Old Judge Hall of Fame rarity-

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Posted By: Harry 

It seems as though there are many Old Judge Hall of Famers that bring considerable premium over others such as Delahanty and McPhee. Is this because they are difficult within the set or are they just very popular with collectors. Over the years, I have seen quite a few Delahantys for sale and never considered him a real difficult card. McPhee, on the other hand, seems to hardly ever become available.

Without getting into the nuances of particular poses, what Old Judge Hall of Famers are relatively difficult to find?

I will start the list off with McPhee, Wright and Nichols.

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Posted By: Paul

Lew Lipset's encyclopedia (published long before McPhee was elected to the Hall) lists Nichols as the toughest and describes Griffith as one of the toughest. Delahanty and Wright are both described as slightly tougher than average, leaving at least the suggestion that they're not real tough.

Current auction catalogs describe Delahanty as next to impossible. I suspect this is due more to his popularity than the true rarity of the card, but others on this board may know more than me.

In my experience, McPhee is clearly the toughest - I've seen only two for sale since he made it to the Hall. Nichols is also very tough. Steve Verkman has one with a clipped corner for $2500. Harry Wright has been a real pain for me and a couple of other people on this board. I suspect he is genuinely difficult. But I also think Lew Lipset's description of Wright as only slightly difficult -- a description he wrote before Old Judges became so popular -- is worth paying attention to.

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Posted By: jeff s

Delehanty and Wright are really popular, particularly Wright because he isn't obtainable in any other major set. I'm sure this has something to do with McPhee's rarity as well, though I suspect that part of the issue with McPhee is that no one collected him for a long time (unlike Delehanty, or any other early HOF inductee). It's worth remembering that aside from a few players, if you decide you want a card of a particular OJ player, it could take a while to find any pose of him. There are usually about 25 old judges for sale on ebay any given week (with some variation), so if you figure that if there are 500 players, it would take a while to find everybody. Compared to <pick your random common>, Duffy, Ewing, Sunday, McCarthy, Brouthers, Ward, Keefe, etc. are really easy to find a single example of.

For what it's worth, I don't think Griffith is all that tough--I've seen at least four for sale in the last eight months--I think Rusie, Connor, and Robinson are tougher. Maybe add Hanlon, Beckley, and Galvin to that list too...they're about the mid-range of HOF difficulty.

Just my opinion...lots of people here know much more than I do...and their expertise extends beyond poor-fair cards

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Posted By: jay behrens

just my observation of having the pleasure of viewing a number of nice OJ collections, I would say Rusie has to be fairly tough I don't recall ever seeing one in any collection I have looked at. I've seen everyone else except McPhee, and I think I have seen one seen one but not positive.

Jay

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Posted By: Tom

Mack is pretty tough too. I have a Rusie in my collection that's SGC50 I believe. Pretty clean. Purchased from the Old Judge clearing house (Jay Miller). I also have two different Griffith poses, so I don't think he's particularly tough. Harry Wright is tough but you do see some of him. I bought a REALLY bad one off Yahoo auctions for $175.00. It had decent photo clarity and is now graded like SGC20 or something. Peeling on the front of the card though.

Ward, Kelly, Duffy, Keefe and a few others are pretty 'common' except for specific poses. I'm sure Jay knows which poses are tougher on these HOFers. I've not seen many Beckley's either. Along with Griffith and Duffy, I believe he's the only other player (maybe only HOFer) that have cards in both Old Judges and T206's.

p.s. anyone have any Pete Browning cards for sale? N172? N173?