How many collections lay dormant?

[vintagecpa]

I think the T206 Honus Wagner card is a pretty good representation on how many of these cards lay dormant in private collections. About 30 years ago, only about 10-15 of these cards were thought to exist. As the price continued to rise, these cards simply became too valuable for private collectors to keep them hidden away. If you compare the percentage of Wagners that surface over a certain amount of time, you can get a pretty rough estimate as to how understated the population reports could be with other sets. If the price of the Wagner would have stayed at under $10k, I would speculate we would only see about half of the Wagners graded today. Basically, as much as we hate to admit it, many pre-WWII cards simply aren't as scarce as we like to think.