Why are certain pre-war cards so scarce?

[tbob]

Certain color variations of cards can be very scarce with no rhyme or reason to their difficulty. My nominee is the E98 Lajoie with red background. There's been a lot of debate on the board and elsewhere as to which background color (blue, green, orange or red is the toughest) and there doesn't seem to be a real consensus. For a while, the popular argument was that the red background cards appeared less often and were presumed toughest, but arguments have also been made that the other colors are equally tough. Having collected several sets of these cards over the years, I have noticed that certain players in certain colors seem to pop up very infrequently but none more infrequently than the red Lajoie. I have a theory that one reason for their infrequency is that the E93 has the same pose and has a "reddish" background (although not the bright red background, but a muted red background) and thus has mistakenly found its way in to some E93 sets. The only E98 red Lajoie I have owned was purchased in an E93 PSA holder and when I cracked it out and submitted it to SGC, it temporarily appeared in an E93 SGC holder before the problem was finally resolved and it now appears in the correctly described holder, although sadly I no longer own the card.
Having collected many, many E94s and E98s over the years, I have never run across another card with as strange a scarcity level as the E98 red Lajoie with no seeming explanation.

[Exhibitman]

I can think of several reasons:

I thnk we tend to project a modern collecting mentality into a throw-away promo production of 100 years ago. In other words, a possible reason there are fewer of any given variety of a card is that they didn't really care about making even numbers at the outset.

Other cards were chase cards, and not necessarily that we know of at this time.

Other cards were just some printer's idea of a good move, like some of the midstream team changes, probably. Could even be as simple as running low on one color and deciding not to do as much of that color to fill out the print job.

Some cards are cheap efforts to reuse whatever art was laying around while labeling it as new. The silhouette PC Back Exhibits come to mind.

[tbob]

All good observations, but with the red Lajoie, the Lajoie card itself is not scarce within the set compared to other cards. Also, the red backgrounds are not, in and of themselves rare in general within the set, yet the red Lajoie is without a doubt the toughest card in the set. Another interesting card is the E98 Ed Walsh. Walsh is one of the toughest cards in the set and yet whenever one pops up for sale, it's a red one almost every time. Green and orange Walshes are very, very tough to find.
Yup, maybe it's just a boring Sunday afternoon and a lot of collectors here could care less about caramel card variations, even though the E98 is a very mainstream set, but I found it interesting

[Bridwell]

We have few facts, only theories.

Regarding Red Lajoies, and other rarely seen cards, perhaps:

1. There are more of them, but they are safely tucked away in private collections, safe deposit boxes and etc. If someone put together a basic set 20 years ago, they might have a few scarce color variations in there and it won't be known to the net54 group until someday they sell out.

2. I agree with the theories of unequal production. Perhaps the red ink ran out before the Lajoie sheet got printed. Perhaps somebody lost count and ran only 1 sheet of red Lajoies instead of 5. Perhaps some sheets were miscut and not used. Perhaps the red Lajoie was accidently left off of a red sheet with other players, and added later after many sheets were run.

3. Maybe a collector was secretly hoarding them a long time ago!

[vintagecpa]

When you consider these cards had to survive two world wars and a depression, it is amazing there are the numbers available we see today.

[Tim Kindler]

Tbob,
I have to agree with you that the Lajoie in red is one of the tougher E98 colors to find. I have only seen 2 of them before, the one you showed and the one that I have. I had mine, sold it with many other E98s that I had at the time to fund my Cobb with an Old Put Back purchase, and then bought it back earlier last year. I wish I had some insight to why certain E94s, E98s, or any other cards with certain front color variations are harder to find than others, but I don't. I just know that in my experience, cetain ones are definately harder than others. As for E98s, there are certain cards that are very scarce with certain colors including some with blue, green , or orange backgrounds. Of course when I say scarce, I mean that I have never; or at least seldom seen them come up for sale with that color background. Many of the ones which I think are scrace may be tucked away in collections somewhere and not really scarce, but they just never appear. I wish there was a way for the Registries to document the populations of the different colored backgrounds, but I guess crazy , insane E98 lovers like me would be the only ones to want such wacky information
Here's mine, best of luck finding one tbob and I wish myself luck on finding the ones that are not on my E98 Color Registries.

[caramelcard]

When I was collecting E98s in bunches, I eventually accumulated enough to where I felt comfortable saying that I didn't think any color was that much harder than another. I had less green than any other color with over 100 cards.

I do agree with Bob that certain players and player/color combos are tougher than others.

E98s were given away with some sort of product on the east coast. Ed Walsh was probably not as popular as some of the other players included in the set for the folks who wanted either players from their team or Cobb, Young and Wagner.

I think the Vaughn and Coombs are tougher because folks (probably kids) threw them out instead of hanging onto them right when they got them. Same with Kling, Dahlen and McClean.

I also think it's possible that certain colors were give out with particular products. Some products may have been a bit more popular then others. The storekeeper could've lost or ruined a huge stack of red cards when they were new.

Rob

[shimozukawa]

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[tbob]

Thanks for all the responses, I appreciate them and was interested in reading different theories. As far as the red background E98s go, having seen some shoebox collections come out of the woodwork the last 9-10 years, I don't believe any one color can definitively be said to the toughest color. The problem is that even in population reports from PSA and SGC that the background colors are not separated out so we have no idea which colors are contained in the registry sets.
I still think it is odd that the red background Lajoie is so rare, not only when compared to other Lajoies but also to all cards with their background colors in general but the red background Walsh is so plentiful when compared to the other colors of Walsh cards in the set, although Walsh E98s in general are very tough to find.
Maybe some day we'll know but I think it may be one of the mysteries in life that is never answered.

[tbob]

If anyone reading this thread has a red E98 Lajoie in their collection, I would be interested in hearing about it. Even if it is not for sale, it would be helpful. The only two I have ever seen are the one I had which I sold to Rob D. and is on his webpage and which is shown above and Tim's which he has shared a scan of above also.