I surveyed close to 25,000 graded T205 cards, here are the results (full data added)

[53toppscollector]

I was hoping to wait and write a really long thread here detailing all of my T205 research that I've conducted over the last 8 months, but I was slandered by a fellow board member in one of my BST threads, so I am simply going to share the top end data for now, and eventually I may come back and further write out more detailed analysis.

To create this data, I went through the VCP database for the T205 set. I went alphabetically, and for each player, I went through their entire 15+ year history of sales of graded cards. When an image was available with the front and back of the card, I logged the grading company certification number into Excel and set up formatting rules to make sure duplicates were not double counted. I did this for every single front in the main 208 set, and almost all the cards in the extended master set (errors, variations). For cards where the scan was too blurry, or where there was no back, for example, I did not log it because I couldn't be certain what the front back combo was. Mislabels and bad scans happen. After going through VCP, I went to ebay and added in the cards that were listed for sale, and double checked the sold listings to make sure none were missed by VCP. When factoring in duplicates that I removed, I looked at close to 100,000 cards, I'd guess.

This census is just that, a census. It is the cards I was able to find based on a unified set of data. To be clear, there are more of these copies out there that have been graded and never sold. PSA and SGC's pop reports are not great for T205 because they do not distinguish between the factory variations (Hassan, Sweet Cap, Piedmont) and in PSA's case, they don't even differentiate the backs, its just "T205 Gold Border"...so I felt like this census would be useful. There are also obviously raw copies of these cards out there that have never been graded and they were not included. For example, I saw zero copies of the Foxen with American Beauty back, but I have a raw copy of the card, so I know it exists. This is not a 100% perfect study, it is a sampling of 25,000 cards.

I will post the numbers for the main 208 card set and then the extended errors/variations that are part of the master set. This second grouping is more subjective and tougher to narrow down because of the various minor print defects/oddities that have been found on some cards and trying to figure out if its truly a variation or an error. The 208 set does not seem to be in question, so I found that data more useful. There are also a few cards that are tougher to evaluate in the method I used above. For example, Dots Miller has 3 different "variations", a middle initial B, a middle initial D and one that contains sort of an overprint of the B and D. Unless you have a great, clear scan that can be zoomed in on, it can be difficult to tell these apart. Some of the scans, especially the older sales from 2013/2014, it is impossible to tell. I chose not to guess and the result is fewer cards evaluated. This only really happened in a few cases, like the one above.

208 card Main Set



Here is the data for the "variations"



This includes the following cards:

Chase Both Ears - Frame Extends
Crandall - T Not Crossed
Dougherty - Red Sock
Gray - Stats On Back
Graham Rustlers - Blue Signature
Hoblitzell - No Stats
Hoblitzell - No Cin After 1908
Hoblitzell - Name Misspelled
Hoffman - Yellow Base, No Stripe
Hoffman - Yellow Base, With Stripe
Latham - WA On Back
Leifield - AP In Signature
Mathewson - 1 Loss Cycle
Moran - Stray Line of Text
Wallace - No Cap, 1 Line
White - No Quotes
Wilhelm - Suffered

Adding this chart in the first post too:



This shows the summary numbers, and then breaks it down a bit further.

Number of fronts that have a back (ie, there are 192 different subjects that have a Piedmont 25 back, 74 subjects have a Piedmont 42 back, etc)
% of number of fronts that have a back (percentage of the above)
Average number of backs per front (total number of a back divided by the unique number of fronts, eg, 8,570 divided by 192 = 44.6, or 45. So, if a card has a Piedmont 25 back, the average would be 45 examples

Hopefully by looking at the raw numbers and the percentage of the total backs, you can get an idea of the overall scarcity of T205 backs. You also need to consider the "relative scarcity"...the minor leaguers were only printed with Hassan 649 and Polar Bear backs. I counted 174 Polar Bears and 844 Hassan 649s, a nearly 5 to 1 ratio. There are no exceptions among those 12 cards, I saw way more Hassans than Polar Bears for every single minor leaguer. These numbers also put into perspective the rarity of Piedmont 42s (which someone told me I was lying about), American Beauties and Cycles, and especially Broad Leaf, Drums and Hindus.

If you think this data sucks and is worthless, discard it and move on, that is fine by me. If you get something out of it, then thanks for reading.

Update: Full data dump is here