge posed by many Exhibit sets from the 1920s and 1930s. The danmed things just don't come up for sale.
I think part of the problem is self-inflicted. The price guides over time have developed the unhelpful habit of listing a price for every card in every grade rather than leaving blank spaces, leading the reader to assume (1) that every card in every grade is available when the truth is that many of them have never even been seen, and (2) that the pricing assumptions inherent in a common designation apply to every lousy player in each set. The error comes up like this: I as price guide editor see lots of T207 commons sell for $20 each in vg condition. Joe Blow is a common player. Joe Blow should sell for the same as any other common, so I slap a common price tag on him, right? WRONG. A card listed as a "common" in a price guide is often listed there through inertia because the card had to be checklisted and "had" to have a price assigned to it in every grade, even though no one had ever seen it because in reality the card is RARE. When it does make it to market, the price soars because the specialists go after it and everyone is astounded that a "common" sells for so much more than book. The truth is, the card wasn't common at all. We are only starting to see the real, heavy analysis of this issue. I think that by the time the present generation of researchers, aided by the internet and computerized spreadsheets, finishes its work, the basic assumptions about the relative availability of many prewar "commons" will be very different than the conventional wisdom today. I know, as a price guide/card guide/article researcher and writer, that I've developed a feel for the subjects of my interest that is very different than the present conventional wisdom on those sets. Ebay is a very transparent market with almost no impediments to entry, yet I am often amazed at how little a percentage of my snipe on an item takes the item at auction on Ebay; I think I know something the others out there don't, and that something often is my perception of the relative rarity of a "common" card as compared to the conventional wisdom about the set.