A Modern Objective View of E90-1 Rarities

[ScottFandango]

Collectors today are very lucky that they have modern conveniences to help their collections grow....Its Amazing what Burdick and other founding fathers were able to accomplish with snail mail and very little published information...

Today we have the Internet which connects us instantly to people around the world...we also have TPG's, registries and most importantly, Population Reports..

These modern tools need to be used to reevaluate what we have come to know as American Caramel Rarities....

Each individual collector will have his own subjective opinion of the difficulty of a card based on how quickly, or how cheaply a certain card was obtained...

a collector may have been very lucky, and come across a very difficult card early in the collection process, and this card is then thought of as being "not that hard" when in fact, it may not have been seen for many more years...

My Goal is to take subjectivity out of the E 90-1 set and come up with a more accurate depiction of a cards difficulty....Enter the Population Reports...

Both PSA and SGC have extensive Pop reports that are nearing 20 years old...

People may say they are inaccurate but a few crossovers or crack outs will not spoil the information within...Look at the Pop reports as "the most possible graded cards in existence." Yes, there may be less in actuality due to crack outs, but that inflates the population...so a very low pop card may actually have Less in circulation than stated, thereby supporting rarity levels...

Our founding collecting Fathers have traditionally called these cards rare:
Mike Mitchell
Joe Jackson

..and these cards Very Difficult:
Bill Sweeney
Hans Lobert
Dave Shean
Larry McLean
Hugh Duffy....

However, New evidence paints a different, Objective picture...


Without further ado, I present the COMBINED POP REPORTS of PSA and SGC graded E90-1 American Caramels...

Leach Throwing 25
Dougherty 25
Bescher 26
Stone Left hand 30
Lobert 31
Shean 32
Gibson back view 34
Siegle 34
Howell Wind up 35
McLean 35
Speaker 36
Wagner Throwing 36
Duffy 36
Stahl 36
----------------------------

O'conner 38
Ritchie 38
Upp 38
Demmitt 38
Barry 38
Bliss 39
Leach Batting 39
Gray 39
Leever 39
Camnitz 39
Corridon 40
H Davis 41
Walsh 42
Young Clev 42
Sweeney 42
Keeler Red Port 42
Hartzell Batting 42
Karger 44
Mitchell 44
Bemis 44
Tenney 44
Pastorius 44
Sheckard 44
O'leary 44
McIntyre 44
Clement 44
Donovan 44
Stovall 45
Groom 45
Irwin 45
Bell 47
Clarke Pitt 48
McInnis 48
Gibson Front 48
I Thomas 48
R Thomas 49
Wiltse 49
Overall 49
Brandsfield noP 49
Lumley 50
Isbell 50
Phelps 50
Schlitzer 50
Blankenship 50
J Tannenhill 50
Butler 50
Keeler Throwing 50
Knight 51
Miller 51
Jordan 52
Donlin 52
Fromme 52
F Mitchell 54
Hall 54
Unglaub 54
G Davis 54
Ellis 55
Bush 56
Graham 57
Willis 57
L Tannenhill 58
Wagner Batting 62
Oakes 63
B Brown 64
Marquard 64
Joss Pitching 64
Schaefer 64
Krause 65
Bransfield P 67
Grant 67
Heitmuller 68
Bradley 68
M Brown 70
-----------------------
Engle 73
Dooin 77
Dygert 79
Hartzell Batting 80
Mullin 80
Stanage 84
J Sweeney 85
Mcquillan 85
Stone LH 87
Criger 88
Bailey 90
Summers 99
Howell Follow 106
--------------------high pop HOF's--------/
Bresnahan 89
Collins 91
Chance 94
Clarke Phila 101
Crawford 107
Chase 110
Joe Jackson 115
Keeler Pink 116
Tinker 120
Lajoie 122
Joss Portrait 127
Bender 129
Jennings 129
Mathewson 132
Wallace 133
Baker 135
Plank 139
Young Boston 149
Cobb 234
----------------

There you have it! They key to me is Bailey, Summers and Howell....these commons have been graded almost 100 times each...you can't say that there are so many Bailey, Summers, or Howell collectors that they altered the pop reports...these pop reports are truly indicative of the amount of cards out there...

There are really no outliers...an amazingly consistent pop report...

Only a handful of cards stand out as real Toughies!

So, say hello to the NEW MODERN RARITIES of the e90-1 set:

Tommy Leach Throwing
Dougherty
Bob Bescher ( the only card Steve soloway was unable to obtain for his set)
George Stone Left hand
George Gibson Back View
Johnny siegle (by far the lowest pop of any horizontal card In this set)
Harry Howell Wind up

Of special note are a few Rarities that are HOF's!
Tris Speaker
Wagner Throwing
Hugh Duffy

Enjoy!

PS..the T206 Wagner has one of the smallest pop reports in its set, verifying its status as THE iconic rarity....notice there are over 100 Joe Jackson e90-1..

[ullmandds]

Nice research Scott...how would you rank/categorize the e90-1 miller w/sunset pose...which I've seen very few of...and which noone seems to recognize as a variation or scarcity within this set.

I know...I have a one track mind!!!

[ScottFandango]

I would love to see a scan of the backs of those if possible!

[ullmandds]

i'll get you 1 tonight when I get home.

[ScottFandango]

Any new variation talk is highly acceptable in this thread

Is that a blank back or does it have American Caramel 100 subjects on back?

My initial reaction was the sunset card iis a E101 without some blue shadowing...

Would LOVE to see the back! Will wait patiently...

[ullmandds]

scott...it is definitely an e90-1...it has an e90-1 back...not blank. I have seen maybe 3 of them since I've been searching for miller glove pose...like approx 3-4 yrs.

Mine was acquired from a fellow board member who purchased a lot of mostly e90-1 raw at auction in the last 2 yrs or so...the lot contained 2 of these sunset millers and also contained some tougher e90-1 like keeler red portrait.

This variation has been discussed in the past(see archive) but no one seemed to know/care much about it?!

[brianp-beme]

Nice compilation Scott...here are a few thoughts.

I do not think the Joe Jackson card has ever been considered rare. Extremely popular, yes, especially the last twenty years, and thus expensive. But not a difficult card compared to other E90-1's. Check out Lew Lipset's Encyclopedia...he does not include it in his lists of difficult to extremely rare cards.

I also would like to make a point about the 'graded' rarity of most of the common players at the top of your lists (which is appreciated, by the way). It has only been in the past two or three years that the Leach-throwing, Dougherty, Bescher, Stone-left hand, and Howell-wind up have had more than a nominal added value in the SCD Guide. All of these cards were basically listed as commons in the 2009 guide. By 2011 their prices had been elevated (except for Stone-left hand).

I always like to think of all the sets, near-sets and larger groupings of E90-1 auction lots over the years...quite often some of the 'better' cards of these raw collections (usually the big name hall of famers and the traditional 'rarities' of the set) were the ones that were sent out for grading. I think you have honed in on some of the scarcities of this set, but I also think some of the real low populations on some of the commons has been the result of these cards not being perceived as particularly rare until very recently. In other words, I think these are scarce cards, but more are likely out there ungraded to narrow the gap at the top of your scarcity charts.

In another line of reasoning, I believe that your list really exposes the HOF rarities of the set, as these are cards most likely to have been graded over time. I knew about the difficulty of the Speaker card, as well as the Duffy, but the Wagner Throwing comes as a little bit of a surprise as to how scarce it is, as Wagner cards are about as likely to have been graded as any in the set.

Once again, an interesting read. And by the way, my Miller fielding has no smog induced sunset. I think the sunset version should be noted in the guides and by the TPG's as a legitimate variation, especially since it is an 'added' color (not a missing color) variation from the commonly seen card.

Brian

[honus94566]

What is the pop. of the Keeler red portrait? I didn't see it listed in the OP of this thread... I am pretty sure it is quite a bit tougher to find than either of the other two Keelers.

[ullmandds]

Yes...red keeler is def toughest of the 3.

[brianp-beme]

The Keeler Red portrait card is mistakenly identified as part of the Keebler cookie family (42 on the combined population list).

Brian

[steve B]

I can't say wether it would apply to E90s, but in the closeup looking I've done with T206 population reports there's a rather clear 2:1 ratio for HOF cards being graded.

Also a bit early, but I think that may be much higher for rare cards or ones believed to be rare.
Magie is in the same range as any p150 common. But we know it's not common.

That may affect the number on the Mitchell.


Steve B

[honus94566]

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

The Keeler Red portrait card is mistakenly identified as part of the Keebler cookie family (42 on the combined population list).

Brian

LOL.... That's why I didn't find it when doing a search for the word "Keeler" on the page