Charleston v. Clemente

[Bigdaddy]

I simply boil it down to supply and demand. You cant separate one from the other when talking about prices. Your analysis focused mainly on the supply discrepancies of the two cards, but without demand in the equation, a Piedmont T206 Cobb would be the same price as any other Piedmont T206 card.

And I think we regularly see the demand of a given card is not only based on the players ability, but other (non supply based) factors like the market and era he played in.

So while it's a good, and very interesting analysis, I don't think you can draw any conclusions about cards being over or under valued or whether there is room for price escalation (or deflation) based on those numbers.

So I'll go ahead and make a stab at how we value a card:

CV = f(PG, PF, CN, MK, ER, AV, MF, SP, VA, RC, FF)

where:
CV = value of the card
PG = Player's Greatness - Babe Ruth or Buddy Biancalana?
PF = Player's Following - explains why Roger Maris (non-HOFer) costs more than Early Wynn (HoFer)
CN = Condition of the card - since graded cards have entered the market, this is now an exponential factor (ie high grade cards now demand a higher % premium)
MK = Market the player played in - New York or Milwaukee?
ER = Era that the player played in - how familiar are folks with this player?
MF = Manufacturer of the card - Topps or Hostess or Goudey?
SP = Supply - how many were produced?
VA = Visual Appeal - is the card visually appealing and therefore more collectible?
RC = Rookie Card - does it carry the RC premium?
FF = Fudge Factor - was it a corrected error, printing flaw, an iconic card or some other strange factor?

All of these factors, except Supply, are really related to Demand. Am I missing any major factors here? Anyone care to try to put coefficients to these factors?