Old Judge Book Scarcities

[oldjudge]

Hi Scot! Team variations of a specific pose and unlisted poses still come up occasionally. What rarely shows up are new players or even new teams for a player (team previously unknown on any of the player's poses).

[insidethewrapper]

Jay: Just wondering . Why would a cigarette company spend all the money to produce a card ( production, printing, rent a studio, pay a photographer etc) and then only produce maybe 1-5 cards of that player ?

[trdcrdkid]

I have a pose that is listed but not illustrated in the OJ book (Hengle 223-6).

[oldjudge]

Originally Posted by insidethewrapper

Jay: Just wondering . Why would a cigarette company spend all the money to produce a card ( production, printing, rent a studio, pay a photographer etc) and then only produce maybe 1-5 cards of that player ?

If you are asking why certain cards are so rare today I don't have an answer. Perhaps the negative was broken early in production and not replaced.

[trdcrdkid]

Originally Posted by insidethewrapper

Jay: Just wondering . Why would a cigarette company spend all the money to produce a card ( production, printing, rent a studio, pay a photographer etc) and then only produce maybe 1-5 cards of that player ?

The Old Judge cards that survive today are a tiny fraction of those that were originally produced. I don’t know how many of each card were made, but I’m sure it was quite a bit more than 1 to 5, even for scarce cards.

And by the way, OJs weren’t printed; they consisted of very thin albumen photographic prints glued to cardboard and then cut into individual cards. The OJ book has a section on how they were produced.

[oldjudge]

David—I think Mike’s point related to the rarity of certain cards (Mike-please correct me if I am wrong). Obviously, only a percentage of cards produced have survived over the last 130+ years. What percentage is that—don’t know. However, I would guess that card numbers were reduced fairly evenly amongst the set’s subjects. That being the case, why is Player A common today and Player B rare? Part of that may be explained by certain players having cards issued over several years and other only having cards issued in one year. Part may be that people saved star cards and threw away scrub cards. I don’t know if there was a regional factor associated with the cards issuance, st Goodwin would put more Chicago players into packs that were sold in the Midwest. If that were the case then, everything else held equal, small market cards would be scarcer than big market cards. Finally, as I mentioned before, maybe breakage of glass plate negatives had something to do with it. I’m sure if we thought about it more we could come up with other possible factors, but ultimately we will never know for sure.

[RCMcKenzie]

I think any Old Judge card is rare by any standard. I started a Dude Esterbrook pose run about 15 years ago. I'm about halfway through. His cards never come up. About 2 months ago HA had a pose 1 and pose 2 in the same lot graded A by sgc. Grading is silly for Old Judge, because the graders ignore the photo quality.
Anyway, I stopped at $500 because I did not need pose 1 or 2. These cards are very rare. I have 3 pose 1's and 1 pose 2 that Jay sold me. I should have kept bidding on the Ha lot, but I felt bad, because I'm going for the pose run, not trying to own all the cards extant.

When I go to a card show, there will be one guy with a Jim O'Rourke, and if I ask about it, he will go into a long story about how it is very rare, and over 100 years old.