Posted By:
Tim NewcombMy most intense prewar efforts have gone into these two sets over the past 3-4 years. I lack the three "rarest" (and certainly most expensive) T207s, and I lack about 35 of the m116s. I wrote an article for VCBC on the T207 population, and Bob Marquette and I are tinkering with an M116 article for a future issue of Old Cardboard. I love both sets dearly, and some of my fondest collecting memories involve them.
So I'd strongly recommend either to any collector with some cash, a tolerance for obscure players, and a lot of patience. Here are a few random thoughts:
I found the T207s significantly easier to (near-)complete than the m116s, despite all the tough cards people have referred to. This is simply due to the greater prominence of the set. There are MANY more T207 collectors out there than M116 collectors.
For my article I was able to survey nearly 7000 T207s in people's collections, and to draw pretty strong inferences about the relative scarcity of each card. When I tried a similar population survey a few months ago for M116s, I got only a few hundred cards to work with.
Obviously there are plenty more than that, but I believe they are dramatically less common than T207s as a total population. When this is coupled with the fact that there are nearly 50% more cards in the M116 set, the disparity grows even more. As tough as a T207 set is, doing all of M116 would be tougher.
There are many true scarcities in T207, perhaps as many as one-third of the set. But this is also true of M116s: nearly all the cards with "300 Subjects" backs are quite scarce, and this group constitutes one-quarter of the set. The Joe Wood card seems as difficult and almost as pricey as any T207, Lowdermilk and Lewis included. And then there are the rare McConnell and McQuillen variations in M116, which are about as tough and expensive as the T207 Big 3.
Bob M., who has come even closer to completing both than I have, will probably weigh in with his thoughts soon--
Dennis, if you want to email me privately, I'd be happy to talk more about them--
Tim