Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
As a sceptic, I don't trust that expertise because it usually proves wrong. Hobbyists have proven themselves generally unable to accurately evaluate scarcity even within a single set. The books are replete with fake short prints, and 'unknown' short prints. The 1966 Topps High # thread here, for one recent example. 1955 Topps All-American is another, there are many of them. Big, popular sets that the conventional wisdom of hobby experts on scarcity is just wrong. If experts, whose judgements are rooted in an appeal to authority, cannot discern scarcity within major, single sets I don't see how they can reasonably be trusted to tell apart sets from completely different areas of the hobby from samples that are in no way random. I include myself in this, my opinion on the scarcity of my passion sets 'ain't really worth a lick', these judgements are rooted in a fallacy.
That's an awesome card. I think I have a pair of actresses in one of my random-old-card boxes. I had no idea boxers even existed.
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Well, if you are a hardcore boxing collector and have been for decades you tend to get a pretty good feel of scarcity based on experience. The cards I listed are just f***ing impossible to find. My want list has cards that I just don't see except once a decade or so, or when a collector dies or quits. Many of my eBay searches haven't had a hit in years and no AH has sold those cards either. Searches of TPG populations are a good shorthand, though obviously incomplete, and the sales records for graded cards are helpful for analyzing frequency of transaction. A valuable low-pop card that has little or few sales over a span of years is one I safely can conclude is rare.
That said, older assumptions are definitely being revised all the time. I try hard to remember to stay humble and open to new information about the cards I collect, because information does surface from time to time as people research or as I research new sources of data that come online for public use. Like the Burdick Collection. For my initial boxing card deep-dive research I had to go to NYC and make an appointment at the print department of the Met to research his collection holdings. Now a lot of the same stuff is online and publicly available. I also know for a fact that there are several jaw-dropping collections out there that will eventually free up most of the known populations of many of the rarest boxing cards. May not be for decades, though.
One thing we really haven't had ever for boxing is a "Black Swamp" style find of material that busts the pop of a rare set. Finding a single T226 Red Sun of a Negro [sic] pugilist is a find given how tough Johnson, Gans, Jeannette and Langford are to find at all in that set. Candidly, I do not think we will. Unlike Topps, these things were made a long time ago and many of them must have been made in far smaller quantities than Topps cards. Unless it is a test set, nothing Topps is truly rare in the absolute sense.