Nearly 2 million 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth cards?

[jason.1969]

Originally Posted by griffon512

attention getting thread title, but i'm not sure what your point is. if goudey made 100 million goudey ruth cards, what difference would it make to collectors if only, say, 10 survived?

If someone is purely interested in how many cards are around today, then my work provides zero useful information. However, I do believe many collectors are interested in how many cards were made. Certainly I am.

Not to get too theoretical, but we can view present-day rarity as a combination of two factors:

1. Original production
2. Survival rate

While the first might well fluctuate greatly between one vintage set and another, it's possible the second is more stable for similar sets/cards from the same era (e.g., 1933 and 1934 Goudey, or 1933 Goudey and 1933 Goudey Sport Kings or the two Mel Ott cards in 1934 Goudey).

What this means is that if someone is able to make a good estimate of the actual numbers for a particular vintage card today (and we DO sometimes see these), a patient and creative person could extrapolate from such data and original production numbers to arrive at a reasonably sound estimate for the surviving numbers of some other card of interest.

It's an inexact science to be sure, but I do believe many collectors find the information interesting, whether or not they find it useful. Sorry it didn't meet your expectations.

[griffon512]

Originally Posted by jason.1969

"What this means is that if someone is able to make a good estimate of the actual numbers for a particular vintage card today (and we DO sometimes see these), a patient and creative person could extrapolate from such data and original production numbers to arrive at a reasonably sound estimate for the surviving numbers of some other card of interest."

wouldn't a much more accurate estimate of surviving population from mainstream sets come from looking at the encapsulated totals and making reasonable estimates on cross-over population and raw population from surveys?

there's a huge amount of variance in the presumptions you are making about the size of the original manufacturing run. to start, we don't know whether the revenue figures you cited are based on sell in or sell through from the retail stores. we don't know if they are based on wholesale or retail prices. we don't know how much excess inventory was manufactured, etc.

regardless, i now understand the point of your post is not to insinuate there are tons of goudey ruths lying around undiscovered but to give an extremely rough estimate of what might have been manufactured based on extrapolating one line from a historical document.