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Posted By: warshawlaw

One of the reasons I don't collect these other than as a novelty (read: really cheaply) is that there seems to be an unlimited supply of high grade specimens on ebay. I don't know how much many of you know about collecting in the mother country, but it is quite different than it is here. First of all, they never got pissy about tobacco cards, so there are tobacco cards aplenty into the 50's and the production numbers were huge. Second, there has been a national collecting organization (currently the Cartophilic Society of Great Britain) since the 1930's, and there was a heck of a lot more consciousness about cards starting decades before it started here, so there are a lot more cards out there from the British issues relative to their contemporary US surviving cousins. Third, there are a number of big sellers in the UK who seemingly have endless supplies of the 1930's sports sets for sale. To me, it resembles the diamond cartel; I just don't trust that the prices aren't the product of curtailed supply rather than true supply and demand. I have seen US dealers with stacks of hundreds of high grade UK boxing cards.