T206 Back Scarcity, Pricing, and Other Tidbits

[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...

[53toppscollector]

** part 2 **

Print Group 3 // Odd Balls 350 / 460



7 odd balls here, for various reasons.

Toughest Back Summary:

Old Mill = 2
Lenox Black = 2
Drum = 1
Tolstoi = 1
EPDG = 1

Print Group 3 // 350 Series with both 350 and 460 Series Backs




Imagine having a Broad Leaf 460 back and it only being the third scarcest back for your card. There are 6 examples in this batch of that scenario (Baker, Elberfield Fielding, Reulbach No Glove, Rucker Throwing, Street Catching and Willis Throwing)

Jennings Both Hands is an interesting case. The Cycle 460 only has 7 graded copies, while the Uzit, one of the overall toughest backs in the entire set, has double that amount with 14.

Toughest Back Summary:

Lenox Black = 14
Drum = 13
Lenox Brown = 10
Broad Leaf 460 = 10
Hindu Red = 5
Uzit = 2
Cycle 460 = 1

Print Group 4 // 460 Series Only




This is one of my favorite groups of cards in the entire set. Such a cool set of patterns.

Toughest Back Summary:

Uzit = 17
AB 460 = 11
Cycle 460= 6
Lenox Brown = 5
Old Mill = 5
Hindu Red = 1
Lenox Black = 1

Print Group 5 // Super Prints



It takes some kind of courage/insanity to complete these back runs. I tip my cap to you

Toughest Back Summary:

Drum = 2
BL 460 = 1
Hindu Red = 1
BL 350 = 1
Carolina Brights = 1

Print Group 6 // Southern Leaguers




Not much to add here. 34 of the Southern Leaguers were printed with a Hindu Brown back, the other 14 only have an OMSL and Piedmont

Toughest Back Summary:

Hindu Brown = 34
OMSL = 14

~~ Summary ~~

If you want to put together the 520 Set and grab the scarcest back (in terms of combined PSA/SGC population), then you would be buying the following:



Final thoughts for now:

* I did my best here, if you spot an obvious error, let me know.
* I do not include the printer's scrap backs (Blanks, OM Brown, OM Blue, etc) because they weren't put in packs, they are anomalies. They are super cool, I just do not track them in my spreadsheet and I almost count them as their own mini set.
* I updated my population counts a few months ago (4 months ago?) so if numbers are off by 1 or 2 now, well, I apologize. I will likely do another update again in a few months.
* I really love exploring the depths of this set


updates 1: fixed Schulte Front View
updates 2: fixed Ames Hands Above Head
updates 3: fixed Willis Portrait
updates 4: Bender With Trees Tolstoi has been confirmed, so re-added
updates 5: added in a few confirmed pop 1 Tolstois (Stephens, Thomas, Hoffman STL)
updates 6: added in Cravath BL 350 (though not in the pop reports, has been confirmed)
updates 7: removed the Cobb Red BL 350 since it appeared to be a pop report error.

[53toppscollector]

bonus content. This chart here shows the cards where the 3 scarcest backs all have a combined PSA/SGC population of 3 or less.

I would say these cards would be insanely difficult to complete back runs for



And if my numbers are right, the hardest back run of them all is technically Doyle With Bat, that has 3 pop 1s (BL 460, Drum, Hindu Red). The BL 460 shows up as possible on T206resource. SGC shows an SGC 1 copy graded.

That is...tough.

[MR RAREBACK]

Wow
Thank you for doing this

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

bonus content. This chart here shows the cards where the 3 scarcest backs all have a combined PSA/SGC population of 3 or less.

I would say these cards would be insanely difficult to complete back runs for



And if my numbers are right, the hardest back run of them all is technically Doyle With Bat, that has 3 pop 1s (BL 460, Drum, Hindu Red). The BL 460 shows up as possible on T206resource. SGC shows an SGC 1 copy graded.

That is...tough.

James I'm pretty sure the Cobb Red portrait isn't confirmed with a Broad Leaf 350 back did you find one in the pop reports?

[53toppscollector]

I think you are right, I think SGC may have updated their pop report, I suspect that is where I originally saw it. Because they now show the 1911 Broad Leaf (the 460) as having a pop of 3 and none for the 350, while PSA shows 1 for the 460, so the total pop of the 460 would now be 4. When I looked at the numbers a few months ago, it was only a pop 2 combined between PSA and SGC (and really 3, if they had miscategorized one of the 460s as as 350. So either they just cleaned up the mistake, or another one got graded in that time too.

I will update that later, thanks for catching it.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

I think you are right, I think SGC may have updated their pop report, I suspect that is where I originally saw it. Because they now show the 1911 Broad Leaf (the 460) as having a pop of 3 and none for the 350, while PSA shows 1 for the 460, so the total pop of the 460 would now be 4. When I looked at the numbers a few months ago, it was only a pop 2 combined between PSA and SGC (and really 3, if they had miscategorized one of the 460s as as 350. So either they just cleaned up the mistake, or another one got graded in that time too.

I will update that later, thanks for catching it.

Yeah it's tough to get the true pops on some of the scarce combo's.

I Only know of two Red Cobb broadleaf 460's

The One Jamie had
Cobb BL460.jpg

and the one that was discovered in 2018 that was originally graded by SGC and has since been crossed over to PSA
Cobb BL460 SGC.jpg
Cobb BL460 PSA.jpg

I haven't heard of a new example but Jamie would probably know if there is one.

[53toppscollector]

Not sure this is going to be a full fledged post, but it was something I thought was interesting as I am slowly working through my Sweet Cap census, based on a comment Steve B made.

There are a few interesting SweetCap patterns I've noticed before, but here is one in Print Group 2 that I find interesting. There are a batch of cards that seem to be a lot more scarce than the other SweetCaps within the print group, along with 2 more extreme cases.

Lundgren KC has 37 SC 350s at PSA and 22 SC 350s at SGC for a total of 59. Compare that to his P350 (187 at PSA, 137 at SGC)

Knight (Portrait) has 25 SC 350s at PSA and 16 SC 350s at SGC for a total of 41. Knight has 352 combined (PSA+SGC) Piedmonts.

The average number of combined (PSA + SGC) SC 350s for a Print Group 2 subject is 147. The average number of P350s is 388. That ratio is about 2.6:1 Piedmont to SC. For Lundgren, the ratio is 5.5:1 and Knight's is 8.6:1.

This below group of cards are more than 2 standard deviations from the average of a 2.6:1 ratio, Piedmont to SweetCap (the ratio is in the column next to the SweetCap population total). But there doesn't appear to be any real pattern here in the other backs. Their populations just look like outliers. Was there a reason these cards have a lot more Piedmonts than Sweet Caps, or in Tannehill's case, almost the exact same number of Piedmonts and SweetCaps? Lundgren was traded from CHC to KC, so we know why his card is special. What about the rest?

(note, the numbers in the chart below are slightly different for Lundgren and Knight, they haven't been updated in months, but I just got their updated totals from PSA/SGC now for the above paragraphs)

[G1911]

I love baseball cards and data, this is fantastic. Great research

[53toppscollector]

if you spot any errors, please let me know and I will update. I will track the updates at the bottom of post #50 on the last page.

[Luke]

This is really amazing, thank you for putting this data together. Great presentation with the different colors too. Very easy to read.

[HobokenJon]

Brilliant work. Best I’ve ever seen. I just wish you’d waited another five or 10 years or so before you posted it. :-) Lots of open secrets about back scarcity are now a lot more open.

[HobokenJon]

Now for the really hard part . . . Plenty of cards graded by PSA and SGC don’t get entered into the pop reports. Here’s an example: Danny Hoffman with a Tolstoi back. It isn’t listed on either pop report; hence, it isn’t on your rankings. But I remember very well when this one sold in 2016. It even says Tolstoi on the flip. I’ve never seen another one.

https://sales-history.pwccmarketplac...y%20Hoffman%20

[HobokenJon]

Quick follow-up note: To see the Tolstoi Hoffman scan you’ll need to scroll down a little ways after clicking the link.

[53toppscollector]

Yep there are definitely items missing, some items were crossed over so they are "double counted", etc.

On one hand, these are "open secrets", maybe, on the other hand, none of this information is actually secret. I think my interest in this is partly because I love the T206 set, and partly because I am very much into data and trying to see things from different angles.

I think a lot of the types of people who collect master sets or some type of version of a master set already knew 99% of this information. If a few more people are now clued in that might mean I miss out on a few cards, but I can't worry about that.

This is as much a piece of American history as it is a hobby of mine. I like sharing data and information and learning something new, so hopefully it proves useful to others too.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by HobokenJon

Now for the really hard part . . . Plenty of cards graded by PSA and SGC don’t get entered into the pop reports. Here’s an example: Danny Hoffman with a Tolstoi back. It isn’t listed on either pop report; hence, it isn’t on your rankings. But I remember very well when this one sold in 2016. It even says Tolstoi on the flip. I’ve never seen another one.

https://sales-history.pwccmarketplac...y%20Hoffman%20

That's because PSA used T206resource checklists but they haven't updated their pop report data in several years to include newly confirmed cards
and Danny Hoffman wasn't confirmed with a Tolstoi back until 2016 so if PSA doesn't update their lists you won't see that combo in the pop reports until SGC grades one.

I have a few T206's that are recently graded PSA cards with all the info on the label that aren't listed in their pop reports or set registry.

[RCFire82]

T206 overload!!! I love it James. Thank you for doing this. Makes me realize how much I'm living (financially) in the print group 1 realm when it comes to trying for harder backs to include in my off-back set build. It's interesting to note, I just picked up a Bill Hinchman Sov.150 (raw) on eBay for about $5o. Theres a poor graded Hindu currently listed for $7oo, yet your research shows a pop. of 14 Sovereigns (#1 toughest back) compared to 20 Hindus (#3 toughest back)...sometimes the overall scarcer back is going to trump the actual scarcer back...an album full of Sovereigns or an album full of Hindus?

[RCFire82]

Similar effect with the aforementioned Piedmont 42's.

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by RCFire82

T206 overload!!! I love it James. Thank you for doing this. Makes me realize how much I'm living (financially) in the print group 1 realm when it comes to trying for harder backs to include in my off-back set build. It's interesting to note, I just picked up a Bill Hinchman Sov.150 (raw) on eBay for about $5o. Theres a poor graded Hindu currently listed for $7oo, yet your research shows a pop. of 14 Sovereigns (#1 toughest back) compared to 20 Hindus (#3 toughest back)...sometimes the overall scarcer back is going to trump the actual scarcer back...an album full of Sovereigns or an album full of Hindus?

This is where it gets dicey because of the way PSA previously cataloged Sovereigns. There are likely a few 150s out there in just "T206" or "T206 Sovereign" holders that would shift the counts slightly.

In Print Group 1, there are 68 subjects (updated this, initially had 71 but my sheet was filtered incorrectly) that have both a Sovereign 150 and a Sovereign 350. The exact counts of those is likely impossible to determine. In that subset of 71, 44 of them also have a Hindu Brown back. In most cases, the population of the Sov150 is close to the Hindu. There are a few interesting cases, however, where the Hindu is much more rare than the Sovereign 150. Those are:

Bradley Portrait: 18 Hindu // 31 Sov 150
Davis: 14 Hindu // 33 Sov 150
Joss Portrait: 14 Hindu // 30 Sov 150
Wagner Bat on L Shoulder: 14 Hindu // 30 Sov 150
Young Portrait: 19 Hindu // 33 Sov 150

[53toppscollector]

Also, I am going to fix some of the formatting/sizing on the charts tomorrow, because it will drive me insane if I don't. I will wait to see if anyone finds any other errors or things I need to fix before I re-create the charts and update them.

[HobokenJon]

A very minor nit . . . In post #62 above, did you mean to say Wagner left shoulder instead of right shoulder?

Separately, another example of a 350-only Tolstoi back that isn’t in either of the pop reports is Stephens. I believe it probably is scarcer than any of the backs shown in your spreadsheet.