[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by UKCardGuy

In an attempt to be partially scientific about it, I ran some quick stats from Ebay (/Sports Trading Cards/ Baseball Cards) for sales of different sets on the basis that the sets that have the most sales are the most popular and hence the most collected.

These are the results...you're mileage may vary.

Search Term Quantity
--------------- -----------
"1971 Topps" 37,195
"1972 Topps" 36,286
"1968 Topps" 33,231
"1975 Topps" 32,306
"1961 Topps" 32,253
"1959 Topps" 31,447
"1969 Topps" 31,272
"1965 Topps" 29,697
"1970 Topps" 29,683
"1964 Topps" 29,092
"1960 Topps" 28,639
"1967 Topps" 27,910
"1973 Topps" 27,002
"1962 Topps" 25,921
"1966 Topps" 22,743
"1974 Topps" 22,669
"1958 Topps" 22,607
"1957 Topps" 21,296
"1956 Topps" 21,248
"1963 Topps" 20,580
"1952 Topps" 13,384
"1954 Topps" 10,639
"1955 Topps" 12,209
"1955 Bowman" 11,098
"1953 Topps" 10,872
"T206" -2020 -reprint 8,688
"Goudey" 7,694
"1953 Bowman" 6,016
"1954 Bowman" 5,289
"1952 Bowman" 5,243
"1951 Bowman" 5,281
"1950 Bowman" 4,116

Very interesting, even more interesting is how the rankings on the list change when the number of sales per set is then divided by the number of issued cards from each set...this of course assumes that many of the sales are for single cards. It makes sense that the 71 and 72 sets would have more sales than most of other sets as there were more cards issued in those sets....the 56 set is less than half the size of the 71 and 72 sets yet has sold more than half the number of each of either the 71 or 72 sets.