David—I think Mike’s point related to the rarity of certain cards (Mike-please correct me if I am wrong). Obviously, only a percentage of cards produced have survived over the last 130+ years. What percentage is that—don’t know. However, I would guess that card numbers were reduced fairly evenly amongst the set’s subjects. That being the case, why is Player A common today and Player B rare? Part of that may be explained by certain players having cards issued over several years and other only having cards issued in one year. Part may be that people saved star cards and threw away scrub cards. I don’t know if there was a regional factor associated with the cards issuance, st Goodwin would put more Chicago players into packs that were sold in the Midwest. If that were the case then, everything else held equal, small market cards would be scarcer than big market cards. Finally, as I mentioned before, maybe breakage of glass plate negatives had something to do with it. I’m sure if we thought about it more we could come up with other possible factors, but ultimately we will never know for sure.
|