T206 Back Scarcity, Pricing, and Other Tidbits

[atx840]

As noted the Tinker is quite tough, I think there are 4-5 known now.

[53toppscollector]

That's a really sharp card there, very impressive.

There are a ton of very very low pop P42s. My data on pop counts is a few months old (will be updating soon), but based on what I have, I have the following cards with 5 or less combined graded copies between PSA/SGC

(5): Baker, Bradley With Bat, Chase Blue Portrait, Jennings One Hand, Schlei Portrait, Seymour Portrait, White Pitching, Willetts

(4): Chase Holding Trophy, Davis (Davis on Front), Leifield Batting, Marquard Pitching/Follow Through, Mullin With Bat, O'Leary Hands On Knees, Steinfeldt With Bat

(3): Lajoie With Bat, McIntyre Brk+Chi, Pfeister Throwing, Wilhelm Batting, Wiltse Pitching, Wiltse Portrait With Cap

(2*): Tinker Bat Off

* The Tinker pop report is wrong. PSA shows a triple 0 for his P42 population, but Ryan has a P42 in a PSA slab that he linked to earlier for his completed back run. SGC shows 2 of them, the one Chris posted, and then an SGC 1.5. We also know that PSA did not track factory numbers early on, so there are likely a few Tinker Bat Offs with a "T206 Piedmont" on the slab that is actually a P42 back.

[atx840]

Thanks James. I know of 4 Tinkers, Ryan, mine an Authentic and a board member owns another.

The Chase was also very tough, agreed these are definitely underrated.

[Bobbycee]

James, missing from your low PSA Pop, Piedmont 460/42 list is Willis Batting. There are only 5 listed. Not sure how many SGC there are. I have a PSA 5.5 & it's not listed in the Pop report.

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by Bobbycee

James, missing from your low PSA Pop, Piedmont 460/42 list is Willis Batting. There are only 5 listed. Not sure how many SGC there are. I have a PSA 5.5 & it's not listed in the Pop report.

Thanks, I had that one at 7 total copies between PSA/SGC

[53toppscollector]

new content added to the main post, pasting it in here for those who stopped reading the updated first post!

Entry #3, 18Aug2022

This will be a shorter entry here, but I felt it was interesting enough (to me) to add into the main post. As I noted in the thread, I am trying to work on a way (using my average Excel skills) to better capture raw card sales data. I still haven't worked out a way I love yet, but I have been playing around with Terapeak the last few days, and I was able to put together some generalized data. Terapeak allows you to pull data on sales up to 365 days old. You can only view the actual auctions for the past 90 days, but Terapeak keeps records of the sale price, shipping, date, etc for 365 days. For the purposes of this quick exercise, I realize I cannot drill down to the player level, but I figured that if I stripped out the exceptional HoF cards, I may be able to get data that is at least interesting to look at until I come up with a better method.

So, in the Terapeak search box, I used a string similar to what I use when creating ebay alerts for myself, adding in excluders like -reprint -rp -renata -honus etc to try and weed out all the junk that typically shows up, and I also added excluders for PSA, SGC, BGS, BVG, GMA, etc, to remove all graded cards. Once I had this list filtered, I sorted for most expensive cards and then least expensive. Terapeak shows you 50 results per page, so I was able to manually exclude a few graded cards that didn't include the grading acronym in the title, I removed a Demmitt Polar Bear because it would skew the avg price of a Polar Bear sale, and I also added in excluders for "cobb" "mathewson" and "cy" to remove those super expensive cards. I could have removed them manually, but that was too much work. I essentially wanted to compare the Commons, Tough Cards, and HoF outside of the most expensive in the set against the data from VCP for graded cards. This data is not perfect, and should taken with a grain of salt, but I think its a decent enough approximation to discuss.

I decided to do a quick search for the common backs and then the offbacks. I did not bother with any of the very rare backs since they sell so infrequently, and they are almost always graded when they do sell. Here is the chart, with an explainer below

• As you remember from an earlier post, VCP groups together all SweetCap and Piedmonts (except P42) into their data, which is why I merged the PSA 1/2 averages at the top.
• BINs and Offer Accepteds were grouped together and separated out from auctions. Terapeak's filters there aren't great, so I just combined BIN and Offer Accepted.
• The numbers here include ALL CARDS except Cobb, Matty and Cy Young + the Demmitt PB that sold raw
• There were almost 7,000 Piedmont backs sold in the last 365 days, or about 19 per day. 3,269 SweetCaps, or about 9 per day.
• For all backs in the chart, there were 11,900 total sales, or about 33 per day. If you take the above numbers, that means that 28 out of 33 cards sold every day on ebay is either a Piedmont or SweetCap.
• Polar Bears make up by far the next highest total, with 816 sold (7% of all T206 raw cards sold)
• On the other side, I could only see 5 total AB 460 backs. I don't have comparable data for the graded cards because of the weird way VCP lumps in the ABs (and the Sovereigns)
• Sovereign 350s far out pace the 150s and 460s in terms of volume (205 vs 48 vs 47) but the 150s sell for a much higher average price than the 350s.
• The spread between the price of auction and BIN/Offer Accepted does vary greatly, which I think is kind of interesting, because it skews in different directions pretty drastically, likely impacted by one or two really high or really low sales

One thing to add here that I didn't add in the main post (will edit it later) is that I think the interesting thing to remember here is that a common/less famous card is more likely to sell raw than graded, I would think. You see a few raw copies of like a Chance Red Portrait or Brown Portrait or Lundgren Chicago, but those cards are getting graded at a higher frequency than Casey, Wright and Pickering. Still, it is interesting to compare the average cost and to look at the volume of off backs that sell raw.

[Zach Wheat]

Nice research, good stuff.

[53toppscollector]

This one came as a request in another thread, so I am adding it here so I can easily find it again

Entry #4, 21Aug2022 - What is the toughest Off Back Set Possible?

So this question was posted in another thread: what would be the "toughest" set you could put together using only off backs (ie, no Piedmont/Sweet Caps)

This is something I have thought a lot about. I have an Excel file that has combined populations (PSA+SGC) for all 520 cards. I update it every 6 months or so. And I consistently look at those extremely low population cards with envy. So this was a perfect chance to dig deeper into the numbers and see what the toughest set would look like, if you wanted to put together a 520. This is going to be a LONG post with tons of huge graphics. Its the only way I know how to do it, so apologies in advance.

We will start as we normally do with caveats

* The PSA and SGC pop reports are problematic. In some cases, quite problematic. PSA has gone through a number of iterations with how they have cataloged cards in their pop report. Starting with just "T206", which is extremely unhelpful for a back collector, then eventually graduating to something like "T206 Piedmont" which is only slightly more helpful, and then eventually getting us to where we are now, which properly identifies the series and the factory (where needed)

* Where does it hurt the most for an exercise like this? For cards that overlap in different series. For example, if a card has a Sovereign 150 and a Sovereign 350 back, there are slabs out there from PSA that just say "T206" and some that say "T206 Sovereign" without a series designation. So getting exact counts is impossible.

* PSA has also misclassified certain cards (and I think it happens when that player has multiple poses), so there are absolute errors in the pop report that make you think there is a front/back combo that has a pop 1, when in fact, it is just an error. Not great.

* SGC has done a good job of cataloging cards by series/year, for instance, all Piedmont 150s get a 1909 Piedmont Cigarettes designation, which helps. That helps to solve the Sovereign issue, but unfortunately, they do not track factory numbers for SweetCaps, which is a huge problem. SGC also has cards misclassified. It happens, unfortunately.

* These counts only show graded copies, obviously. If you've been hanging around here long enough, you have seen a TON of very rare front/back combos posted in raw form. These aren't factored in. In some cases, these raw examples are snapped out of a PSA/SGC holder, which makes it all the more difficult to really know how rare a card is.

* When thinking about these cards, another thing to consider is "how likely is card X to get graded, compared to card Y?"....T206 collectors with a modest knowledge of the set understand that certain backs (Broad Leaf, Hindu, Uzit, etc) are very rare. When those cards are found, I think it is reasonable to assume that they get submitted for grading (and sometimes snapped right back out!) compared to, say, a Polar Bear. Of course, there are a lot of Polar Bears graded, a lot of plentiful Old Mills and Sovereigns too. I think those tend to tilt things both ways. A Black Lenox back may only be the 4th most populous for a front, but I think we can assume that a higher percentage of the Black Lenox's for that front have been graded, compared to say an American Beauty or EPDG (or especially a Piedmont/Sweet Cap)

Because we have 520 cards to look at data on, I am splitting this up by PRINT GROUP to make it slightly more manageable, and I think splitting it up by print group also lets us see a few cool patterns. Now that I've yammered on and on, lets start. I again used Scot Reader's scarcity rankings (http://www.t206insider.com/store/c1/insider#checklists/) and so if there is a tie between 2 backs, the tougher back goes first. Obviously.

** one final note. You can only post a max of 18 images per post, so I have to split this into 2 posts **

** second note. I color coded the grids. It might look "busy" but I think it actually helps to spot patterns and it makes it easier to distinguish the backs instead of just walls of text **

*** final warning....if you aren't interested in looking at the card by card stuff, I put summaries after each chart by series, and you can always scroll to the bottom of the 2nd post a see a summary ***

PRINT GROUP 1 // 150 Only Subjects (no 350 Series Backs)



This should look pretty standard. For 8 of the 11 cards, the toughest back is going to be Brown Hindu, followed by Sovereign 150. These are the only 2 off backs available for these 11 cards

Toughest Back Summary:

Hindu Brown = 8
Sovereign 150 = 3

PRINT GROUP 1 // NO 150 Series Backs and limited 350 Series Backs



These 3 cards are all very well known and do not require a ton of explanation. The Old Mill is the toughest back of the 3 by a huge margin over the Sovereign 350. Elberfeld Washington Portrait has only the Old Mill back and it is more plentiful than the other 2. It is also very very expensive.

Toughest Back Summary:

Old Mill = 3

Print Group 1 // The rest








Toughest Back Summary:

Old Mill = 94
Sovereign 150 = 20
Hindu Brown = 18
EPDG = 10

Some of the population numbers on those Old Mills is just nuts. Good luck finding them.

Print Group 2 // 350 Only Series










I mean, too many cards to really dig in on here. I caught one notable error, I think it was SGC's pop report had Bender With Trees as having a Hindu Red back, which it obviously does not. If I missed any others, let me know.

Toughest Back Summary:

Drum = 85
Broad Leaf 350 = 60
Carolina Brights = 28
Tolstoi = 18
AB 350 With Frame = 5
Cycle 350 = 3
Polar Bear = 2
Sovereign 350 = 1

part 2 incoming...