Which t206 Southern League player is the toughest?

[where the gold at?]

Its always been a question of mine which t206 southern leaguer is the toughest, i always had thought shag but im not sure anymore.
i thought Carlos Smith, Dolly Stark were tough to find, but im curious to hear your thoughts as well

[BruceinGa]

My knowledge on the T206 set is far below most here but I tend to believe Scot Reader that Ed Reagan would be the scarcest.

[donmuth]

For the longest time I had heard Foster was the toughest, or one of the toughest, so I picked one up several years ago. There are 9 on ebay right now.



Another list I've seen said Persons was the hardest, but there are 13 of them on ebay right now.


Maybe others have more definitive info...

[sreader3]

My research shows:

1. Reagan
2. Ellam
3. Cranston
4. Manion
5. Smith (Shreveport)
6. Hart (Little Rock)
7. Coles
8. Otey
9. Jordan (Atlanta)
10. Seitz

The scarcity differences among these 10 subjects are not that great. For example, Reagan is about 5.6X scarcer than Cobb (Red) (the most common subject in the set) whereas Seitz is about 4.6X scarcer.

As has been discussed on Net54, the Reagan featured in T206 is likely Steve—not Ed.

Persons comes in at #14; Foster at #19 (out of 48).

[MR RAREBACK]

What about southern league Hindu

[asphaltman]

I’ve never understood the Shaughnessy craze if he’s not the toughest.

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by asphaltman

I’ve never understood the Shaughnessy craze if he’s not the toughest.

Hi Dave

I have completed several T206 sets, and "Shag" was always tough to find. Like you, I didn't quite understand why. Back in the late 1990's, at the Fort Washington Philly Show,
I found out why. A customer from Canada bought the two Shaughnessy cards I had on my table. He told me Frank Shaughnessy has a huge following with Canadian collectors,
they will buy any thing of his. So, the "Shaughnessy craze" is simply due to "supply vs demand".

Frank is in the Canadian Baseball HOF and Football Hall of Fames and the McGill University Sports HOF.

Here's a picture of him when he was the President of the International League (1936 - 1960).




TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[sreader3]

As confirmation for what Ted said, I looked back at my old 1993 Beckett price guide and three southern leaguers were priced higher than the other 45. Shag was one of the three. (The other two were Perdue and Stark. No idea why.)

[MVSNYC]

Didn't we find out several year back that someone was hoarding Shag, like someone else was doing with Titus? I think it was a high-profile auction house owner.

[RCMcKenzie]

For fun, I put some of the names you hear mentioned a lot by collectors. I have not checked all the Southern Leaguers, so there may be some others that have low pops. It's anecdotal, as cards like Shaghnessy are more likely to be sent to a tpg.

Hickman 122
Helm 124
Ellam 127
S Smith 128
Cranston 130
Foster 131
Paige 135
Reagan 135
Thornton 136
Manion 137
Bernhard 139
Coles 142
Otey 142
Lipe 146
D Jordan 147
B Hart 148
C Smith 149
Shag 153
Revelle 162
Seitz 162
F White 173

Again, I did not check them all. It's amazing how close the pop numbers are for all of these. In other words, they are all relatively the same scarcity level.

Incidentally, Hickman is also hard to find in T213-1.

[KaiserCurt]

Originally Posted by tedzan

Hi Dave

I have completed several T206 sets, and "Shag" was always tough to find. Like you, I didn't quite understand why. Back in the late 1990's, at the Fort Washington Philly Show,
I found out why. A customer from Canada bought the two Shaughnessy cards I had on my table. He told me Frank Shaughnessy has a huge following with Canadian collectors,
they will buy any thing of his. So, the "Shaughnessy craze" is simply due to "supply vs demand".

Frank is in the Canadian Baseball HOF and Football Hall of Fames and the McGill University Sports HOF.

Here's a picture of him when he was the President of the International League (1936 - 1960).




TED Z

T206 Reference
.

I’ve heard that in addition to the opinion that his hairstyle is pretty neat, so people sought him out/ hoarded him like Titus

[where the gold at?]

bill huggins had about 18 shags but he sold them off a while ago..

[philliesfan]

I am glad to have a Shag in my collection......with a Hindu back.

[CMIZ5290]

I agree with Reagan, especially in high grades....

[Bobbycee]

For me its Ray Ryan. He was the last player for me to finish off the Southern Leaguers. Think of how often you see his cards on eBay. Rarely.

[sreader3]

Originally Posted by Bobbycee

For me its Ray Ryan. He was the last player for me to finish off the Southern Leaguers. Think of how often you see his cards on eBay. Rarely.

Even though Ryan did not rank in the top tier under my methodology I had a some trouble finding a PSA 5 copy back in the day.

[steve B]

It's interesting that out of the group of 8 blank backs I got, four are in that top 10. Maybe the SL wasn't helping sales and they decided to stop using them earlier than expected?

Breitenstine
Ellam
Cranston
Coles
Fritz
Guiheen
Reagan
Sahughnessy

[bbsports]

Ray Ryan is the toughest to get. I always have to pay extra to get that card. Shag is the most popular.

[DixieBaseball]

Steve - Love that pic of those blank backs and I still have the one you traded/sold me many years ago! When I saw this post, it made me curious as to how and when you came by those blank backs? Would love to know the origin or how it happened many moons ago... You just don't see a group like that anymore. - Love it - Thnx for sharing and hope all is well - J

Originally Posted by steve B

It's interesting that out of the group of 8 blank backs I got, four are in that top 10. Maybe the SL wasn't helping sales and they decided to stop using them earlier than expected?

Breitenstine
Ellam
Cranston
Coles
Fritz
Guiheen
Reagan
Sahughnessy

[steve B]

Originally Posted by DixieBaseball

Steve - Love that pic of those blank backs and I still have the one you traded/sold me many years ago! When I saw this post, it made me curious as to how and when you came by those blank backs? Would love to know the origin or how it happened many moons ago... You just don't see a group like that anymore. - Love it - Thnx for sharing and hope all is well - J

They were a single lot on Ebay, at what I thought was a very good price. The seller also had a larger lot of regular blankbacks. My wife and I discussed it like with any big purchase and she convinced me to only buy the southern leaguers, and maybe approach them about buying the others if they hadn't sold. She was suspicious of so many in one lot.
I bought the SLs, and they were nice, I messaged the seller as the other lot hadn't sold, and they never responded, my first offer was along the lines of "I've come into a bit more money, if these are still available I would buy them at your asking price" Figuring that would be good since they'd had no bids at all, and if not at least it wasn't a crazy lowball offer and if they wanted more I would probably have gone with it as long as it wasn't completely crazy.

Someday, I'll have to organize my file of ebay items I saved the listings for and see if I have the pics of the other lot.

I miss Ellam a bit sometimes... but he really belonged with you.

[DixieBaseball]

Steve - I would love to see that big lot of Blanks! You just don't ever see that type of lot rear itself on ebay anymore. What a cool find... I still have the Ellam as a part of my Nashville collection. I just need a Brown Old Mill Bernhard to complete my entire Nashville SL run of T206-Hindu-T210-8-T211-T213-1's... That will be my white whale card. (Had a chance to buy it years ago from Dan at National, but just passed on it due to price tag. (Brown Old Mill's were stupid expensive then).

I have always held out hope there was a Bay-Bernhard-Perdue Nashville Blank back, but never seen one. Anyway... Good stuff -

Thnx for sharing - Be well - Jeremy

[leaflover]

A well registered Ryan was the toughest for me.

[jp1216]

Ray Ryan was my last card to reach 520. Big thanks to Brian W. for the final piece.

[Bobbycee]

Mike, nice namesake Ryan & an OM 5 to boot. Looks like Ryan is leading the way in the toughest SLer.

[RCMcKenzie]

Ryan ties for 3rd with Elam at 127 on SGCLegacyReport. I guess I need to run the rest of the names and look at psa. Stay-at-home orders end tonight in Texas, so I may not find the time...Rob

[RCMcKenzie]

Here are the PSA pops for a few. This places Ryan at the top so far. I need to do more research on the tpg pops. It's still just an anecdotal, arbitrary number...

PSA pop-
Ryan 248
Hickman 267
Reagan 272

[sreader3]

The reason Ryan is out of the top 10 in my algorithm is that it adjusts population for condition. My algorithm assumes that T206 subjects should generally have the same condition profile and that a significant reason some subjects have higher populations than others is higher price, which induces surplus submissions. When you adjust population for condition, it removes high value submission bias and provides a truer measure of scarcity. It so happens that there are an unusually high number of Ryan cards in strong condition relative to his total population. So after adjusting for condition, Ryan does not fare as well in the southern leaguer scarcity rankings as he otherwise might. Perhaps Ryan is an anomaly and it’s a coincidence that the cards of his that have survived are in unusually good condition. But condition-weighting works extremely well for most of the 524 T206 subjects.

Raw populations are not very useful as a comparative T206 scarcity metric, although if one limits the discussion to southern leaguers perceived to have similar value I suppose they could be of some use.

[RCMcKenzie]

Scot, I'm not attempting to debunk any of the evidence you have gathered. I have not spent a lot of time analyzing any data on T206 SL'ers. It is interesting to me that there are 12 Hickman's for sale on eBay and 8 Reagan's and zero Ray Ryan's. It could be a variety of factors, such as people perceive the Ryan card as difficult, and scoop it up when it is offered. None of the cards are especially difficult, in any grade, with any back, from what I can tell. Rob

[sreader3]

Hi Rob,
I didn’t mean to come across as offended in any way. I just wanted to explain how I arrived at my scarcity rankings. It’s quite possible that Ryan is an anomaly and that the cards of his that have survived all these years are in unusually good condition. That would account for a lower scarcity ranking in my algorithm relative to his true pop.
Scot

[RCMcKenzie]

That's interesting. I did not realize Ryan was more often found in higher grade. Fun discussion, nonetheless. I'm always trying to learn faster than I forget.

[Donscards]

I really enjoy reading about the T206 cards and the explanations on the Southern Leaguers with scarcity of this set---I always thought Shag was the toughest, now I have a better awareness on SL's. On this site, we do have T206 Experts and thanks for sharing your knowledge.

[tedzan]

Hey Guys

So, you think Ryan is one of the tougher Southern Leaguer's, so how scarce is this Ryan (without caption) ? ?

.


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[sreader3]

It’s the first one I’ve ever seen Ted. But as you know the market value of these print anomalies is in the eye of the beholder.

[Leon]

Nice card, looks miscut a little bit. You almost want to see a partial name at top....

Originally Posted by tedzan

Hey Guys

So, you think Ryan is one of the tougher Southern Leaguer's, so how scarce is this Ryan (without caption) ? ?

.


TED Z

T206 Reference
.

[mattsey9]

Originally Posted by where the gold at?

Its always been a question of mine which t206 southern leaguer is the toughest, i always had thought shag but im not sure anymore.
i thought Carlos Smith, Dolly Stark were tough to find, but im curious to hear your thoughts as well

I briefly got excited at this prospect as I have these two cards. Then I remembered the old maxim, "If it's rare and valuable, why do you have it?"

[DixieBaseball]

Toughest SL T206....