T206 Back Scarcity, Pricing, and Other Tidbits

[53toppscollector]

So now that I've had a chance to kind of zoom out and look at the data I put together, I have some thoughts:

* Old Mill is underrated as a back, in general. And it is not just the 150 series HoF, there are so many very low pop Old Mills. Print Group 2 Old Mills are more plentiful (around 30 or so combined copies per front), Print Group 3 are plentiful (around 40-45 per front, on average), but they got tougher in Print Group 4, averaging only about 26 per front. Within Print Group 4 there are a bunch of very tough Old Mills, including 12 subjects that have less than 10 total combined copies. McGraw Glove at Hip has 105 copies of a Sovereign 460 back, but only 8 Old Mills, for instance.

* The American Beauty 460 sub-group is really fascinating to me. The same 12 cards mentioned above in the Old Mill group are very plentiful in AB 460 backs while being very very hard in OM backs. That group is

Crandall With Cap
Devore
Duffy
Ford
Gandil
Geyer
Hummel
McGraw Glove at Hip
Pfeffer
Sheckard Glove Shows
Tannehell (Tannehill on Front)
Wheat

These 12 cards all share a very similar card profile that I find super interesting:

-- AB 460 backs are very plentiful
-- Sovereign 460 backs are very plentiful
-- Tolstoi backs are very plentiful
-- SweetCap Factory 42 backs are very plentiful

-- Old Mill Backs are very scarce
-- EPDG backs are scarce
-- Polar Bear backs are scarce (relatively)
-- Cycle 460 backs are scarce

* Tolstoi backs are either very very rare or very very plentiful as a whole. The average number of Tolstoi examples for all subjects is 17, based on my numbers. However, there are 50 subjects with a pop of 5 or less! Tolstoi is generally not considered rare (by T206 standards) but as we see above in the charts and in the comments, there are a ton of very rare Tolstois out there and I am sure a few more will continue to pop up.

* I know this is bordering on sacrilege, but is it possible that Hindu Brown is.....overrated? According to my numbers, the average combined population for Hindu Brown per front is 20. That isn't Polar Bear, sure, but the average is also higher than Tolstoi, per subject, as noted above. Yet Hindu Browns command a massive premium over all the other moderate off backs. Now, there aren't any fronts that have a massive number of Hindu Browns. I count a total of 11 subjects that have 30 or more combined Hindu Browns:

- Bresnahan Portrait
- Fritz (SL)
- Greminger (SL)
- WaJo Portrait (38 examples, most populous)
- Leifield Pitching
- Lipe (SL)
- McCauley (SL)
- Persons (SL)
- Revelle (SL)
- Shaughnessy (SL) (38 examples, most populous)
- Sullivan

Of those 11, 7 of them are SLers.

On the flip side, there are only 8 subjects that have 10 or fewer Hindu Browns:

- Delehanty (Washington)
- Ewing
- Killian Pitching (7 copies, rarest)
- O'Leary Portrait
- Owen
- Schmidt Throwing
- Stone
- Wilhelm Hands At Chest

For those 8 cards, the Hindu Brown is not the clear cut scarcest back in a number of cases:

- Delehanty (EPDG is more scarce)
- Ewing (Hindu Brown is the most scarce)
- Killian Pitching (Hindu Brown is the most scarce)
- O'Leary Portrait (Old Mill is the most scarce)
- Owen (Old Mill/Hindu Brown are tied for most scarce)
- Schmidt Throwing (Old Mill is the most scarce)
- Stone (Hindu Brown is the most scarce)
- Wilhelm Hands At Chest (Old Mill and Hindu Brown are tied)

Hindu Brown is definitely a rare back, it was only available during the early part of T206 production, but is the price people are willing to pay a bit distorted based on population counts and relative scarcity? Not sure. Maybe?