Posted By:
runscottOkay, here's an obscure list to debate.
I've been trying to complete a t206 HOF portrait collection in vg to vgex condition for about a year, with appearance the priority - color, registration, no creases that break the paper. I've learned a lot during the process, such as: most of the green-background cards I found had poor color, but when there was lots of green ink they looked great. Others, like Beckley and Willis were very easy to find, but looked horrible unless they had good registration. Others look so good when printed correctly, that you just can't settle for one with poor color or registration - Evers, Clarke and Huggins are examples of this. Some, like Griffith, Bresnahan and Walsh, still look good when color or registration are slightly off. Chance orange and E.Collins seem to look bad no matter how they are printed. Based on the preceeding qualifiers, here's my difficulty list, toughest first. In some cases I might have gotten lucky and found a difficult card early and stopped looking - Cy Young was one of my first - but most have been upgraded at least once, some such as Matty, many times. I found the top 4 on the list to be especially difficult, and still don't have a red Chance.
1.Frank Chance (red)- tough to find
2.Tinker - tough, backgr. varies between red/orange
3.Jennings - extremely tough to find with color,reg.
4.McGraw - lots of "low ink" cards, reg. can be off
5.Chesbro - reg. can be off, tuff to find in nice cond.
6.Lajoie - reg. problems are common
7.Evers - background ink, reg. problems
8.Joss - moderately hard to find w/good color,reg.
9.Collins,E - reg. is tough (ugly to begin with)
10.Beckley - reg. is tough, but card is common
11.Clarke - color and reg. is tough
12.Willis - color and reg. is tough, but an easy card
13.Collins,J - reg. is tough
14.Brown - when found, color and reg. are normally good
15.Huggins - reg. can be off
16.Cobb (green)- background color problems, trimming
17.Waddell - reg. can be off, beautiful when perfect
18.Young - probs w/low background ink
19.Keeler - almost always looks nice
20.Bender - reg. can be off
21.Marquard
22.Johnson - reg. can be off, but it's fuzzy anyway
23.Wallace - easy
24.Mathewson - reg. and color normally good
25.Cobb (red)- reg. problems
26.Walsh - reg. and background color can be off
27.Chance (orange)- reg. poor to begin with, easy card
28.Griffith - easy
29.Bresnahan - easy