T206 Back Scarcity, Pricing, and Other Tidbits
 

Hello and welcome to my post that will contain a lot of words about T206 back collecting and pricing.

When I go through buying binges, I have to follow them up with cooldown periods to refill my hobby bankroll, and given that I did not win the recent billion dollar Mega Millions jackpot, I am in a cooldown period. During these times, I typically look into T206 research projects to keep me busy and engaged with the set when I am not actually buying cards.

Yesterday I bought a 1 day pass to VCP and grabbed a ton of price data for T206, and I am going to use this data to write a few words about a subject that is really interesting to me, and that is T206 off back collecting/pricing/scarcity. As my T206 collecting has evolved, I've taken a keen interest in the off backs, how people treat them on the market, and how pricing and demand has changed over time. I will use this first post in the thread to add thoughts as we move forward. All data will be what I collected on 09Aug

A few caveats on the data itself that will apply to all writings I end up putting in this post.

• The VCP data is not great in a lot of respects, but it is ultimately the best data source available for this kind of project, short of hand recording the result of every auction. VCP data covers not just ebay, but most of the major auction houses too, which is important for offback data.
  
• VCP lumps together all Piedmont (except Fac 42) and SweetCap sales, which is...not great! But it isn't as big an issue as
  
• All Sovereign sales are lumped together, which creates issues. We know the premium associated with the tougher Sov150s and Sov460s in general. No way to distinguish the difference for a subject with a Sov150 and Sov350
  
• American Beauty 350 and 460 with Frame are lumped together under just a listing for "American Beauty With Frame"...the 350 No Frames are their own separate listing, which is good at least.
  
• For the analyses I am going to do, I did not include data for half grades, because the numbers would just be too small to draw any kind of conclusions.
  
• I combined the sales by number grade for PSA and SGC. That is, I downloaded all the data for PSA 1s, and SGC 1s, and then I averaged those two together. I did the same for 2s, 3s, and 4s. For modern cards, we know PSA commands a big premium over SGC. But for prewar, and especially T206, the difference is not nearly as big (if any at all), and I think averaging them together increases the sample, which is important when we are talking about small samples.
  
• I am only looking at data from 2021 and 2022. If a card's last sale was 2020 or earlier, I removed them from my sample. Honestly, the 2021 data is probably not super relevant at this point, but again, small samples.
  
• VCP uses a formula for calculating their average. I took a screenshot of it and will include it as an attachment here. For some of these cards, there will literally only be 1 sale....which isn't really an average. Small samples, etc.
  
• The VCP data is obviously only factoring in graded cards, and we all know that tons of raw cards, common backs and off backs, are being bought and sold every day. So this is only going to give us a decent approximation. But its something, right?

I may add more caveats as I think of them, but I think that sums it up for now.

Entry #1, 10Aug2022

The first thing I wanted to look at was how pricing is today, compared to the back multiplier data that Scot Reader put out in 2012. If you haven't read Scot's piece, check it out here:

https://t206resource.com/Article-T20...ltipliers.html

I used Scot's updated 2012 numbers in the chart I will show below.

For this first analysis, I focused only on what I consider "Commons"....that is, I removed the 74 HoF cards, the SLers, and then two other groups that I thought would skew the data. I call these two groups "Low Pop" cards and "Tough Cards"...the Low Pop group consists of commons that are in the top 100 most scarce cards based on total population. I will provide a list here as attachment number 2. For the "Tough Cards" group, I included non-HOF cards that command a premium...think Hal Chase, the Black Sox guys, cards that were hoarded (Adkins, Titus), the 6 horizontals, and other popular cards that always command a premium over a regular non low pop common.

What I wanted to look at for the commons (325 subjects not excluded based on the above paragraph) was what kind of premium the various off backs commanded, and compare that to Scot's research from a decade ago. Here is the resulting chart:

https://i.ibb.co/2skKZDQ/Summary-1.png

It should be fairly easy to read, but I will outline it in detail, and then my takeaways:

* A reminder the 1, 2, 3 and 4 is the average sale of a PSA 1/SGC 1. So for a Piedmont/SweetCap, it was $59. A 2 has an average sale price of $79, and so on. After the PSA/SGC 4, the "Avg" is the average cost of all Piedmont/SweetCaps, grades 1-4. Sample applies for all the off backs.

* The AB with Frame for a PSA/SGC 1 is $259, a 2 is $314, and so on.

* The "Multiplier" section of the grid is the multiple above a Piedmont/SweetCap that the off back command. For example, $254 for a PSA/SGC 1 AB with Frame is 4.3x the price of a Piedmont/SweetCap. ($254/59 = 4.3). The "avg" column in orange is the average multiplier for all grades, 1-4.

* The 2012 Multiplier comes from Scot's research, which is linked above. Scot's data presumably included Hall of Famers and SLers, so I don't think it should be compared 1:1 for this first exercise. I will be doing a separate analysis which includes the HoFs as well, but I am focusing here only on commons.

Now, my takeaways/comments:

* I debated not including Hindu Brown in this exercise, because it is much more rare than the other offbacks listed, but that is generally where I draw the line in terms of thinking about the offbacks in two distinct groups. You have what is listed in the table, and then you have Carolina Brights, Drum, Hindu Red, Lenox and Uzit, all of which are so rare and command such a premium, that really analyzing them here is kind of pointless. You might see one of those backs hit the market in a year for a common, and if you do, the expected price will be all over the place depending on how many people are chasing that back. Its hard to analyze that, imo.

* The first interesting thing that jumped out to me is that the multiplier for the offbacks declines as the grade increases in most cases. For example, a Tolstoi in a PSA/SGC 1 has a multiplier of 3.9, whereas a PSA/SGC 4 has a multiplier of 2.5. It is not purely linear, but you can see the decline in most of the backs as the grade increases. Polar Bear and Old Mills are not linear, and the Old Mill in a 2 looks like an outlier.

* According to this data, Tolstois still command more of a premium (3.2x on average) compared to EPDGs (2.8x), and anecdotally, I would not have expected that, as EPDGs seem to have really gone up in price recently.

* Cycle460s have a much higher multiplier in Scot's numbers from 2012, and I suspect that is because the HoFs with Cycle460 backs command a huge premium. It is still the most expensive multiplier here for commons outside of Hindu Brown, which as I noted above, you could group Hindu in with the other "ultra rare" backs like Drum, Lenox, Uzit, and CBs.

I am going to write more about the Hall of Famers in a separate post (maybe the next one?) and I want to also talk about population reports and relative scarcity in more detail, as I think it gets at a really interesting concept when thinking about back collecting and off backs in general.

Anyway, for now, I hope this starts a good discussion, maybe others will have things they want to add, and it might spark some interesting ideals to look at for future posts. I am probably going to just update the first post of this thread with future writings and bold them out so it is easier to navigate, instead of scattering new content throughout the thread.

Thanks for reading, I know back collectors are a niche within the T206 set, but I know there are a bunch of serious back collectors here, and guys with a lot more knowledge than me, so hopefully this will generate some interesting discussion.

Entry #2, 12Aug2022

I appreciate the feedback on the first entry, so I wanted to keep writing. In looking at the data, I decided to make 2 key changes which I think will help smooth out the data and make it a bit more meaningful.

• In part 1, I noted that I created two separate groups from the commons, low population and "tough"....I decided that ultimately, it makes more sense to group these 2 sets of cards together into one group, which I just renamed the Tough group. These cards are reasonably close enough in price, and as I noted, they do sell for a premium over regular commons, but they come in, for the most part, under the price for Hall of Famers. From the images I attached below, you can just combine those 2 groups now into the one condensed "Tough" group.
  
• After looking through the data for this post, I realized the easiest way to clean up the Hall of Famer data and make it presentable was to remove the outliers into their own separate group. As we all know, there is a pretty wide gap between a Green Cobb and a Jake Beckley, and looking at them together creates a pretty big skew/spread. So what I did was remove 7 cards from the main 74 card HoF subset. Those 7 cards are: the 4 Ty Cobb cards, WaJo Portrait, Mathewson Portrait, and Cy Young Portrait. Those cards all sell for $4,000+ on average in a PSA/SGC 4, and are outliers. I could have dropped the threshold slightly and included some of the cards that typically sell between $3k-$3500, but for now, I think removing these 7 cards and putting them in their own sub-group makes the most sense.

To illustrate why I think this is necessary, here is a quick chart showing the average cost of a Piedmont/Sweet Cap back for the newly aligned groups.

https://i.ibb.co/SRRHm2M/Summary-2.png

HoFE stands for "Hall of Fame, Exceptions"...I didn't have a better name/abbreviation for it, apologies. Those 7 exceptional cards sell for, on average, 10x more than a regular Hall of Famer.

So now that we have the HoFs better grouped, I wanted to look at the multiplier data for the 67 Hall of Famers that remain.

https://i.ibb.co/5MXtzrR/Summary-3.png

Because we are dealing with smaller samples, there will be some outliers in the bunch. I did not find any AB350WF HoF sales in a PSA/SGC 4 in 2021/2022. It is possible VCP missed one, but nothing on my list. In this chart, I used the updated multiplier from Scot Reader that he provided in the thread. I will also eventually re-do the original chart I posted in entry #1 to include these numbers

A few things that interest me in this data for the HoF

* As Scot noted in the thread, the multiplier for HoFs is much more narrow than it is for commons/other cards in the set. From this list, the Cycle 460, Hindu Brown and AB No Frame all have basically the same multiplier.

* Tolstoi coming in at a 1.4 multiplier is a tad surprising to me. EPDG comes in at 2.2, and I can only assume that is because for a lot of the early, desirable HoF, the EPDG back is the toughest or second toughest back behind the Hindu Brown

* The AB No Frame sale driving that wild multiplier is a Lajoie Batting. An SGC 3 sold in August 2021 for $18,600 through REA. The previous sale of an SGC 3 (it was a different example of the card) sold in October 2020 for $12k. Nice little price spike there.

* To give you an idea of the small numbers we are dealing with here, this is a quick summary of the Cycle 460 sales in the 4 grades in 2021/2022. The following cards saw a sale for each of the grades:

PSA/SGC 1, (4): Bender No Trees, Chance Batting, Tinker Bat Off, Willis Batting
PSA/SGC 2, (3): Baker, Mathewson Dark Cap, Willis Throwing
PSA/SGC 3, (3): Bender No Trees, Crawford Batting, Willis Throwing
PSA/SGC 4, (2): Griffith Batting, Young Glove Shows

Not a huge sample there.

* Because they lump in all of the Sovereign data together, it isn't easy to parse out the differences between a Sovereign 150 and 350 for the fronts that have both backs. Sovereign 150s for HoFs command a premium, from what I've seen anecdotally.

* Looking at Old Mills is also interesting. I threw together this quick chart with the multipliers for a few of the early HoF portraits that had at least some data for both Old Mills and Sovereigns. The Old Mill carries a premium. People have also caught on to the fact that there are tons of commons where the Old Mill back is the most scarce, with a lot of those cards having less than 10 combined graded copies. Those prices seem to have really jumped in the last year or so.

https://i.ibb.co/KXBd33f/Summary-4.png

Someone really wanted that Waddell portrait in the Old Mill 3 back.

Last chart for this entry is sort of an overview of what I have come up with so far.

https://i.ibb.co/r3yh75T/Summary-5.png

This shows the multiplier for the off backs for the 4 subsets of players, and then an "All" which averages the price of off backs for all subjects, not broken down into the different groupings. As a reminder, the multiplier is calculated by dividing the average of the off back with the average of the Piedmont/SweetCap in the same grade.

For example: A HoF PSA/SGC 1 averages $266 in a Piedmont/Sweet Cap, while it averages $695 in a PSA/SGC 1 with an American Beauty No Frame back. That is a 2.6 multiplier.

For "All", as an example of the above, the average PSA/SGC 1 for Commons + Tough Cards + HoF + HoFE + SLers is $145. The average of a PSA/SGC 1 with an AB350 With Frame back is $329, which is a multiplier of 2.3. You get the idea.

* Looking at these summaries, a few things jump out to me. Across the 4 main groups (Commons, Toughies, HoF, HOFE), the higher the grade, the lower the multiplier. This seems counterintuitive to me. Higher grades = lower population counts, which you would think would drive more competition and a higher hammer price relative to the common Piedmont/Sweet Cap back, but that isn't the case, for the most part.

* Southern Leaguers in Hindu Brown and OMSL backs command higher premiums in higher grades, at least when comparing a 1 to a 4.

* EPDGs have one of the smallest spreads from a PSA/SGC 1 to a PSA/SGC 4. The average for Piedmont/SweetCaps (for all groups of fronts) from a 1 to a 4 looks like this

P/SC 1, $145
P/SC 2, $200 (1.4x a PSA/SGC 1)
P/SC 3, $295 (2.0x a PSA/SGC 1)
P/SC 4, $467 (3.2x a PSA/SGC 1)

The EPDG spread for all groups looks like this

PSA/SGC 1, $408
PSA/SGC 2, $547 (1.3x a PSA/SGC 1)
PSA/SGC 3, $626 (1.5x a PSA/SGC 1)
PSA/SGC 4, $651 (1.6x a PSA/SGC 1)

This would seem like an opportunity to pick up a nicer grade EPDG without paying as much of a premium.

Adding a few other stray thoughts now that I have some time.

* Perhaps the most interesting thing to me is that the biggest multipliers are all for common backs. On one level this does make sense, as commons in a Piedmont/Sweet Cap will have the lowest price, but it is interesting that buyers will pay a big premium to get an off back of a common, but won't pay a premium to get an off back of a Hall of Famer. Would you rather have a Cycle 460 back of Bradley Batting (pop 12) or WaJo pitching (pop 11)....the data indicates you are likely to pay a bigger multiplier for the Bradley card than the WaJo.

* Polar Bear backs for the HoFs buck the trend slightly, as those command a very slight premium compared to commons with a PB reverse. Perhaps this is due to the more abundant populations across all of the cards in the Polar Bear set.

* A common with a Hindu Brown back in a PSA/SGC 3 commands more than 3x that of a HoF in the same grade. That is pretty wild to me. Hindu Browns for SLers command between a 4-6x multiple over the OMSL back. At a glance, I'd have thought that number would be higher given the smaller subset of SLers that have a Hindu Brown back, and the big spread in population numbers between OMSL and Hindu Brown

Last update for Entry #2, just something to look at for fun. I pulled out all of the subjects from my data that had at least 10 different sale points, ie, at least 10 different front/back/grade combos. I wanted to fit this all in one graph, so you may want to open in a new tab and zoom if it is too small to read

https://i.ibb.co/kcvWhN2/Summary-6.png

Nothing much to add here, just thought it was interesting.

Entry #3, 18Aug2022 - Raw Card Prices v1.0

Check out this post for more info/data: https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...98#post2254398

• As you remember from an earlier post, VCP groups together all SweetCap and Piedmonts (except P42) into their data, which is why I merged the PSA 1/2 averages at the top.
• BINs and Offer Accepteds were grouped together and separated out from auctions. Terapeak's filters there aren't great, so I just combined BIN and Offer Accepted.
• The numbers here include ALL CARDS except Cobb, Matty and Cy Young + the Demmitt PB that sold raw
• There were almost 7,000 Piedmont backs sold in the last 365 days, or about 19 per day. 3,269 SweetCaps, or about 9 per day.
• For all backs in the chart, there were 11,900 total sales, or about 33 per day. If you take the above numbers, that means that 28 out of 33 cards sold every day on ebay is either a Piedmont or SweetCap.
• Polar Bears make up by far the next highest total, with 816 sold (7% of all T206 raw cards sold)
• On the other side, I could only see 5 total AB 460 backs. I don't have comparable data for the graded cards because of the weird way VCP lumps in the ABs (and the Sovereigns)
• Sovereign 350s far out pace the 150s and 460s in terms of volume (205 vs 48 vs 47) but the 150s sell for a much higher average price than the 350s.
• The spread between the price of auction and BIN/Offer Accepted does vary greatly, which I think is kind of interesting, because it skews in different directions pretty drastically, likely impacted by one or two really high or really low sales

Anyone, discuss amongst yourselves, I gave you a topic. I'm going to keep tinkering with my methods for collecting raw card data and hope to have something more detailed and granular to dig into. Until next time..

Entry #4, 21Aug2022

What is the toughest possible off back set (No Piedmont/SweetCap) that you could put together?

See post #49/50 for the answer https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...47#post2255347

thanks for the info

James, great post! I look forward to reading more. A couple quick thoughts/replies:

1. I totally agree with your discussion about Hindus being the line, and feel you put them on the right side of the line. They do not compare to Carolina Brights, Broadleafs, and the other rare backs. But they are certainly more rare than the mid-tier backs. I guess they kind of fall in their own place, or maybe get grouped with American Beauty, who is a step above EPDG, Cycle and Tolstoi. Regarding Hindus, I especially love all the portraits and southern leaguers.

2. Great point about the scarce cycle 460 HOFers perhaps throwing off Scot’s 2012 weight. The same scarcity tends to exist for American Beauty, and also with some (not all) Sovereigns. Series 460 can be tough indeed.

3. I like that you point out that not all Sweet Caps are the same. Specifically, series 350 factory 25s can be downright impossible sometimes. I have found 150, 25s can be tougher too (compared to 150, 30)

4. Personally I strongly prefer series 150, when a combo can be found in 150 vs 350 (see Cobb bat on, Wajo portrait, etc). Series 150 is 1909. They are the “OG” t206s. They are the first and the oldest, and I think that is cool.

I look forward to more posts

Here is a mid-tier combo

Cool article! Nice dive into the recent market on these.

Look forword to your next installment

Hi All,

The back multipliers at the below link are more current than those in my 2012 piece:

http://www.t206insider.com/store/c1/insider#checklists/

David Hall and I also collaborated on a couple of back scarcity articles which are published on the PSA website.

Scot

Great info here!

Chad

This is a wonderful post, thank you for the information!

Thanks for this Scot, I must have missed it. I will update my chart accordingly and use those updated numbers in future updates.

Ryan, I agree with your comment about the SC 350/25s....some of them are just impossible. The real shame is that factory numbers were not tracked from the beginning by PSA (and not at all by SGC), so we don't know the true counts, but I think it is clear that the SC 350/30s far out number the 25s in most all cases.

On a semi-related note, certain brands, often. the "lesser" ones (i.e. not Sweet Cap or Piedmont) have much better image quality. I've always thought that was interesting.

Here’s a link to one of the back scarcity articles.

https://www.psacard.com/articles/art...ifferent-backs

In terms of pricing, I know that P42 has not held up to the 8X that I originally assigned. It’s more like 4X now. I’m sure some other multipliers have changed for better or worse.

Also, the back multiplier for HOFers is (and always has been) less than advertised—typically about half. So for example if a Ganzel CB sells for 25X a Jimmy Collins CB might sell for 12.5X.

brown hindu's are up

need to check my backs, great information

Thanks for that link.

The interesting thing about the Piedmont 42 backs is that they SHOULD command a pretty big multiple, imo. When I last did my combined population report update (PSA + SGC) a few months ago, I had 73 subjects that had at least 1 example of a factory 42.

The front with the highest population was the Red Cobb, with 29 combined copies between PSA and SGC. By comparison, there are 474 Polar Bears, 68 Sov350s, 84 Tolstois, and 173 Old Mills of the Red Cobb.

The average combined population for the 73 different cards is 7. There are 23 cards with a pop of 5 or less. Baker has a pop of 5, compared to his Hindu Red (11), his AB 350WF (27), his Cycle 460 (12), and the 5 is the same count for his Broadleaf 460. I'd imagine the BL460 would sell for a ton more, despite them having the same scarcity within the back run.

Lajoie With Bat is the same deal. P42 pop is just 3, whereas the Uzit has a pop of 4 and the AB460 has a pop of 8.

Hi James

My tally regarding the PIEDMONT 460 Factory #42 is 72 subjects. How did you come up with 73 ?

Checklist......

350/460 Series............63 subjects

Ames (hands over head)
Baker
Bender (no trees)
Berger
Bradley (bat)
M. Brown (Chicago)
Burch (fielding)
Chance (yellow portrait)
Chase (blue portrait)
Chase (dark cap)
Cobb (red portrait)
Cobb (bat off shoulder)
Conroy (bat)
Davis (A's)
Crawford (bat)
Donlin (bat)
Doolan (bat)
Dougherty (arm in air)
Downey (bat)
Larry Doyle (bat)

Elberfeld (Washington-fielding)
Evers (bat-yellow sky)
Griffith (bat)
Jennings (one hand)
Jennings (both hands)
Johnson (pitching)
Jordan (bat)
Joss (pitching)
Kleinow (Boston)
Konetchy (glove low)
Lajoie (bat)
Lake (no ball)
Leach (cap)
Leifield (bat)
Magee (bat)
Manning (pitching)
Mathewson (dark cap)
McIntyre (Brooklyn & Chicago)
McQuillan (bat)
Mullin (bat)

Murphy (bat)
O'Leary (hands on knees)
Overall (yellow sky)
Pelty (vertical)
Pfeister (throwing)
Reulbach (no glove)
Rucker (throwing)
Seymour (throwing)
F. Smith (Chicago & Boston)
Snodgrass (catching)
Stahl (glove)
Steinfeldt (bat)
Street (catching)
Sweeney (fielding)
Tinker (bat off shoulder)
Wagner (bat on right)
White (pitching)
Wilhelm (bat)
Willetts
Willis (bat)

Willis (throwing)
Wiltse (throwing)
CYoung (glove)



460-only Series............9 subjects

Chase (Trophy)
Latham
Marquard (follow thru)
Merkle (throwing)
Schlei (portrait)
Schlei (batting)
Schaefer (Washington)
Seymour (portrait)
Wiltse (portrait-cap)



TED Z

T206 Reference
.

I have a complete t206 tinker bat off back run (don’t have t214). It started because I bought the Uzit and I figured I had the toughest so why not shoot the moon? The brown Lenox was most difficult, and I believe is a 1 of 1. But aside from the that and the Uzit, which is wicked rare but was easy bc it was the first I got, the Pied fact 42, the AB 460, and SC 350, 25 were the most difficult.

Here is link to the back run: https://www.flickr.com/photos/156271...57703248205622

I totally overpaid for my Pied fact 42, which is a relative beater. When I got it, there were two known and people one had 3 sides trimmed to the picture (it’s been on eBay for years). Then last year a very pretty mid-grade popped up and my buddy bought it for 1/3 of what o paid for mine 4 years earlier.

Bottom line Pied fact 42 does not get anything close to the premium it should based on rarity alone. That’s probably bc it’s still a Piedmont and most people don’t care about the factory (or series), especially in Piedmont and sweet cap.

Ted, the one I had in my spreadsheet that isn't on your list is Murray (Portrait)

PSA shows 1 graded, a 1.5. T206resource also includes Murray Portrait on the P42 checklist

Agree, but here is why that is odd to me. Back collectors are a niche within the T206 set. Most people probably don't care about the backs at all, and that is cool. But if you are putting together back runs, you obviously have researched the various backs, you know what goes into it, you understand scarcity. So it is weird that a very scarce back like Piedmont 42 would be so undervalued, relatively speaking.

I sort of equate back collectors to sharp bettors in Vegas. They look below the surface and have requisite knowledge to parse out the rarity and scarcity numbers. I can understand "the public" breezing right past the P42s because "its just a Piedmont back" but back collectors are savvy and understand the different between a Sweet Cap 350/25 and a 30, and they definitely know the difference between a P42 back and a Piedmont 25 back.

Based on my numbers (which are a few months old), there are 526 total examples of P42 backs spread out among the 73 subjects I have data for. Here is how that stacks up with the rarer backs:

Carolina Brights: 883
Broadleaf 350: 619
P42: 526
Lenox Black: 479
Hindu Red: 322
Uzit: 298
Drum: 249
Broadleaf 460: 101

Would you have guessed there were more BL350s out there than Piedmont Factory 42s?

James

Over the past 16 years, I have helped two Net54 guys complete their PIEDMONT #42 runs; and, we have compared notes. Years ago, we thought Murray/P#42 existed.
But, these two guys never found a Murray (portrait) card with a #42 back.

We are convinced PSA's pop report in this case is in error.


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

Wow, great info in this post!
Thanks for all the research and for posting here!

Hi James,

It's a PSA label error, I posted a scan of it in Ted's T206 reference thread it's in the "Thread Hi-Jacked" section.

Attachment 529283

Thanks Pat, I will zero him out on my sheet.

Working on a post about the Hall of Famers in off backs, and let me tell you, the data is messy!

I added "Entry #2" to the original post, with some more data on Hall of Famers, as well as a summary of the data by player group, which I think is interesting.

If you spot any errors or issues, please let me know. I have to run now, so I wanted to hit submit so nothing got lost. I may update entry #2 at some point with a few more thoughts.

* Looking at these summaries, a few things jump out to me. Across the 4 main groups (Commons, Toughies, HoF, HOFE), the higher the grade, the lower the multiplier. This seems counterintuitive to me. Higher grades = lower population counts, which you would think would drive more competition and a higher hammer price relative to the common Piedmont/Sweet Cap back, but that isn't the case, for the most part.

Super interesting info here, great work James!

A quick thought that jumped out to me about the diminishing multiplier with higher grades, is the fact there may be less competition (in terms of # of bidders) as people start getting priced out..thus bringing that curve down.

Myself, trying to build a raw set, I'm curios what raw card sold history would look like? (Or if this data is even something you could gather)

-Ryan

Raw card data would be amazing, but unfortunately, I don't know of any way to really do it. ebay only shows you the last 90 days of sales under completed listings, and that would be limited to just ebay. Most of the big auction houses don't sell raw singles, everything is graded, but they do sell lots/collections of raw cards, but parsing out that info would be really tedious.

If there is a better way to get automated or semi-automated raw card sales data, I would be all ears. I too am focused on a raw set, and when I look at the raw values, I just have to estimate and assume a small discount from an equivalent grade down to a raw card. So if a PSA 3 sells for $100, I would expect to pay like $80-90 for a similarish condition raw card. Its very inexact in that way, of course.

https://i.ibb.co/kcvWhN2/Summary-6.png

Added this graphic to the end of Entry #2 in the first post, this is the last thing I have for right now. I pulled out all of the subjects that had at least 10 data points to look at, that is, sales of 10 different front/off back/grade combos. These are the multipliers. None of these had a Hindu Brown sale, so I just omitted that from the chart to make it fit into the post without having to scroll a ton. Enjoy

This is all awesome info, well done. Am I reading this chart correctly when I see a yellow Chance CYC350 PSA1 for $208 (1.0 mult.)? If so, that’s an amazing deal, that Chance is one of those cases when the 350 is tougher than the 460.

Correct, it actually sold back in June on BIN, and my guess is it got snapped up quickly

https://www.ebay.com/itm/195144890408

Wasn't trying to skew the numbers...

T206
 

Fabulous work, guys! This is an awesome thread!

Yeah he’s a fun one. Here’s mine.

It might be worth using CardTarget for some of these with low samples.

http://www.cardtarget.com/cards/146129

Nice research. Thanks for sharing..
.

Curious if anyone knows of any hoarder who might have the most copies of any one T206 card - and if so - about how many they have.

This was probably up there for most copies of one front hoarded

https://robertedwardauctions.com/auc...uding-psa-sgc/

What a punk. Lol.

lol
.

300+

Some might have even more. There are quite a few cards that are hoarded.

Are you sure we aren't talking Miller Obaks? Three hundred is a lot of any card!
I have a few dupes, meaning quantity 2 :)....

To the subject, I have never thought P42s get their due rewards.
.

I was doing some research yesterday on raw card sales and saw this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/384949345645

Instant sadness. I literally try and click on every Piedmont 350/460 listing to check for hidden factory 42s and I somehow missed this. It sold for the price of a lower grade raw Factory 25 back. Sure, it has a hole punch and some writing, but I count 10 total copies graded between PSA and SGC. So bummed I missed this.

I had been watching that one all week James. Somehow I missed it as well...I snagged this one a while back. It wasn't listed in the title or description as a P42, and the picture of the back (as you can see) wasn't the best.

Along the same lines as the Sweet Cap. 350/25's

Great spot there, Ryan.

I think it was Luke who had noted this on his site that the Factory 42s have a "longer" string of print text, things are spaced more, so in some cases even if the back image is tougher to read, the Piedmont 42 cards have a longer string of text at the bottom than the Factory 25s. It definitely jumps out to me more now when I am spot checking cards on ebay.

I'm currently working on a way to better catalog raw card prices, still haven't perfected it, but I feel like I am getting there at least. Hopefully will be able to share some insights on that in future posts in this thread.

As noted the Tinker is quite tough, I think there are 4-5 known now.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...024c1467_b.jpg

That's a really sharp card there, very impressive.

There are a ton of very very low pop P42s. My data on pop counts is a few months old (will be updating soon), but based on what I have, I have the following cards with 5 or less combined graded copies between PSA/SGC

(5): Baker, Bradley With Bat, Chase Blue Portrait, Jennings One Hand, Schlei Portrait, Seymour Portrait, White Pitching, Willetts

(4): Chase Holding Trophy, Davis (Davis on Front), Leifield Batting, Marquard Pitching/Follow Through, Mullin With Bat, O'Leary Hands On Knees, Steinfeldt With Bat

(3): Lajoie With Bat, McIntyre Brk+Chi, Pfeister Throwing, Wilhelm Batting, Wiltse Pitching, Wiltse Portrait With Cap

(2*): Tinker Bat Off

* The Tinker pop report is wrong. PSA shows a triple 0 for his P42 population, but Ryan has a P42 in a PSA slab that he linked to earlier for his completed back run. SGC shows 2 of them, the one Chris posted, and then an SGC 1.5. We also know that PSA did not track factory numbers early on, so there are likely a few Tinker Bat Offs with a "T206 Piedmont" on the slab that is actually a P42 back.

Thanks James. I know of 4 Tinkers, Ryan, mine an Authentic and a board member owns another.

The Chase was also very tough, agreed these are definitely underrated.

https://live.staticflickr.com/5498/1...4874a306_b.jpg

James, missing from your low PSA Pop, Piedmont 460/42 list is Willis Batting. There are only 5 listed. Not sure how many SGC there are. I have a PSA 5.5 & it's not listed in the Pop report.

Thanks, I had that one at 7 total copies between PSA/SGC

new content added to the main post, pasting it in here for those who stopped reading the updated first post!

Entry #3, 18Aug2022

This will be a shorter entry here, but I felt it was interesting enough (to me) to add into the main post. As I noted in the thread, I am trying to work on a way (using my average Excel skills) to better capture raw card sales data. I still haven't worked out a way I love yet, but I have been playing around with Terapeak the last few days, and I was able to put together some generalized data. Terapeak allows you to pull data on sales up to 365 days old. You can only view the actual auctions for the past 90 days, but Terapeak keeps records of the sale price, shipping, date, etc for 365 days. For the purposes of this quick exercise, I realize I cannot drill down to the player level, but I figured that if I stripped out the exceptional HoF cards, I may be able to get data that is at least interesting to look at until I come up with a better method.

So, in the Terapeak search box, I used a string similar to what I use when creating ebay alerts for myself, adding in excluders like -reprint -rp -renata -honus etc to try and weed out all the junk that typically shows up, and I also added excluders for PSA, SGC, BGS, BVG, GMA, etc, to remove all graded cards. Once I had this list filtered, I sorted for most expensive cards and then least expensive. Terapeak shows you 50 results per page, so I was able to manually exclude a few graded cards that didn't include the grading acronym in the title, I removed a Demmitt Polar Bear because it would skew the avg price of a Polar Bear sale, and I also added in excluders for "cobb" "mathewson" and "cy" to remove those super expensive cards. I could have removed them manually, but that was too much work. I essentially wanted to compare the Commons, Tough Cards, and HoF outside of the most expensive in the set against the data from VCP for graded cards. This data is not perfect, and should taken with a grain of salt, but I think its a decent enough approximation to discuss.

I decided to do a quick search for the common backs and then the offbacks. I did not bother with any of the very rare backs since they sell so infrequently, and they are almost always graded when they do sell. Here is the chart, with an explainer below

https://i.ibb.co/5xtp1tC/Raw-18-Aug2022.png

• As you remember from an earlier post, VCP groups together all SweetCap and Piedmonts (except P42) into their data, which is why I merged the PSA 1/2 averages at the top.
• BINs and Offer Accepteds were grouped together and separated out from auctions. Terapeak's filters there aren't great, so I just combined BIN and Offer Accepted.
• The numbers here include ALL CARDS except Cobb, Matty and Cy Young + the Demmitt PB that sold raw
• There were almost 7,000 Piedmont backs sold in the last 365 days, or about 19 per day. 3,269 SweetCaps, or about 9 per day.
• For all backs in the chart, there were 11,900 total sales, or about 33 per day. If you take the above numbers, that means that 28 out of 33 cards sold every day on ebay is either a Piedmont or SweetCap.
• Polar Bears make up by far the next highest total, with 816 sold (7% of all T206 raw cards sold)
• On the other side, I could only see 5 total AB 460 backs. I don't have comparable data for the graded cards because of the weird way VCP lumps in the ABs (and the Sovereigns)
• Sovereign 350s far out pace the 150s and 460s in terms of volume (205 vs 48 vs 47) but the 150s sell for a much higher average price than the 350s.
• The spread between the price of auction and BIN/Offer Accepted does vary greatly, which I think is kind of interesting, because it skews in different directions pretty drastically, likely impacted by one or two really high or really low sales

One thing to add here that I didn't add in the main post (will edit it later) is that I think the interesting thing to remember here is that a common/less famous card is more likely to sell raw than graded, I would think. You see a few raw copies of like a Chance Red Portrait or Brown Portrait or Lundgren Chicago, but those cards are getting graded at a higher frequency than Casey, Wright and Pickering. Still, it is interesting to compare the average cost and to look at the volume of off backs that sell raw.

Nice research, good stuff.

This one came as a request in another thread, so I am adding it here so I can easily find it again

Entry #4, 21Aug2022 - What is the toughest Off Back Set Possible?

So this question was posted in another thread: what would be the "toughest" set you could put together using only off backs (ie, no Piedmont/Sweet Caps)

This is something I have thought a lot about. I have an Excel file that has combined populations (PSA+SGC) for all 520 cards. I update it every 6 months or so. And I consistently look at those extremely low population cards with envy. So this was a perfect chance to dig deeper into the numbers and see what the toughest set would look like, if you wanted to put together a 520. This is going to be a LONG post with tons of huge graphics. Its the only way I know how to do it, so apologies in advance.

We will start as we normally do with caveats

* The PSA and SGC pop reports are problematic. In some cases, quite problematic. PSA has gone through a number of iterations with how they have cataloged cards in their pop report. Starting with just "T206", which is extremely unhelpful for a back collector, then eventually graduating to something like "T206 Piedmont" which is only slightly more helpful, and then eventually getting us to where we are now, which properly identifies the series and the factory (where needed)

* Where does it hurt the most for an exercise like this? For cards that overlap in different series. For example, if a card has a Sovereign 150 and a Sovereign 350 back, there are slabs out there from PSA that just say "T206" and some that say "T206 Sovereign" without a series designation. So getting exact counts is impossible.

* PSA has also misclassified certain cards (and I think it happens when that player has multiple poses), so there are absolute errors in the pop report that make you think there is a front/back combo that has a pop 1, when in fact, it is just an error. Not great.

* SGC has done a good job of cataloging cards by series/year, for instance, all Piedmont 150s get a 1909 Piedmont Cigarettes designation, which helps. That helps to solve the Sovereign issue, but unfortunately, they do not track factory numbers for SweetCaps, which is a huge problem. SGC also has cards misclassified. It happens, unfortunately.

* These counts only show graded copies, obviously. If you've been hanging around here long enough, you have seen a TON of very rare front/back combos posted in raw form. These aren't factored in. In some cases, these raw examples are snapped out of a PSA/SGC holder, which makes it all the more difficult to really know how rare a card is.

* When thinking about these cards, another thing to consider is "how likely is card X to get graded, compared to card Y?"....T206 collectors with a modest knowledge of the set understand that certain backs (Broad Leaf, Hindu, Uzit, etc) are very rare. When those cards are found, I think it is reasonable to assume that they get submitted for grading (and sometimes snapped right back out!) compared to, say, a Polar Bear. Of course, there are a lot of Polar Bears graded, a lot of plentiful Old Mills and Sovereigns too. I think those tend to tilt things both ways. A Black Lenox back may only be the 4th most populous for a front, but I think we can assume that a higher percentage of the Black Lenox's for that front have been graded, compared to say an American Beauty or EPDG (or especially a Piedmont/Sweet Cap)

Because we have 520 cards to look at data on, I am splitting this up by PRINT GROUP to make it slightly more manageable, and I think splitting it up by print group also lets us see a few cool patterns. Now that I've yammered on and on, lets start. I again used Scot Reader's scarcity rankings (http://www.t206insider.com/store/c1/insider#checklists/) and so if there is a tie between 2 backs, the tougher back goes first. Obviously.

** one final note. You can only post a max of 18 images per post, so I have to split this into 2 posts **

** second note. I color coded the grids. It might look "busy" but I think it actually helps to spot patterns and it makes it easier to distinguish the backs instead of just walls of text **

*** final warning....if you aren't interested in looking at the card by card stuff, I put summaries after each chart by series, and you can always scroll to the bottom of the 2nd post a see a summary ***

PRINT GROUP 1 // 150 Only Subjects (no 350 Series Backs)

https://i.ibb.co/Ct66M7t/1-150only.png

This should look pretty standard. For 8 of the 11 cards, the toughest back is going to be Brown Hindu, followed by Sovereign 150. These are the only 2 off backs available for these 11 cards

Toughest Back Summary:

Hindu Brown = 8
Sovereign 150 = 3

PRINT GROUP 1 // NO 150 Series Backs and limited 350 Series Backs

https://i.ibb.co/hDXn5hy/1-350-ONLY.png

These 3 cards are all very well known and do not require a ton of explanation. The Old Mill is the toughest back of the 3 by a huge margin over the Sovereign 350. Elberfeld Washington Portrait has only the Old Mill back and it is more plentiful than the other 2. It is also very very expensive.

Toughest Back Summary:

Old Mill = 3

Print Group 1 // The rest

https://i.ibb.co/vxkLchg/1-1.png
https://i.ibb.co/N7VtsNp/1-2.png
https://i.ibb.co/7J0QbZh/1-3.png
https://i.ibb.co/YDmJbx8/1-4.png
https://i.ibb.co/mN2HVzw/1-5.png
https://i.ibb.co/ScVF30Z/1-6.png

Toughest Back Summary:

Old Mill = 94
Sovereign 150 = 20
Hindu Brown = 18
EPDG = 10

Some of the population numbers on those Old Mills is just nuts. Good luck finding them.

Print Group 2 // 350 Only Series

https://i.ibb.co/N1th5WS/2-1fix.png
https://i.ibb.co/rFPZ6p1/2-2fix.png
https://i.ibb.co/NTTtKGS/2-3.png
https://i.ibb.co/vL5Z4NY/2-4.png
https://i.ibb.co/kxJTLbF/2-5.png
https://i.ibb.co/QXX5Mcb/2-6.png
https://i.ibb.co/wSQWT2G/2-7.png
https://i.ibb.co/tbzGDPf/2-8.png

I mean, too many cards to really dig in on here. I caught one notable error, I think it was SGC's pop report had Bender With Trees as having a Hindu Red back, which it obviously does not. If I missed any others, let me know.

Toughest Back Summary:

Drum = 85
Broad Leaf 350 = 60
Carolina Brights = 28
Tolstoi = 18
AB 350 With Frame = 5
Cycle 350 = 3
Polar Bear = 2
Sovereign 350 = 1

part 2 incoming...

** part 2 **

Print Group 3 // Odd Balls 350 / 460

https://i.ibb.co/xDfSTyH/3-350460.png

7 odd balls here, for various reasons.

Toughest Back Summary:

Old Mill = 2
Lenox Black = 2
Drum = 1
Tolstoi = 1
EPDG = 1

Print Group 3 // 350 Series with both 350 and 460 Series Backs

https://i.ibb.co/6WMBHdt/3-1.png
https://i.ibb.co/z5n9VkY/3-2.png

Imagine having a Broad Leaf 460 back and it only being the third scarcest back for your card. There are 6 examples in this batch of that scenario (Baker, Elberfield Fielding, Reulbach No Glove, Rucker Throwing, Street Catching and Willis Throwing)

Jennings Both Hands is an interesting case. The Cycle 460 only has 7 graded copies, while the Uzit, one of the overall toughest backs in the entire set, has double that amount with 14.

Toughest Back Summary:

Lenox Black = 14
Drum = 13
Lenox Brown = 10
Broad Leaf 460 = 10
Hindu Red = 5
Uzit = 2
Cycle 460 = 1

Print Group 4 // 460 Series Only

https://i.ibb.co/37DFGmH/4-1.png
https://i.ibb.co/Wyk5fTL/4-2.png

This is one of my favorite groups of cards in the entire set. Such a cool set of patterns.

Toughest Back Summary:

Uzit = 17
AB 460 = 11
Cycle 460= 6
Lenox Brown = 5
Old Mill = 5
Hindu Red = 1
Lenox Black = 1

Print Group 5 // Super Prints

https://i.ibb.co/hsvtzMV/5-fixed.png

It takes some kind of courage/insanity to complete these back runs. I tip my cap to you

Toughest Back Summary:

Drum = 2
BL 460 = 1
Hindu Red = 1
BL 350 = 1
Carolina Brights = 1

Print Group 6 // Southern Leaguers

https://i.ibb.co/kGrxwqm/6-1.png
https://i.ibb.co/kxqg3wf/6-2.png

Not much to add here. 34 of the Southern Leaguers were printed with a Hindu Brown back, the other 14 only have an OMSL and Piedmont

Toughest Back Summary:

Hindu Brown = 34
OMSL = 14

~~ Summary ~~

If you want to put together the 520 Set and grab the scarcest back (in terms of combined PSA/SGC population), then you would be buying the following:

https://i.ibb.co/vw2wnb4/summary-3.png

Final thoughts for now:

* I did my best here, if you spot an obvious error, let me know.
* I do not include the printer's scrap backs (Blanks, OM Brown, OM Blue, etc) because they weren't put in packs, they are anomalies. They are super cool, I just do not track them in my spreadsheet and I almost count them as their own mini set.
* I updated my population counts a few months ago (4 months ago?) so if numbers are off by 1 or 2 now, well, I apologize. I will likely do another update again in a few months.
* I really love exploring the depths of this set


updates 1: fixed Schulte Front View
updates 2: fixed Ames Hands Above Head
updates 3: fixed Willis Portrait
updates 4: Bender With Trees Tolstoi has been confirmed, so re-added
updates 5: added in a few confirmed pop 1 Tolstois (Stephens, Thomas, Hoffman STL)
updates 6: added in Cravath BL 350 (though not in the pop reports, has been confirmed)
updates 7: removed the Cobb Red BL 350 since it appeared to be a pop report error.

bonus content. This chart here shows the cards where the 3 scarcest backs all have a combined PSA/SGC population of 3 or less.

I would say these cards would be insanely difficult to complete back runs for

https://i.ibb.co/hx6dX7V/summary-3fix.png

And if my numbers are right, the hardest back run of them all is technically Doyle With Bat, that has 3 pop 1s (BL 460, Drum, Hindu Red). The BL 460 shows up as possible on T206resource. SGC shows an SGC 1 copy graded.

That is...tough.

Wow
Thank you for doing this

I love baseball cards and data, this is fantastic. Great research

if you spot any errors, please let me know and I will update. I will track the updates at the bottom of post #50 on the last page.

Brilliant work. Best I’ve ever seen. I just wish you’d waited another five or 10 years or so before you posted it. :-) Lots of open secrets about back scarcity are now a lot more open.

This is really amazing, thank you for putting this data together. Great presentation with the different colors too. Very easy to read.

Tolstoi Danny Hoffman
 

Now for the really hard part . . . Plenty of cards graded by PSA and SGC don’t get entered into the pop reports. Here’s an example: Danny Hoffman with a Tolstoi back. It isn’t listed on either pop report; hence, it isn’t on your rankings. But I remember very well when this one sold in 2016. It even says Tolstoi on the flip. I’ve never seen another one.

https://sales-history.pwccmarketplac...y%20Hoffman%20

Quick follow-up note: To see the Tolstoi Hoffman scan you’ll need to scroll down a little ways after clicking the link.

Yep there are definitely items missing, some items were crossed over so they are "double counted", etc.

On one hand, these are "open secrets", maybe, on the other hand, none of this information is actually secret. I think my interest in this is partly because I love the T206 set, and partly because I am very much into data and trying to see things from different angles.

I think a lot of the types of people who collect master sets or some type of version of a master set already knew 99% of this information. If a few more people are now clued in that might mean I miss out on a few cards, but I can't worry about that.

This is as much a piece of American history as it is a hobby of mine. I like sharing data and information and learning something new, so hopefully it proves useful to others too.

T206 overload!!! I love it James. Thank you for doing this. Makes me realize how much I'm living (financially) in the print group 1 realm when it comes to trying for harder backs to include in my off-back set build. It's interesting to note, I just picked up a Bill Hinchman Sov.150 (raw) on eBay for about $5o. Theres a poor graded Hindu currently listed for $7oo, yet your research shows a pop. of 14 Sovereigns (#1 toughest back) compared to 20 Hindus (#3 toughest back)...sometimes the overall scarcer back is going to trump the actual scarcer back...an album full of Sovereigns or an album full of Hindus?

Similar effect with the aforementioned Piedmont 42's.

This is where it gets dicey because of the way PSA previously cataloged Sovereigns. There are likely a few 150s out there in just "T206" or "T206 Sovereign" holders that would shift the counts slightly.

In Print Group 1, there are 68 subjects (updated this, initially had 71 but my sheet was filtered incorrectly) that have both a Sovereign 150 and a Sovereign 350. The exact counts of those is likely impossible to determine. In that subset of 71, 44 of them also have a Hindu Brown back. In most cases, the population of the Sov150 is close to the Hindu. There are a few interesting cases, however, where the Hindu is much more rare than the Sovereign 150. Those are:

Bradley Portrait: 18 Hindu // 31 Sov 150
Davis: 14 Hindu // 33 Sov 150
Joss Portrait: 14 Hindu // 30 Sov 150
Wagner Bat on L Shoulder: 14 Hindu // 30 Sov 150
Young Portrait: 19 Hindu // 33 Sov 150

That's because PSA used T206resource checklists but they haven't updated their pop report data in several years to include newly confirmed cards
and Danny Hoffman wasn't confirmed with a Tolstoi back until 2016 so if PSA doesn't update their lists you won't see that combo in the pop reports until SGC grades one.

I have a few T206's that are recently graded PSA cards with all the info on the label that aren't listed in their pop reports or set registry.

Also, I am going to fix some of the formatting/sizing on the charts tomorrow, because it will drive me insane if I don't. I will wait to see if anyone finds any other errors or things I need to fix before I re-create the charts and update them.

A very minor nit . . . In post #62 above, did you mean to say Wagner left shoulder instead of right shoulder?

Separately, another example of a 350-only Tolstoi back that isn’t in either of the pop reports is Stephens. I believe it probably is scarcer than any of the backs shown in your spreadsheet.

Yep, I fixed that Wagner notation, good catch.

Here’s another “pop zero” 350-only Tolstoi: Ira Thomas. This is the only copy I’m aware of that’s been graded by PSA or SGC.

https://bid.robertedwardauctions.com...e?itemid=98759

Thanks to everyone that commented/PMed me about errors and items to add that are not in either the PSA/SGC pop report.

I really wish they had a functionality where you could submit updates/corrections to the POP reports and they'd be handled quickly. Some of us take this very seriously!

Anyway, I have re-formatted the charts to remove a few little things that were bugging me, and I made in the updates people provided. A change log is at the bottom of the last post on the last page.

As I noted, I plan to re-update my population counts again in a few months, and if anything changes, I will be sure to update it here.

Fantastic data and research. Serious thread of the year candidate right here.

So now that I've had a chance to kind of zoom out and look at the data I put together, I have some thoughts:

* Old Mill is underrated as a back, in general. And it is not just the 150 series HoF, there are so many very low pop Old Mills. Print Group 2 Old Mills are more plentiful (around 30 or so combined copies per front), Print Group 3 are plentiful (around 40-45 per front, on average), but they got tougher in Print Group 4, averaging only about 26 per front. Within Print Group 4 there are a bunch of very tough Old Mills, including 12 subjects that have less than 10 total combined copies. McGraw Glove at Hip has 105 copies of a Sovereign 460 back, but only 8 Old Mills, for instance.

* The American Beauty 460 sub-group is really fascinating to me. The same 12 cards mentioned above in the Old Mill group are very plentiful in AB 460 backs while being very very hard in OM backs. That group is

Crandall With Cap
Devore
Duffy
Ford
Gandil
Geyer
Hummel
McGraw Glove at Hip
Pfeffer
Sheckard Glove Shows
Tannehell (Tannehill on Front)
Wheat

These 12 cards all share a very similar card profile that I find super interesting:

-- AB 460 backs are very plentiful
-- Sovereign 460 backs are very plentiful
-- Tolstoi backs are very plentiful
-- SweetCap Factory 42 backs are very plentiful

-- Old Mill Backs are very scarce
-- EPDG backs are scarce
-- Polar Bear backs are scarce (relatively)
-- Cycle 460 backs are scarce

* Tolstoi backs are either very very rare or very very plentiful as a whole. The average number of Tolstoi examples for all subjects is 17, based on my numbers. However, there are 50 subjects with a pop of 5 or less! Tolstoi is generally not considered rare (by T206 standards) but as we see above in the charts and in the comments, there are a ton of very rare Tolstois out there and I am sure a few more will continue to pop up.

* I know this is bordering on sacrilege, but is it possible that Hindu Brown is.....overrated? According to my numbers, the average combined population for Hindu Brown per front is 20. That isn't Polar Bear, sure, but the average is also higher than Tolstoi, per subject, as noted above. Yet Hindu Browns command a massive premium over all the other moderate off backs. Now, there aren't any fronts that have a massive number of Hindu Browns. I count a total of 11 subjects that have 30 or more combined Hindu Browns:

- Bresnahan Portrait
- Fritz (SL)
- Greminger (SL)
- WaJo Portrait (38 examples, most populous)
- Leifield Pitching
- Lipe (SL)
- McCauley (SL)
- Persons (SL)
- Revelle (SL)
- Shaughnessy (SL) (38 examples, most populous)
- Sullivan

Of those 11, 7 of them are SLers.

On the flip side, there are only 8 subjects that have 10 or fewer Hindu Browns:

- Delehanty (Washington)
- Ewing
- Killian Pitching (7 copies, rarest)
- O'Leary Portrait
- Owen
- Schmidt Throwing
- Stone
- Wilhelm Hands At Chest

For those 8 cards, the Hindu Brown is not the clear cut scarcest back in a number of cases:

- Delehanty (EPDG is more scarce)
- Ewing (Hindu Brown is the most scarce)
- Killian Pitching (Hindu Brown is the most scarce)
- O'Leary Portrait (Old Mill is the most scarce)
- Owen (Old Mill/Hindu Brown are tied for most scarce)
- Schmidt Throwing (Old Mill is the most scarce)
- Stone (Hindu Brown is the most scarce)
- Wilhelm Hands At Chest (Old Mill and Hindu Brown are tied)

Hindu Brown is definitely a rare back, it was only available during the early part of T206 production, but is the price people are willing to pay a bit distorted based on population counts and relative scarcity? Not sure. Maybe?

For the “Exclusive 12,” do your numbers show that these subjects are unusually scarce with Sweet Cap Factory 42 overprint backs? See Duffy, for example. Similarly, do your numbers show these subjects are relatively more plentiful with red Hindu backs? That’s been my experience, and Ted Z has pointed this out many times.

And on a personal note, would some kind soul out there please sell me an EPDG Hummel? Any condition will do!

Here are the numbers I have on the Exclusive 12

https://i.ibb.co/x2z8yqg/Exclusive12.png

* Hindu Red for those averages 16 per front

* The average for the other subjects with a Hindu Red excluding those 12 is only 4. So they are exponentially more populous with Hindu Red backs than the other subjects that have a Hindu Red back

* The SC 460/42 OP average for all fronts that have at least 1 copy is 12, and the average for the Exclusive 12 is 8, so slightly lower. A few are quite rare (Devore, Pfeffer), but of course we don't really know how many of these exist because of labeling issues

One of the big thrills for me, when looking at that last table, is that we should expect to find an Uzit for those remaining where the cell is blank. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't, and we know that if it does, we'll likely only find a small handful.

Everyone wants to own a Honus Wagner (I do, as well) but what I would really love would be to have old records from ATC that detail print runs, how many were actually made of each, etc. There are so many mysteries and things we don't know, and finding that set of written books/ledgers would be even more exciting to me than the next Drum or Lenox or Uzit find.

Grazie.

You’re right about brown Hindu backs being overrated, of course. But they look so, so cool.

When I look at the numbers, the glaring candidates for most overrated are the Polar Bear Demmitt and O’Hara. I realize these subjects are less common than most Piedmont and Sweet Cap backs, and it’s also true that every 520 set needs both. But they are not rare. A Tolstoi Demmitt (N.Y.) is far rarer than a Polar Bear Demmitt (St. Louis), just as an Old Mill Magee is much scarcer than a Piedmont Magie error card. Maybe someday more Monster collectors will care.

James

1st
For the past 7 years, I have been working to achieve a complete RUN of the Exclusive 12 group. Five years ago, I acquired the UZIT McGraw
which completed his 13-card run......

http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...dHINDUsgcX.jpg . . http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...ZITxSGC30x.jpg http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...loveUZITxb.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...dHINDUsgcB.jpg


http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...VxPd4xPBxx.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...SOVxPd4xPB.jpg
Factory #42.....................Factory #42




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http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...xAB460xOMb.jpg




http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...tory30xx12.jpg . . http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...YCLE460x18.jpg . http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...CLE460x18b.jpg
Factory #30


The total count for this 460-only Series group is 156 cards. At this point in time, I have over 100 cards into this project. About 50 more to go.
And their UZIT backs will most likely prevent me from attaining this goal.


2nd
I for one do not care to own a Honus Wagner (it is overrated). The thrill I got when I acquired this unique McGraw / UZIT card was tremendous.

Furthermore, so was my acquisition of Eddie Plank....SWEET CAPORAL 150 (Factory #30)


TED Z

T206 Reference
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I'm of two minds on the O'Hara and Demmitt. I mean, the only way to get that FRONT is to get a Polar Bear back, and there are a finite number of them available, thus, limiting the ability to get a complete 520 set to whatever the actual population is on those 2 cards. My counts from a few months ago have Demmitt at 292 and O'Hara at 269. There is a raw Demmitt on ebay now. Where I do agree though is that the Southern Leaguers, though expensive, are FAR less expensive despite their low population counts. For example, the 10 cards with the lowest TOTAL populations (all fronts/backs) are

O'Hara STL (269)
Demmitt STL (292)
Cranston (366)
Violat (379)
Helm (389)
Mullaney (391)
Ryan (411)
Hickman (422)
Perdue (423)
Greminger (426)

There are about 100 more copies of a Cranston compared to O'Hara STL. That is a difference....but is it that huge of a difference? You can pick up a Cranston in low grade for less than $150-200. O'Hara STL goes for like $3k-4k now.

Theoretically, the max number of T206 520 card sets is 269.....obviously there are likely a bunch of raw copies out there, and I suspect some of the cards have been crossed over so the 269 is close, but not exact. If we say 300, that means there can only be 300 sets of 520, which does make that card pretty important, all things considered. Assuming you care about a 520 set, of course :)

The idea of putting together a master set is really interesting. I assume David Hall gave up on his project because he started to hit a lot of the 1 of 1s and when he found who had the card and they said they wouldn't sell, he didn't want to wait 5 years to see if another copy surfaced.

James, I think there are far more than 100 copies of Cranston compared to O'hara. I know there's raw Demmitt on Ebay now but that one was even an attempted grade. You rarely see a Demmitt or O'hara that's not graded today but there are lots of ungraded southern leaguers. A search I just did on ebay resulted in 77 graded and 38 ungraded southern leaguers.


I just did a quick search of past sales for Demmitt, O'hara and Cranston this is the graded vs ungraded numbers

Cranston 322 total
250 - graded
72 - ungraded

Demmitt 234 total
223 graded
11 - ungraded

O'Hara 210 total
206 graded
4 - ungraded

Sure, there are definitely more copies of Cranston than there are O'Hara, but I guess the question is, how many more? From your numbers, there were 112 more sales of the Cranston than O'Hara. So there are more, definitely. But, do you think are, say 600 Cranstons in total? 700? If there are, say, 50% more Cranstons than what shows up on the combined pop report, then are there are also 50% more copies of a more common card like Herbie Moran?

My point was more, the O'Hara/Demmitt are very rare. But based on population reports, the Southern Leaguers are also very rare but do not command anywhere near that premium. An O'Hara costs basically 20x a Southern Leaguer, and if you map that out, then 20x the population would be like 5300, and I think we can agree there aren't 5300 copies of Cranston out there.

It is all relative, obviously. My point was only that in degrees of rarity, the pricing never seems to line up properly.

I was mainly just questioning the number comparison of the Cranston's to the O'Hara's. The degree of rarity and pricing has always been all over the place in the whole set I don't think there are many examples where they do line up.

Using Ludgren as one example his total pop numbers are 580 for Chicago and 489 for KC but his KC cards sell for 20% of what his comparative Chicago cards sell for.

James I'm pretty sure the Cobb Red portrait isn't confirmed with a Broad Leaf 350 back did you find one in the pop reports?