Cool article by PSA on Top 20 rarities

[brian1961]

Originally Posted by Shoebox

This will probably be a minority opinion but things like the Mantle Dice game and the Robin Roberts 51 AS are very rare/scarce but the fact that they were never actually distributed to the public even in a very limited form puts them in a different (less desireable/appealing) category for me. The same for T206 proofs and scrap cards. They are interesting and certainly have a lot of historical significance but just isn't the same to me as a rare regional item that survived out in the wild.

Right on, Dustin.

When researching my E-book on a CD, NEVER CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, as I traced the provenance of some of the banzai regionals, I found the far majority trace their heritage to a significant find of unsold stock, where these leftover prizes were squirreled away by someone who either worked for the company who printed the cards, or worked for the company whose promotion distributed the cards or coins.

In such monumentally rare instances, these eventual PSA 9s did not have to survive out in the wild, but were spared the wild. Then, many years later they were brought to a show, or a dealer was contacted, or the guy got in touch with an auction house and consigned them.

Really, finds are all miraculous in and of themselves, because extremely few people at said factory or printing companies back in the day would have the inclination to save a few of these as souvenirs of the promotion. After all, until the advent of the organised adult hobby around 1969, these little "free prize" trinkets were seen as just "junk" to 99 people out of 100.

For what it's worth, the most cherished pieces in my own collection do trace to one of these "finds". I wrote at length about some of them. Amongst which was the occasion from whence came the hobby's only graded MINT 1954 Wilson Franks Ted Williams. This particular once intended "free prize" sold back in 2002 for $109,638, a world record price for a regional, and deservedly so.

So Dustin, your opinion is by no means a voice in the wilderness. I'm right there with ya. ---Brian Powell