T206 Sweet Caporal Census Project

[Rhotchkiss]

Another great example of how/why pop reports should be used as guides and not gospel. Here, we can use them to extrapolate relative scarcity compared to other series/factory numbers; not so great when comparing to an entirely different back.

What is abundantly clear, and a major (largely) overlooked fact about t206 backs, is that SC Factory 25s are much rarer than factory 30s. This is especially true in the 350 series

[frankbmd]

Quite a project, but perhaps paralysis by analysis.

I reminded of launch angles and exit speed velocities.

Babe Ruth hit a lot of home runs without them and not a single home run has been attributed to them that hasn't gone over the fence.

Good luck and carry on.

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Another great example of how/why pop reports should be used as guides and not gospel. Here, we can use them to extrapolate relative scarcity compared to other series/factory numbers; not so great when comparing to an entirely different back.

What is abundantly clear, and a major (largely) overlooked fact about t206 backs, is that SC Factory 25s are much rarer than factory 30s. This is especially true in the 350 series

The most interesting thing to me is that most of the T206 rules are not universal, and there are outliers. For example, I was just looking at two different 350 series cards in the PSA pop report and they have very different Fac 25/30 splits:

Byrne has (14) Fac 25s and (18) Fac 30s....not a big split.

Butler has (4) Fac 25s and (32) Fac 30s...a huge split

Other than this random huge gap in their Sweet Cap factory distribution, there is nothing else really distinguishing them. They have an almost identical total number of Sweet Caps, Byrne has none of the rare backs while Butler has only a BL350.

You are right, the majority of the Factory 25s are much more rare, but not in all cases. Which makes you wonder why. These oddities pop up everywhere, like the Tannehill above, the fact that the Exclusive 12 are so abundant in AB460 backs, while the rest of the AB460s are extremely difficult and low population.

The journey continues.

[53toppscollector]

12. Armbruster (Print Group 2)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory number: 10 (plus 5 that were too blurry to see)
T206 > Factory number: 4 (plus 4 Piedmont 350s)

Armbruster is an interesting one. He is one of the nicest looking portraits, imo, with the lovely red background. But his card is pretty scarce overall. Based on total population numbers (which are a few months old), he was ranked 91st in terms of total population. He has only 102 total Sweet Caps graded between PSA and SGC. Based on the above numbers, his Factory 25 falls into the "very very rare" bucket. I saw only 3 graded copies total between PSA and SGC.

[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

12. Armbruster (Print Group 2)

Armbruster is an interesting one. He is one of the nicest looking portraits, imo, with the lovely red background. But his card is pretty scarce overall. Based on total population numbers (which are a few months old), he was ranked 91st in terms of total population. He has only 102 total Sweet Caps graded between PSA and SGC. Based on the above numbers, his Factory 25 falls into the "very very rare" bucket. I saw only 3 graded copies total between PSA and SGC.

I just checked, but my SC350/25 is ungraded.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

The most interesting thing to me is that most of the T206 rules are not universal, and there are outliers. For example, I was just looking at two different 350 series cards in the PSA pop report and they have very different Fac 25/30 splits:

Byrne has (14) Fac 25s and (18) Fac 30s....not a big split.

Butler has (4) Fac 25s and (32) Fac 30s...a huge split

Other than this random huge gap in their Sweet Cap factory distribution, there is nothing else really distinguishing them. They have an almost identical total number of Sweet Caps, Byrne has none of the rare backs while Butler has only a BL350.

You are right, the majority of the Factory 25s are much more rare, but not in all cases. Which makes you wonder why. These oddities pop up everywhere, like the Tannehill above, the fact that the Exclusive 12 are so abundant in AB460 backs, while the rest of the AB460s are extremely difficult and low population.

The journey continues.

I'm thinking this has to do with what fronts were available in the printers at the time they filled the order. The ones with big splits are most likely either the end of a front run that was finished off using the 25 backs, OR fronts that were only available one particular time the 25s were finished.

The ones with more equal splits were probably available during different press runs.

That the data used weeds out duplicates is both proper and wonderful, as it makes the pop report data much more useful.

I think eventually we'll see groups of cards based on the splits between factories, and that will give a very approximate idea of what cards were on the same sheet.
One of the guys here did some work separating the 350-460s by group, and what he came up with was pretty impressive. Even more so when I looked up the pop report numbers, and all but two cards matched up nicely within those groups.

[53toppscollector]

13. Arndt (Print Group 2)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 7 (plus 3 cards that were too blurry to see)
T206 > Factory: 3 (plus 7 Piedmont 350s)

You can add Arndt into the very tough Sweet Caporal bucket. Less than 100 total Sweet Caps graded, and only 13% were Factory 25s in my census.

[53toppscollector]

14. Atz (Print Group 2)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 14 (plus 2 that were 2 blurry to read)
T206 > Factory: 4 (plus 8 Piedmont 350s)

Errors:

I discovered 1 error here, the first of the survey. There is a SC 350/25 slab that actually has a SC 350/30 back. The nice thing about the PSA slab is that the serial number shows up on the back too, so I double checked it, and sure enough, this is a mislabel. Our first of the survey, and honestly, this was one of the things I was most interested in, to see how many of these mislabels are really floating around out there.

[53toppscollector]

Before diving into the Bs, I wanted to share the summary of what I have so far.



Note that I am splitting out the 34 subjects that have the SC 150/649 OP back into their own row here. That is more about my own curiosity at this point.

We only have 14 subjects so far, so I don't think it is worth drawing any conclusions yet. Actually, I know it isn't worth it. But, I think it would be interesting to see how the numbers change as we add more cards to the sample. So far, the key takeaways are:

* SC 150/25 vs SC 150/30 split is 52/112, or slightly more than 2:1 Factory 30s to 25s

* SC 350/25 vs SC 350/30 split is 85/342, or a slightly more than 4:1 Factory 30 to 25 split.

* We only have one card with a 649OP so far (Alperman), but his card had 28 copies with the 649OP factory, compared to just 18 150/25s and 16 150/30s. That is moderately interesting to me.

[53toppscollector]

15. Baker (Print Group 3)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 25 (plus 8 that were too blurry)
T206 > Factory: 15 (plus 1 too blurry, 6 P350s, 3 P460/25s, 1 P460/42)

Errors:

I found 3 errors in the scans:

* One SC 460/42 that was actually a 460/42OP
* One SC 350/30 that was actually a 350/25
* One SC 350/25 that was actually a 460/25 (this is a PSA DNA card)

The Baker SC 460/42OP had only 12 copies in the PSA pop report, but I found 19 of them in total just with PSA, and another 7 at SGC. Of the 19 in PSA slabs, only 5 of them actually had SC 460/42OP on the label, the rest were Sweet Caporal or T206 labels.

I also found my first hidden Piedmont 460/42, which was quite exciting. It was in a T206 labeled slab.