Sets: How many really exist?
 

Picked up a 62 Jell-O Baseball partial set today (120/200) and got to thinking about how many complete sets of these are really out there. There is currently no complete sets in the PSA database. The only one listed is 57% complete. In addition, I am in the process of finishing the Dietsche Tigers 1907 set as well ( 80% done). Are there 10/100/1000 of these in private collections? Feel free to throw other sets you are all trying to complete as well. There is obviously no way to really know but was just curious on your thoughts and looking forward to hearing from you all.

The 1907 Dietsche Set of 15 is relatively easy. Cobb is expensive but available. If you want the Cobb fielding variation then it is "very hard " to complete. If you want the complete 1907-09 Dietsche Detroit Set I would think only a very few Sets of all 3 exist. I have one. If anyone else knows of one please list. This set was great but frustrating to pursue.
Not sure on the Jello Sets.

It is estimated that there are fewer that 10 complete 62 Jell-O sets in existence. I probably know a little about the only PSA set on the registry. ;) Would love to hear what cards were included in the partial set you got. After I get back my next few submissions I will be at near 80% complete. A complete set with numerical grades....I believe will be impossible.

E107
 

The E107 set has to be one of the hardest. I think there was a near set in the Chris Sullivan collection but don't know of any 148/148 in existence. Would be a major accomplishment of patience not even considering price. Would love to know if one or more exists(I don't track set registries so maybe my answer lies there)

From past forum posts, there have been at least 2 E107 sets that were closer than the Sullivan collection to being complete. Not sure if either were ever actually finished though. There are a number of sets such as N172, W600, E104-3 that are for all practical purposes, are impossible to complete as the full checklist is unknown. As far as sets that seem impossible, but have been completed, I would vote for Jim Blumenthal's N167 set. In general, I think there are a lot more sets completed and hidden in collections than we generally believe.

So you are near 80% and there are 200 cards in th set?
Wow.

With the exception of the relatively easy Mayo, A&G, and Goodwin Champ sets almost all 19th century sets are impossible or almost impossible to complete.

The 1923 W572 set has, to my knowledge, never been completed. There is one board member who is the closest I think there has ever been to completing it but even he is still 4 cards away and one of those 4 may not exist.

There are actually only 197 cards in the set. Three cards were omitted. #29, #82 and 176. And while 80% isn't "easy", it's nothing compared to the last 10%. The hard core collectors of this set have a good 20-30 years head start on me and it may take me that long to complete it. There are several people much more knowledgeable about the set than I am....I'm still in A ball while they are Hall of Famers. From what I gather, many people have tried to complete this set but gave up due to the difficulty in completing it. I've read where others completed the 61-63 Post and 63 Jell-O but don't even bother trying this one. So far, for me, it's been a labor of love!

can you elaborate on why the set is so hard to complete or why certain cards are tougher?

Lol, again, I'm kind of a rookie and my knowledge comes from the guys I consider the Godfathers of this set. But, in short, 1962 was basically a test issue and appears they were printed later in or after the season compared to the Post cereal brethren. The distribution was limited to the Midwest....specifically the Chicagoland area. Not much is known in regards to the exact distribution and quantities as all that information was apparently destroyed or just wasn't saved. Others can give much more detail as far as why some of the players are much more scarce. It has to do with being printed on either the 3oz or the 6oz box or being printed on both and if the were printed on the gelatin or pudding boxes or both. Lol, I try to keep it all straight but I have it written down as I can't always remember things as well as I used to. The funny thing, when you look on Ebay, is the asking prices for the Mantles. While Mantle is going to command a premium just for being Mantle, he is actually one of the easiest cards to find in the set.

thank you

Any one have any thoughts on the T206/ 1959 Home Run Derby or the 1963 Jell-o?

I believe it was discussed before, but it's interesting to know how many 518, 520 and 524 card T206 sets exist, as well as the T205 set. (raw or graded)

1936 Goudey Big League Gum's easy to complete by player fronts (25 total, biggest name is Greenberg). Master set of front/back variations hasn't been done (or accepted for registration by a grading company) due to uncertain master set size. 176 total is what I'm comfortable with, thanks to research done elsewhere on Net54. No telling whether any cards are shorter-printed that others. Because there's more Lefty Gomez and Chuck Klein front/back combos than others, it's possible they're double- (or triple?) printed.

Short story, lots of 1936 Big League Gum basic sets, zero known master sets.

I can add a little to the Jello discussion...via an article I read a bit ago that talks about distribution, flavor issues, etc. Has a nice chart of cards confirmed with which flavors.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...bbles-bobbles/

Love the 1959 HR Derby set. Very rare and very cool. I used to watch the re runs of the HR derby in the late 70s as a kid. Its one of the only post war sets I still own and love it!!

Why so hard?
 

I will take a shot at answering your question as I have tried to research this set over the years. Before getting started, wanted to throw a big shout-out to Tim for what he has accomplished towards building his Jell-O set in the very limited time since he started. And he is basically acquiring these cards in a card-by-card manner (as opposed to buying a large percentage of the cards at one time). In fact I know of no one who has made as much progress in putting the set together in the few months he has been at it.

So what makes this set so tough to put together. First there was a very limited distribution of the 1962 Jell-O cards when they were produced. It was a promotion that was a test to see the impact of cards on Jell-O product sales. As such, cards could only found in the Chicago/Milwaukee test area. And plans were that the promotion was to run for only 4 weeks. Thus very much different that the nationally distributed 1963 Jell-O cards in a lot of ways. All 197 players had cards that were issued on various packages of Jell-O gelatin. And some players also had cards on multiple gelatin flavors. But what the Jell-O folks also did in 1962 was to issue cards on 5 pudding flavors in addition to the gelatin flavors. Most of the stars appeared on one or more Jell-O pudding flavors (along with some "common" players). Because of these pudding box appearances, it is not hard to find most cards of the stars of the day as pudding was popular thus making more of certain players available (e.g. Mantle, Maris, Ford, Kaline, Cash, Fox, Aparicio, Killebrew, Snider, F. Robinson, Mays, Cepeda, Aaron, and Mathews were among the HOFers printed on pudding). There are probably around 64 players making appearances of pudding boxes with all of those players being not overly challenging to find.

So it is the remaining Jell-O gelatin cards only that have different degrees of difficulty in locating. And the cards that are really tough are the ones that were SOLELY printed on only one flavor of Jell-O that just did not sell that much. An example of one of those flavors is the small Black Raspberry Jell-O flavor. That is were the super tough cards of players like Maye, Spangler, Grammas, and Haddix were printed on.

One of the major issues from totally understanding the promotion is that there is not documentation that has ever been found that shows exactly which player cards came on each flavor and size of Jell-O (this exists for the 63 Jell-O set and all the Post Cereal BB/FB sets). As such, while there is a general understanding of which cards are tough and the level of difficulty of those cards, without a production list, it is very tough to tell why in terms of Jell-O gelatin flavors those cards appeared on. Some of us have started lists that try track which players appeared on which flavors of Jell-O, but with limited boxes and pictures of boxes available to see the flavor a player was on, those lists are probably far less than 50 percent complete. So I have likely rambled too much, but hopefully provided you a decent overview.

The 63 Jell-o set currently has 2 sets listed on the registry. Anyone want to venture a guess on how many exist?

More than we know about :)

My earliest complete sets are the 1933 DeLong (moderately tough) and 1935 Goudey, which if you're just doing card fronts, is relatively easy.

I have a complete E104-2 Nadia pirates set. Can’t be many of those. Not many cards in the set (I think 11) but they are pretty rare. If I could chose one complete to own, it would, hands down, be E107; with Rose Co. postcards coming in second

Set quantities
 

I’d be interested in guesses about the existing quantity of my completed sets and some others I am building :

e95 and e96 Philadelphia Caramel = I have low grade SGC full sets. Do you think there are a 100 complete sets ? Maybe a few less of e96?

e210-1 York Caramel type 1 = I have a SGC full set. No others in that registry.
Do you think there are more than 30 full sets out there?

e210-2 York Caramel type 2 = I have 90% but haven’t found another in years.
No one seems to care much about these, but I don’t think anyone has a full set. Doubters?

C46 imperial tobacco = I have 75%. These are not terribly difficult but lack of interest it seems keeps folks from doing the full set. I wonder if there are 50 of the full set out there?

Finally, T205. There must be hundreds of full sets. I have almost two. I’m interested to hear if someone has a more precise guess.

I have had T205 and T206 (520) complete since 1974. Finished E98 about 1980, and E95, T201, E90-3 and E101 over the past decade. Because I fly under the radar, I am guessing that no one would have calculated any of my sets in their guesses on how many complete sets of certain cards there are. How many others are there out there like me?
How many sets of 1955 Spic and Span do you think there are?

Guesses probably start with adding up the registry set totals and then multiplying by a factor of 3 or 4 times that number?

That multiplier number is probably higher on big sets like the Monster since grading that many cards wouldn’t likely appeal to older collectors.

So maybe 10x of the combined registry sets for T206?

Wayne97 just emailed me some of his calculations and if he wants, they could be posted here more globally. They discuss e95 and e96, but our viewers may want to speculate on practically any (prewar) set.

Does anyone else have set population theories? I’m liking this topic...

Before it’s forgotten
 

Congratulations on a great collection, Mike!
Very nice:eek:

Thanks for your post.

These three would be interesting to know.

I certainly would be interested in Wayne97 thoughts on E95 and E96.

e95 and e96 sets
 

The e95 and e96 sets are very popular ecards and fairly easy to finish depending on what grade a collector desires

e95 PSA sets 7 e95 cards graded 2034

e95 SGC sets 7 e95 cards graded 2441

e96 PSA sets 3 e96 cards graded 891

e96 SGC sets 4 e96 cards graded 1191

The above mention are complete sets, are only registery sets. The amount of cards makes it possible for several dozen complete sets in private hands. Yes, several cards are crossed back and forth for higher grades and into whatever grading company one likes, but a ton of graded examples, other ecards sets don't come close to these numbers and probability would be less sets

wayne

I would also add that E95 & E96 are very common ungraded as well. Out of curiosity, I just checked Ebay and without looking at price, multiple E95 complete sets, except for the Wagner, could be made just using the BIN feature (only 1 Wagner is currently listed and its an auction). REA alone has sold 5 complete and several more near E95 sets. Also, at the last White Plains show a dealer told me he had 3 e95 sets he was in the process of breaking. With all that in mind, it would not surprise me one bit if there were 75-100 of each of these sets.

DJ

complete sets
 

DJ,
That's in the area I was thinking too in my earlier post.

Remember that the OP was talking about complete sets and I presume that there are a LOT of partial sets out there, probably most of them needing Cobb/Wagner/Plank.

This thread is going in the direction I was hoping. I know there is no way to actually know the exact number of some of these sets but I really like to read what some of you have to say. The pre war conversations are especially interesting to me and I assume others as well. I am sure we will all be kicking ourselves about not completing this or that set. Thanks for participating in the conversation!

Yes, Andy is correct. There is no known completed set of 1923 W572s. It's not even certain that all of the 121 cards listed in the Standard Catalog exist. There are also B&W and sepia variations - and it's not known how many of either of those sets exist either.

Cheers,
Patrick

W515-2 Little Wonder Picture Series
 

I have a complete set of the 1923 W515-2 "Little Wonder Picture Series" with not a single W515-1, which are MUCH easier to find. That puts me about 87% further than the one and only PSA registry entry on this set...

<img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2888/33976990375_b06fe8a3cd_b.jpg" width="1024" height="986" alt="W515-2 (1-15)"></a>

<img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2827/33976990285_c1698f6762_b.jpg" width="1024" height="1001" alt="W515-2 (16-30)"></a>

<img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2914/33976990345_960cbce95b_b.jpg" width="1024" height="1019" alt="W515-2 (31-45)"></a>

<img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2944/33976990185_76933d8dfa_b.jpg" width="1024" height="987" alt="W515-2 (46-60)"></a>

That set is hilarious and eclectic and fun.
Many of the pictures aren’t flattering but hey, they were made for kids (by kids?)
Nice !
Thanks for sharing.

I like how the Detroit Tigers are spelled "Tygers".

A guess on T205 “base” 208-card sets would probably bottleneck on some combination of the Wilhelm and Wallace no-Cap (since “master set” collectors soak up 2 of each) and the Joss and the Chase Left Ear (since both are short prints of famous players also in demand by non-set collectors). I’d guess that a much larger proportion of those cards are ungraded as compared to Hoblitzell No-Stats or Matty Cycles. I’d bet that there are 150-250 complete T205 base sets out there right now.

T205 “master sets” would bottleneck on Hoblitzell No-Stats and/or Matty Cycle. I’d guess somewhere around 30-50 of those sets are out there, depending on how many of each card are ungraded.

Apparently the Cobb/Harry Heilmann/Heinie Manush 1920s Detroit team was sometimes referred to as the "Tygers" in local newspapers, when Ty Cobb was manager.

How many Home Run Derby sets do you think are out there? There were 4 complete sets on the all time registry and only 1 on the current registry.

I think there might even be more...

I haven't been out here actively reading in a couple weeks, so just catching up. Ken, thank you for the kind words. I consider you my mentor and one day hope to have a fraction of the collection of 62 Jell-O that you have, both quality and quantity.
What really prompted me to respond again was reading thru all the replies. This forum has some experts on many types of cards and you see a many responses and estimates of the pre-war sets referred to in the OP. The Jell-O just doesn't get the love it deserves. Albeit a post-war issue, the scarcity of this set is relatively overlooked. In comparison to the other sets noted, it most likely meets or exceeds the scarcity of the aforementioned sets in complete from. Then again, I'm just a post-war guy living in a pre-war world, lol! Great discussion guys!

Sets how many really exist
 

Wow, color me jealous. I am also working on a 62 jell-o set. If you don't mind me asking, where did you pick up the 120 card lot ? Thanks