Chicago,
Let me see if I can address your original post. Like you, I am new to collecting pre-war, although I've been collecting cards for over 30 years. I took the advice of many on this board, and picked up examples of many different issues to help me narrow my decision on what to collect. I then started reading as much as I could about the different issues. I kept running across many posts about the different backs on the T206's, T205's, and e92's in particular. I found that although the different T206 backs are highly collected, not much attention (or price differnce) was paid for the tougher T205 backs. That's when I ran across the research that Joshua Levine (and Shawn Adkins) had done on the T205 backs. Joshua kept detailed records for 10+ years and expressed the rarity based on percentages of overall backs seen rather than as a "multipier" system. Needless to say, I'm now happily working on a T205 set, trying to pickup tougher backs whenever possible.
When I first read your post, I assumed that this type of research was already readily available regarding the T206 backs, because they are so much more collected than the T205's. I've spent quite a bit of time over the past couple of days looking for the info you're asking about, but I haven't run across it (I may have just overlooked it). I have seen a lot of lists ranking the scarcity, but no real numbers.
To more directly answer some of your questions, if the research was done you should be able to come up with a multipier system based on the percentages. I absolutely believe that this type of list would be fun and helpful to the hobby. As I stated earlier, it was this same type of list that led me to collect the T205's.
If you (or someone else) really wanted to compile a list like this, I think the initial data would be easier to obtain now than ever before. I believe Joshua had said he used data by looking at 17,000 cards over the years. The SGC population report now lists just over 17,000 cards that they have graded. This is info that was not available to him at the time. When I compared his data/conclusions to the SGC pop reports, they came out pretty close to each other. At the same time, I learned a bit more and came up with my own theories/conclusions. As you stated, this would still be very speculative, for many reasons (cracks and resubmits, cards not graded, possibly larger numbers of rare backs graded vs common backs, etc.), but I still think it would be helpful. You'll run across "anomolies" like the T206 Al Shaw, which shows 5 Hindu's, 5 Sovereign's, and 3 EPDG's. Another problem is that SGC (nor PSA) does not differenciate between the different backs of the companies. This would require more research, and take quite a bit of time. I wish the best of luck to anyone willing to take this on.
Since this is by far my longest post ever on this site (and probably my longest post anywhere), I'd like to thank Joshua for all the research he did over the years, and for sharing it with us. I am really enjoying collecting the T205's, and he is a big reason why.
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