T206 "Population Reports"

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Posted By: T206Collector

The most sophisticated analysis that I am aware of is Scot Reader's relative scarcity discussion, which extrapolated population estimates from various conclusions -- he referred to it as "speculation-laden," but it is probably the best thing out there. I paste it below:

"One speculation-laden analysis would place the surviving number of T206 specimens in the 1.6 million range. Such an analysis extrapolates that figure from an estimate of the surviving quantities of two rare subjects, Demmitt (St. Louis) and O'Hara (St. Louis). These subjects are known only with the Polar Bear reverse; however, they are not notably scarcer with that back than other 350-only subjects. The Polar Bear back was seen on about 6.6% of the total population of 350-only series subjects in a 14,000+ card sub-survey I conducted. Thus, if one assumes that roughly 200 of each of these rare subjects remain in existence, and further assumes that survival rates for these subjects conform with those of other subjects, the surviving quantity of a typical 350-only subject is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000. Finally, assuming for the sake of rough-and-ready calculation uniformity of survival among series, the total number of T206 specimens in existence today is estimable in the general vicinity of 1.6 million. Of course, if there are 400 examples each of Demmitt (St. Louis) and O'Hara (St. Louis) extant instead of 200, the presumed number of T206 cards with us today doubles to 3.2 million, or about 6,000 per subject on average, under this same analysis. In any case, of the likely hundreds of millions of specimens initially produced, it seems highly probable that the number of T206 cards in existence today is in the low single digit millions, or a few thousand for a typical subject. This is quite possibly less than one percent of the original production, with the vast majority of these survivors being
in lower grade."

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What is somewhat missing from the scarcity rankings is the relative scarcity as you move down the list from 1 to 50. That is, #1 is a lot more scarer than #10, but #10 through #50 are, by comparison, nearly as scarce as each other.

Based on Reader's analysis, I would think there are probably 1,000 or more Westlakes out there.