M101 scarce backs..populations?

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Posted By: Dave F

With getting the 6 card lot of holmes to homes last night I was trying to do a little research and couldn't find much to confirm REA's statement of there being maybe 15 total holmes to homes cards? I find that a little hard to believe...but would like the experts to chime in. How many would any of the experts think there are population wise of any of the backs listed below? I thought at one time holmes were considered the rarest, but with the six card lot here and then the joe jax as well has that bumped it up the list?

mall theater
successful farming
everybodys
holmes to homes
green joyce

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Posted By: Tim Newcomb

The article that Todd Schultz and I have done will address some of these questions. A little bit of preview:

Our current thinking on these backs, in descending order of rarity:

green joyce
mall theater
holmes to homes
everybodys
successful farming


We did have Everybody's rated scarcest, but Heritage in the fall of 2007 had a group of about 25. Holmes to Homes were second rarest until these seven appeared. I'd say Mall and Holmes were now about neck and neck.

You get the idea-- these backs are all so tough that the appearance of a single small hoard can easily chang\e the scarcity order.

No Green-Joyce hoards have appeared recently, but if one does, it could change the order again. I personally (Todd may not agree) feel that the number of Green-Joyces could be in the low dozens. The next three I would estimate at maybe 50-100. Successful Farming perhaps in the low one hundreds.

But that's all subject to change--

Tim

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Posted By: Dave F

Thanks Tim-


A green joyce back in a SGC 10 (with presentable back without paperloss), would I need to expect to pay $500 for a 10 in this condition?

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Posted By: Tim Newcomb

It's really anybody's guess-- you could get it for a lot less if the wrong people weren't in the mix-- but given that the H2H on ebay went for $400, I wouldn't be surprised at any price--

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Posted By: leon

I agree with the summation due to the few recent finds of H2H and Everybodys. I don't think the Green Joyce has been considered the scarcest long enough for the price to have caught up with it... until now .

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Posted By: Mark Marvelli

Tim...who are the "wrong people in the mix"?
I picked up the H2H for $400 ($403) on ebay and thought it to be a quite fair price for one of the 'tough backs'. It allowed me to get out of the REA competition where i would have to unload 'the extras' later.
I would love to get an illusive Everybody's, and even though a hoard recently came to light, if they are immediately tucked away into a collection are they any less scarce?
As i recall i laid down $485 for a Green-Joyce about a year ago and would double that for an Everybody's today. Hoards can be misleading if they just end up being re-hoarded.
I would still say that Everybody's are the toughest (that doesnt count the near-impossible Gimbels small block print).

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Posted By: Tim Newcomb

I thought that was clear from the context: The wrong people in this situation (from Dave's perspective) would be one or two people who were willing to pay whatever they had to to get the back. In a situation like that, a card with any of these backs could easily go into four figures.


If no one like that was around, a card like this could be sometimes had for a couple of hundred. In other words, because there is no consistent track record (as there is for, say, T206s), the prices on these cards have to be considered very volatile.

I don't agree with your assessment, Mark. Even if they did go into a collection, the very fact that those Everybody's cards turned up at all means that for the moment, at least, Green-Joyces are clearly scarcer, as no one has seen 23 of them in a long time. However, congrats on getting a G-J for your collection.

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Posted By: Todd Schultz

there a few to several dozen Everybody's known to have surfaced just in the last year. There is an unconfirmed (at least to me)rumor that there is a large to huge group of H2Hs that were nearly up for sale this year in one of the major auctions, but the consignor had a change of heart. Maybe there are as many Green-Joyce out there too, who knows, but obviously the scant number of some of these backs makes their rankings volatile and subject to re-arrangement upon just a handful or so surfacing.

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Posted By: Dave F

So REA's claim of 15 total H2H's is based on their being about 15 total graded is that correct? I am not able to look up PSA's pop report.

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Posted By: Dave F

On the SGC pop report anyway, not sure about PSA-

green joyce total of 2
mall theater total of 2
holmes to homes total of 9
everybodys total of 65
successful farming total of 3

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Posted By: Jay

I have collected backs on and off for about 15 years so please allow me to make a few observations:

1-Virtually no one graded backs until recently. The pop reports are not a particularily good measure of the number of copies of a particular back in collections. The numbers for all backs are much higher.

2-Green Joyce and Successful Farming were readily available in the Northeast in the mid-late 1990's. I would guess that I have seen 50 Successful Farming cards and 20 Green Joyce.

3-The backs that I never saw when I was collecting actively were Burgess Nash, Everybodys and Mall Theatre.

4-Scarcer backs tend not to trickle out one at a time but pop up as little groups. The Burgess Nash group of a few years ago and the Everybodys group recently are two good examples. They come out, make the back seem suddenly less rare, get absorbed into the hobby, and become rare again.

5-Good luck to all back collectors--it's a fun pursuit!

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Posted By: peter ullman

I'm not really a collector of the different backs from the m101 sets...but...I was surfing the board this morning and I read the back to one of the holmes to homes cards for sale on the bst. I thought it odd that the back states the "set features pictures of players from the baseball hall of fame." I know the hall of fame opened in 1936 or so...so was there an unofficial baseball hall of fame 15 or so years prior?

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Posted By: Scot Reader

From PSA Pop Report, for what it's worth:

Burgess-Nash 2
Everybodys 0
Green Joyce 0
Mall Theatre 0
Successful Farming 3