What's up with these t206 sold auction prices ???

[nineunder71]

Well, lets look at what we now know today (Again, due to the pop reports!)

We will take my Malarkey card above to use as an example:

Currently: combined population reports suggest the following:

Piedmont 350s: pop = 308
Sovereign 350s: pop = 56
Cycle 350s: pop = 7


So....... You’re saying “Speculative at Best” ????

While an unofficial barometer it might be,

IT IS FAR SUPERIOR TO “SPECULATIVE AT BEST”, this I promise

[53toppscollector]

I think pop reports are essential, because its really kind of impossible to collect, on a serious level, without knowing how many there are of a certain item. if you want to collect every Babe Ruth card ever made, you need to know 1.) what Babe Ruth cards exist and 2.) how many of each exist

If there are literally 3 surviving copies of a card known, and 25 people want to own that card, you can see why prices are what they are.

Now you can posit that there shouldn't be 25 people who want to own card X, but that is also kind of silly.

There are more people who want to own these cards than there is supply of the card. Which is why you have a common player like Devlin go for thousands in an extremely scarce back. People want those backs. And I think they always will.

[packs]

Analogies have always been an issue on this board. I am talking about collecting an Old Mill subset not Babe Ruth. I think it has been well established that there are a lot of pre-war collectors who don’t grade their cards. The pop count might be useful for cards that are overwhelming graded but I don’t think they’re a true representation of T206 commons that people have little incentive to grade unless they’re either high grade or have a back seen as generally rare like Lenox, etc.

Pop counts have their place in the hobby but will they go on to dominate pre-war? I don’t think so. Maybe good fodder for an auction description though.

[nineunder71]

“Little incentive to grade”. Again, your comment

So, how do explain 308 Piedmont 350 Malarkey cards currently being graded? When at the same time, you don’t think those submitters would submit their Cycle 350?? Your logic is off

If you don’t mind..... how old are u?

Originally Posted by packs

Analogies have always been an issue on this board. I am talking about collecting an Old Mill subset not Babe Ruth. I think it has been well established that there are a lot of pre-war collectors who don’t grade their cards. The pop count might be useful for cards that are overwhelming graded but I don’t think they’re a true representation of T206 commons that people have little incentive to grade unless they’re either high grade or have a back seen as generally rare like Lenox, etc.

Pop counts have their place in the hobby but will they go on to dominate pre-war? I don’t think so. Maybe good fodder for an auction description though.

[nineunder71]

I ask that last question in hopes of pointing out a big fundamental difference between how modern collectors and prior collectors look at the hobby

It’s just not the same anymore

[packs]

Your question cancels itself out and that’s my point. There aren’t only 300 copies of the card with a Piedmont back. There are only that many graded.

[nineunder71]

If you still can’t understand pop collecting after all that

So be it

I will end as I started, Best of Luck & Cheers to All

[Tao_Moko]

If you don’t mind..... how old are u?[/QUOTE]

"u"? I have a twelve year old that does that.

I agree that pops hold value for estimating, but they are highly inaccurate. I have an 880 count box slammed full of slips and many very scarce ones at that. For cards that are plentiful, pops work. For true scarcities, not so much.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Tao_Moko

I agree that pops hold value for estimating, but they are highly inaccurate. I have an 880 count box slammed full of slips and many very scarce ones at that. For cards that are plentiful, pops work. For true scarcities, not so much.

This. It's pretty good for estimating relative populations, especially in more available cards where the sample size lends itself to a better proportional accuracy, to say X is more difficult than Y. When people use POP to say "there are only 3 known!" of a card they have because there are 3 in the pop report, I find that ridiculous; it is almost never true. Competitive people are driven to grading, and more likely to talk about their scarcities in forums, there are usually many more 'in the active hobby' not represented here. The extant population is almost always much higher than the POP report, there are many collections with a significant amount of tough material that simply won't hit the POP's until their owners die, if then.

There are a number of cards that most of the graded population is actually sitting in one of my shoe boxes cracked out. Crack outs, regrades and crossovers heighten the inaccuracy.

[G1911]

Also, I have a poor Atz with a Tolstoi back with a total POP of 5, less than the OM Ames. If anyone would like to pay me half of the Ames price for it because of its POP, I'm a seller.