T206 Back Rarity- Cost multiplier
 

There's been a lot of interesting posts about rare back T206s, and as someone relatively new to this world I'm curious how this forum generally sees the value of a card changing based on back rarity. Let's say your standard Piedmont/Sweet Cap Back is the baseline 1x value. Is polar bear a 1.1-1.2x? People will pay a little more for it, but not much. What about the others? To get started I'm using our favorite t206resource.com back scarcity rankings and creating tiers, but feel free to disagree with the tiers I'm creating:

Tier 1: Old Mill Brown, Lenox Brown
Tier 2: Broad Leaf, Drum, Uzit, Hindu Red, Lenox Black, Carolina Brights
Tier 3: Piedmont 42, American Beauty, Hindu Brown, Sovereign, Cycle, Tolstoi, EPDG
Tier 4: Old Mill, Polar Bear
Tier 5: Sweet Cap, Piedmont other than 42

For the sake of simplicity I'm not breaking the backs out by Series, but feel free to comment if you think that certain series of a brand belong in different tiers.

Thanks!

I think this is too simplistic. Your list does not account for series - BL 460 is on par with a Drum and Uzit, which is a tier above BL 350, CB, and Red Hindu. Sovereign 460s are generally tougher than 150/350. Some old mills are downright impossible, so you can’t discount/ignore front/back combos.

Brown old mills are only southern leaguers, there are only 14 confirmed examples, and there are no more than 2 of a confirmed example known. Plus, they are all graded A, bc they were scrap.

There is a reason the t206 set is called the “monster”. There are soooo many layers. All that said, if we are going to generalize, I would break it down like this in terms of back scarcity

1. Brown old mill and brown Lenox
2. Broadleaf 460, Drum, Uzit
3. Red Hindu, Black Lenox
4. Broadleaf 350, Carolina Brights, Brown Hindu (this last could go in tier below)
5. Sovereign 460, Piedmont fact 42, American Beauty 460, Cycle 460
6. EPDG, Tolstoi, Cycle 360, all other American Beauties
7. Other Sovereigns, Old Mill, Polar Bear, OM SL

Meanwhile Sweet Cap 350, 25s are very tough too
(SC 150, 25s can be tough too)

Totally echo Ryan's sentiment. I agree there needs to be more than 5 tiers, likely 8-9, as Ryan also alluded to.

Really appreciate the thoughtfulness put into the Tier List, I can definitely see how I'm oversimplifying things. Let's use Ryan's Tiers as the basis for the discussion.

Now to the question at hand: what is the typical premium on one tier vs another? For example, if I want to buy a Tier 3 (Red Hindu/Black Lenox), should I expect to pay 5x what the same card in the same condition with a Tier 8 (typical Piedmont/Sweet Cap)? 10x? What about for the other Tiers?

I'm getting better at understanding the market for Tier 8, but the smaller supply for the other tiers makes it harder to get a good read on it.

Thanks for the thoughts so far!

Tier 3 is in the range of having to go card by card.

Looking at prices realized for red Hindu, it's more than 5x, sometimes way more than 5x.

Thinking there is a multiplier for backs is just too simplified. As I mentioned, some front-back combos are near impossible. For example, old mill and Tolstoi are not particularly tough backs, but in some players, they can be downright impossible. Perhaps with commons, maybe PB, Sov 150/350, some old mill, Tolstoi, EPDG, and cycle 350 can have some multiplier (not sure what that will be)( and that is simplified, as there is nuance to each of these. But once you get beyond that, it’s all about the known population of the front/back combo.

Here is what I would do. First, familiarize yourself with the PSA and SGC population reports. Links below (in typical SGC fashion, they fucked up their population report and now it total eats shit (happily, Ryan Hotchkiss), and because you now need 8 characters for anything, you must type in t206 and then the back (cycle, hindu, etc))

https://www.psacard.com/pop/t206?byback=0

https://www.gosgc.com/pop-report

Next, I would sit down and read this Scot Reader’s book/paper on t206 (link below); it totally kicks ass.

https://oldcardboard.com/t/t206/Insi...al-edition.pdf

Last, I would search net54 for t206 threads and read as many as you can, with emphasis on Ted Z’s running thread

So the sweet cap 350 is more rare?

I’m probably the lone oddball on this site that doesn’t care what tobacco ad is on the back of the card. I collect baseball cards of baseball players, not tobacco ads.

For the most part I view the front/back vintage card scenario in the same way, but when it comes to the T206 set it is kind of fun to even get down to the factory #'s. I don't seek out the tougher backs, but I like the fact that, for example, that many of the players in the 150/350 print group of cards have either 4 or 5 different Sweet Caporal backs available to collect, and within this group there are varying amounts of availability for each of these backs.

Dang, the T206 is such a complex beast with sharp pointy teeth...it deserves a deep dive for those with large hobby lung capacities!

Brian

I can certainly understand why collectors may want to try to obtain all the different variations. It’s the thrill of the hunt. Everyone collects in their own way and style. That’s the fun of this hobby - there’s not just one way to do it!