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steve kWarshawlaw - Good points and I agree with most of them. Actually I think your points help validate my point of using card prices as the "best" way to estimate vintage card populations. Notice I said "best" way not "perfect" way. Using card prices may not even be a "good" way but it seems like possibly the only way based on lack of any other discernable data.
One can verify this reasoning very easily by reviewing prices of United States coins. There you have EXACT starting population figures provided by the United States Mint of almost every coin produced by the United States. Coin prices do not always reflect mintage figures, for sometimes similar market reasons as that of baseball cards, but to a good extent there is a pattern, especially when coins are of the exact same type, only different years. Coins also get destroyed through a multitude of reasons such as being melted down during wartime which affects the surviving population that basically makes the price rise as a collectable. Based on the collectable price versus coins of exact type and similar mintage which were not melted down, such as after wartime, a decent estimate could be made as to the number of coins which were melted down. The same type of reasoning could be used with baseball cards. The specific "qualitative" factors which you presented, including other factors, would have to be placed in the formulation, along with the selling price of each card to estimate its surviving population. Why doesn't Barry just try to discover a cure for cancer? - that might be easier - LOL.