Which t206 Southern League player is the toughest?

[RCMcKenzie]

Ryan ties for 3rd with Elam at 127 on SGCLegacyReport. I guess I need to run the rest of the names and look at psa. Stay-at-home orders end tonight in Texas, so I may not find the time...Rob

[RCMcKenzie]

Here are the PSA pops for a few. This places Ryan at the top so far. I need to do more research on the tpg pops. It's still just an anecdotal, arbitrary number...

PSA pop-
Ryan 248
Hickman 267
Reagan 272

[sreader3]

The reason Ryan is out of the top 10 in my algorithm is that it adjusts population for condition. My algorithm assumes that T206 subjects should generally have the same condition profile and that a significant reason some subjects have higher populations than others is higher price, which induces surplus submissions. When you adjust population for condition, it removes high value submission bias and provides a truer measure of scarcity. It so happens that there are an unusually high number of Ryan cards in strong condition relative to his total population. So after adjusting for condition, Ryan does not fare as well in the southern leaguer scarcity rankings as he otherwise might. Perhaps Ryan is an anomaly and it’s a coincidence that the cards of his that have survived are in unusually good condition. But condition-weighting works extremely well for most of the 524 T206 subjects.

Raw populations are not very useful as a comparative T206 scarcity metric, although if one limits the discussion to southern leaguers perceived to have similar value I suppose they could be of some use.

[RCMcKenzie]

Scot, I'm not attempting to debunk any of the evidence you have gathered. I have not spent a lot of time analyzing any data on T206 SL'ers. It is interesting to me that there are 12 Hickman's for sale on eBay and 8 Reagan's and zero Ray Ryan's. It could be a variety of factors, such as people perceive the Ryan card as difficult, and scoop it up when it is offered. None of the cards are especially difficult, in any grade, with any back, from what I can tell. Rob

[sreader3]

Hi Rob,
I didn’t mean to come across as offended in any way. I just wanted to explain how I arrived at my scarcity rankings. It’s quite possible that Ryan is an anomaly and that the cards of his that have survived all these years are in unusually good condition. That would account for a lower scarcity ranking in my algorithm relative to his true pop.
Scot

[RCMcKenzie]

That's interesting. I did not realize Ryan was more often found in higher grade. Fun discussion, nonetheless. I'm always trying to learn faster than I forget.

[Donscards]

I really enjoy reading about the T206 cards and the explanations on the Southern Leaguers with scarcity of this set---I always thought Shag was the toughest, now I have a better awareness on SL's. On this site, we do have T206 Experts and thanks for sharing your knowledge.