condition rarity in e cards

[Archive]

Posted By: scott

as a newbie to the hobby specializing in e cards ,i've noticed that the percentage of caramel cards in midgrade or higher is significantly less then t cards.is this observation correct or is it just the scarcity of one to the other?if so ,why?
thanks,
scott

[Archive]

Posted By: Tom Boblitt

is that the adults were using the tobacco and not really 'playing' with the cards, while the kids were the ones buying the candy/caramels and they weren't taking as good of care of the cards as the adults........

[Archive]

Posted By: JimB

Your observation is absolutely correct. E cards are infinitely more difficult to find in high grade than mainstream T cards like T-206. Some T sets also have factors that make them difficult in high grade like T204 and T205 with their gold borders (T204s are also very thin). There are several factors that account for this. One is just that E cards are a lot less plentiful that T206s. I would imagine there are close to 100x as many examples of any given T206 than any E card. If this rough approximation is anywhere near correct, then statistically there would one high-grade E card for every 100 high grade T206. The other major factor is that E cards were packaged with caramel. Aside from producing stains, E cards were mostly handled by kids who were a lot less careful with their cards in general than the adults who got cards out of cigarette packs. When an e-card survives in high grade, it is a near miracle.

As somebody who has been working on putting together a high-grade E93 set for more than a decade, it is both frustrating most of the time and extremely gratifying when I find a nice example. I just picked up a nm/mt Wagner about a month ago and I can't say how thrilled I was to finally get ahold of that. Overall, I would say my set is about nm on average, but there are definately a few that I would still like to upgrade. The challenge is a lot of fun and very rewarding.

JimB

[Archive]

Posted By: John

There is no doubt that e-cards (most) are scarcer than the larger mainstream T-sets. Jim is right it also has a lot to do with who produced the sets. Many of the E-sets were regional issues vs. national issues making them far less produced. If T206’s were only made and distributed in Lancaster PA for example we would be saying that we could not find nice T206’s.

I keep hearing the theory on adults vs. children and why cards bought buy adults are in better shape. I don’t believe that who was buying it has anything to do with its condition. High-grade cards exist today because who ever bought them had no interest in them. They were (T&E) both placed in drawers, books shoe boxes etc and forgotten about. How many high grade examples of each is based solely on the amount produced at the time of production vs. the amount lost over time. The loved ones got placed in wallets, shirt pockets, backpacks taken overseas during wars etc. And those cards are the affordable items that most of us enjoy collecting today.

We also tend to forget that kids (13-18yrs) smoked and there were no or very few if any laws on the books preventing kids from buying and using tobacco products. My grandfather started smoking at the age of 12 he would have collected cards had it been 1911.

[Archive]

Posted By: identify7

I believe that adults are more likely to toss cards into a cigar box and look at them occasionally, while kids are more likely to keep them in their pockets to play flipping, pitching and other games with the cards.

[Archive]

Posted By: robert a

I remember talking to someone about how many adults likely opened their tobacco product and threw the card(s) in the street. They might have been picked up by kids eventually, but most adults probably just needed a smoke and not a card.

Or maybe they took em' home for their kids and kept them in fairly nice shape.

I think a fair mixture of both situations occured.

robert a

[Archive]

Posted By: tbob

An example is the E98 set where you can find SGC 50s and 60s as the highest graded examples of a particular card and only a couple have graded that high.

[Archive]

Posted By: Anson

Hey, I'm an adult and I like caramel as much as any kid.

I guess you can look at it from many different directions. However, one thing that holds true is that there are a lot less caramel issues than tobacco issues floating around.

[Archive]

Posted By: Scott Elkins

In fact, I had to get rid of my PSA 5 E98 Evers, b/c it didn't look real next to all my others (SGC 40's and below)!

[Archive]

Posted By: Colt McClelland

My personal opinion (as someone who has been collecting E cards for a while) is that the "condition" scarcity issue is much less of an issue than the basic scarcity issue (i.e. scarcity regardless of condition) when it comes to E cards vs. T cards. There are certainly high graded E cards out there. We don't see them very often, but we don't see a lot of E cards very often in any grade. The bottom line (imo) is that E cards in general are much more scarce than T cards, and it logically follows that high grade E cards are much more scarce than high grade T cards. I really don't think it has anything to do with who collected/discarded/etc. any of these cards back in the day. I just think that E cards are much more scarce than T cards in general, and therefore high grade E cards are much more scarce than high grade T cards. I think the number of cards we see on ebay day in and day out supports this.

As an aside, I think that the "E card bubble" that some have tried to explain/understand is nothing more than the value of E cards getting in line with the scarcity of E cards. E cards are very attractive, desirable cards to collectors, and they slid unnoticed, undervalued, and under the radar screen for years. The advent of the internet, Ebay, as well as the introduction of a whole new generation of pre-war collectors has brought E cards out of the dark and led to a more accurate valuation.

All of this is simply one collector's opinion, of course, and I invite some of the more veteran pre-war collectors to poke holes in my comments. That is what makes this N54 forum fun, after all.

[Archive]

Posted By: Anonymous

I agree with the fact that most adults threw away the cards. My late uncle said he used to pick up a ton of T cards from the subway floor after rush hour in Boston - smoking was more important than cards!

[Archive]

Posted By: BcD

I hate you now~

[Archive]

Posted By: Josh K.

ohh, I want that matty