I surveyed close to 25,000 graded T205 cards, here are the results (full data added)

[stutor]

Great thread James! Thank you for sharing this very informative data.

[peterb69]

Thanks for your time and effort put into this.

[Baseball Rarities]

Awesome data. Thanks for all of the work.

[obcmac]

I think there is additional information within the back runs that hasn't been fully explored either. Polar Bears, for example, don't appear in equal numbers...if they are in the group of 22 that appear with only 5 backs, then they are very tough in the polar bear group relative to other polar bears. As another example, 32 sovereigns will come with a darker green back...the same set of 32 is the entire group american beauty blacks (that is...if it has an american beauty black, then it has a dull green sovereign).

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by obcmac

I think there is additional information within the back runs that hasn't been fully explored either. Polar Bears, for example, don't appear in equal numbers...if they are in the group of 22 that appear with only 5 backs, then they are very tough in the polar bear group relative to other polar bears. As another example, 32 sovereigns will come with a darker green back...the same set of 32 is the entire group american beauty blacks (that is...if it has an american beauty black, then it has a dull green sovereign).

Yea I have definitely seen cases where the PB back seems to be much lower than expected. I found 24 cards in particular where I saw 5 or fewer graded Polar Bears. These 24 cards fall into 2 very distinct groups:

Group 1: Piedmont 25, Sweet Cap Black Both, Sweet Cap Red, Polar Bear, Honest, Sovereign

Group 2: Piedmont 25, Polar Bear, Hassan 30 and 649, Honest

Group 2s do not contain the Sweet Cap backs but contain the Hassan backs. Group 2 and Group 1 both contain Honest Long Cut, but Group 2 does not include Sovereigns.

Even within this subset there is another interesting wrinkle. The Group 1 cards that have Sweet Cap backs have much lower Piedmont counts. It is pretty weird seeing a card like Abbaticchio only have 7 graded Piedmont 25s. The fronts in "Group 2" have very plentiful Piedmont 25 backs.

[Fred]

James,

Holy cow! That's a lot of effort!

I can remember a time when my knowledge of T205 and T206 backs was pretty minimal. I sold a T206 on ebay and couldn't understand why it went for much more than other cards for that same player in the same condition with a Piedmont back. Then I found out it had to do with it being from Factory 42. That was over 20 years ago.

I've learned quite a bit through this forum because of unselfish people as yourself. Thank you for sharing the information.

[Baseballcrazy62]

Thanks for compiling this data!