For set collectors: Set scarcity

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

Daniel, I latched onto a Cobb a year and a half ago or so for a decent price. I didn't even know what I was getting until it arrived and I did a little research on it.

I tend to get wrapped up in these "puzzles," and in the process of learning about them, I stumbled on to 4 or 5 commons, by accident. So I bought those, too. I thought that owning them might give me some more insight into the Cobb.

As I was trying to understand the scarcity of the Cobb, and the story behind the cards themselves, I found very few actual answers to the many questions I had about them. In the process of trying to answer the questions, I picked up a few more.

As I picked them up, I realized that nobody really cared about them. The only people that seem to be actively seeking them out are people looking to fill a hole in their type set. There is no registry that exists, and very few have been graded.

The idea of building a very tough set where the main barrier involves actually FINDING the cards was appealing to me. Acquiring these cards reminds me of the "good old days" where the thrill of the chase is paramount, and the only real "value" from a monetary standpoint would lie in having a large number of these. They're relatively ugly and unappealing to most collectors who want to assemble a beautiful set, and I've yet to find one that would grade higher than a 5, so the high-grade collectors don't chase them - so I don't have to slug it out with everyone under the sun to acquire them. Plus it's a set where there are no "scholars" like there are for, say, T206 or '33 Goudey, so the process of trying to find answers to the questions is fun to me.

I figure that by getting my questions answered, I might be able to provide more insight into the set for cataloging purposes, for people who want to collect these in the future. Assuming anyone ever does.

Nothing more complicated than that.

-Al