[rainier2004]

I have always liked Mello-Mints and have spent a few minutes looking at the pop reports and am amazed at how rare these cards truly are. There are 50 cards in the set with 4 players being represented on two cards (Miller, Doyle, Bender and Wagner). SGC shows an additional unlabeled variation for both Wagner and Bender with pops of 7 and 2. I am unclear as to what these variations are and is my first question. When looking at the pop reports from SGC, PSA and BVG there are a total of 375 graded examples of Mello-Mints and 7 cards make up 42.7% of that entire population:
1. Gibson 12 Examples
2. Miller (batting) 14
3. Hartsell 18
4. LaJoie 21
5. Bescher 21
6. Young 34
7. Knight 40 - The final 2 cards on the list comprise 19.7% of the entire population of e105s

There are 7 cards with only a single graded card:
Bridwell, Chase, Collins, Devlin, McLean, O'Hara and Tinker

There are another 6 cards with 2 graded examples meaning one-quarter of this set has a single or only 2 graded examples floating round:
Bender (White hat), Bender (other variation), Crawford, Doolan, Jacklitsch and Jennings

Out of the 52 cards, their populations break down as followed with the majority of cards having between 3 and 10 graded examples:
1 example - 7 cards
2 examples - 6 cards
3-5 examples - 16 cards
6-10 examples - 16 cards
11+ examples - 7 cards

There are 6 cards that PSA has the only graded copy and 4 cards that only SGC has graded. This leads me to the rest of my questions on this set. First, what percentage of Mello-Mints are graded? Is there the presumption that more will surface as they were distributed only in Texas or are we done? I would think there has to be a few more residing in that big state hidden away. Lipset wrote all cards were equal in population, but these numbers beg to differ 35 years and an internet later. I have seen very few raw examples in the past couple years. Would this have to rank as one of the impossible sets? Are there any set collectors hiding out there? I know there has been a couple member here that tried and stopped and another couple more that I thought were attempting this massive feat. Any input, pics or help would be more than appreciated.