Posted By:
steve kInteresting thread - reminds me of some of the courses in my 4 years as a finance major at Penn State. Specifically the QBA (Quantitive Business Analysis) courses - if the professor would have used baseball cards instead of widgets in the classroom presentations, I would have been been more attentive - LOL.
I didn't read Tim's study so this could be redundant. Based on the information in this thread, it seems to me that the best way (and possibly only way) to estimate the surviving card populations would be based on average selling prices of the cards. Certainly if comparing two commons and common A sells for an average price of $10 and common B sells for $20, it can be reasonably assumed, all things being equal, that there are twice as many common A's that have survived. Then of course the qualitative factors which have been mentioned are factored in and an estimate can be gotten. A starting point might be a good guestimate of the number of vintage collectors and what they are willing to pay for a specific common card. Strictly just for example, if there are 100,000 collectors who are willing to pay $20 for a certain T206 common in a certain condition and the average selling price is $20, it could be reasonably assumed there are approximately 100,000 surviving cards in that condition. I know this is very basic QBA and this dissertation could be hundreds of pages long and still be inaccurate, but in my opinion some sort of formulation based on card prices would achieve the best estimates. Maybe John Nash should be contacted - LOL.