What Is the Median Scarcity for Old Judge Poses?

[oldjudge]

I think John approached this the right way. There are about 2535 poses known and if you assume 50,000 cards that would average out to slightly less than 20 copies/pose, on average. This is based on 50,000 cards being known, which may be high. The three biggest private Old Judge collections have under 8000 cards in aggregate. I would bet the next twenty have under 10,000 cards. After that you are down to a lot of small collections. Very few dealers have much of a stock. If the correct number was 40,000 cards then you are down to a average pose having 16 copies. If I had to hang my hat on a number, I would go with 16, which is in John's original range. Again, there are lots of unique or 2-3 copy poses. All the rarities fall into this category (except for Behel and Brady--they probably have 5-10 copies each, but they are there since they only have one pose).