All good observations, but with the red Lajoie, the Lajoie card itself is not scarce within the set compared to other cards. Also, the red backgrounds are not, in and of themselves rare in general within the set, yet the red Lajoie is without a doubt the toughest card in the set. Another interesting card is the E98 Ed Walsh. Walsh is one of the toughest cards in the set and yet whenever one pops up for sale, it's a red one almost every time. Green and orange Walshes are very, very tough to find.
Yup, maybe it's just a boring Sunday afternoon and a lot of collectors here could care less about caramel card variations, even though the E98 is a very mainstream set, but I found it interesting
