M116 sporting Life rarities
 

Hey guys,

Quick question regarding some of the research done by Mr. Newcomb on the Sporting Life set; I've noticed that for the most part, the "Over 300 subjects" backed cards are given a higher ranking as far as how scarce or rare they are. For instance, the Eddie Collins Over 300 subjects back is a 5 and the blue background Collins is only a 2. Now, how come the blue background has a higher SMR than the Over 300 back in this and other cases? Might be a dumb question, but im just wondering because im always wanting to pay a little more if i see a rare card even if the SMR says its worth less than a farely common blue background. Any help on this subject would be appreciated, thanks!

Josh B-ham

The blue backgrounds are a bit better looking, to most. That might be the reason they command a premium.

This is true, they do look much nicer for the most part. Thanks! Those are nice blank backs, love the Johnson!

From my experience, there's definitely a premium with all the blue background cards in general. I'd say 2x the value of pastels at least...for some of the top-tier HOFers, maybe more. The blue backs are extremely attractive cards, like Leon was saying, although I'd say they're more plentiful than the "Over 300 Subjects" backs.

I think the Sporting Life agreed on the "eye-appeal" factor as well. In the rare instances I've seen ad-pieces or panels from this set, they've always consisted of bluebackground cards like the group below....

Attachment 104087

blue bkgs
 

In addition to the reasons Leon and Brian mention, I think over the years a lot of people, rather than tackling the entire 300 cards, have opted to collect only the 24 blue background cards as a kind of "platinum" subset, given all the HOFers in the first two series. That has made the blues more pricey even though all the evidence suggests they are actually more common.

Tim