What percentage of your Prewar collection consists of HOF members?

[brianp-beme]

I thought would try another poll for fun, and perhaps as well to offer a glimpse at our collecting preferences. To restate the title of the thread, what is the HOF card percentage in your Prewar card collection? Collecting cards of Hall of Famers has always been popular in vintage collecting, at least since I started collecting prewar decades ago. To me it seems it has just gathered steam in recent years, with a general shift away from set collecting to investment collecting.

Ideally everybody participating in this poll has at least 10 prewar cards...an amount at which a person's collecting proclivities should start to become apparent.

For me, prewar Hall of Fame card collecting has always been one of my main interests, but definitely not my complete focus. I fall in the 6 to 10% category.

As in the T206 poll I previously ran, it will be interesting to see the results and read any comments about your prewar collecting.

Brian

[Peter_Spaeth]

I think my only non is Joe Jackson.

[mrreality68]

Ruth and Jackson are what I collect with over 60% being Ruth

[conor912]

I have absolutely no idea. Never looked at it like that.

[brianp-beme]

Thanks for all the voting/responses so far.

Originally Posted by conor912

I have absolutely no idea. Never looked at it like that.

Sounds like it is about time to get crackin' on this vital topic! If nothing else it will give you an excuse to comb through your prewar collection.

Brian

[Lobo Aullando]

Pre-war is a shade under 10%, but post-war is 35%. Those numbers will probably be very similar a decade from now.

[Rad_Hazard]

I'm at 38% for pre-war. Only 21 cards, and 8 HOFers. Now, how many of those non-HOFers should be in the Hall is an entirely different conversation.

[Mark]

Originally Posted by conor912

I have absolutely no idea. Never looked at it like that.

I suspect that there are a good number of collectors here who have so many pre-war cards that they cannot say how many cards they have, let alone how many fall into any category.

[Exhibitman]

I don't do commons. I have a few leftovers from when I was a kid building sets, and I will buy the occasional T206 portrait (Lobert, Leach, Steinfeldt to go with the other three, etc.), but I rarely acquire a non-HOFer. O'Doul is the only one I collect and he's in the Japanese HOF...

[Rhotchkiss]

I went with 100% because, aside from sets and 6-8 brown T206 old mills/brown Lenox, all I collect is HOFers, and specific HOFers at that.

Edited - Actually, I have 5-10 Joe Jackson items, and he is not in the HOF, (but I consider him a collectable HOFer), but still much closer to 100% than 75%

[GeoPoto]

I don't collect any cards because the player is a HoFer. I collect in a half dozen different foci and collect HoFers along with everybody else in the focus. For example, pre-war Washington Senators (Nationals, etc.) which includes a fair number of HoFers: Griffith, Johnson, Rice, Harris, Goslin, Cronin, Manush (with cameo appearances by Mack, Coveleski, Speaker, and a few others). But post-war Senators is a HoF wasteland: Killebrew in '55-60, Herzog in '57-58, Williams as manager '69-71. Then there's first black players which is rich in HoFers: Ernie, Campy, Doby, Monte, Minnie, Frank, and Jackie (out of 19 players total). So, answering your percentage question is difficult.

My only Speaker:

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1688145604

[BearBailey]

No idea? As a set collector I just don’t look at it that way, while the HOFer might cost more not any more important to me?

[Golfcollector]

100% As it is all Sam Crawford....

If I include golf cards it is also 100% on pre war.....as it is all Walter Hagen, Tom Morris Jr and Sr, Bobby Jones, Harry Vardon...and really no one else

[conor912]

Originally Posted by BearBailey

No idea? As a set collector I just don’t look at it that way, while the HOFer might cost more not any more important to me?

+1

[3finger1908]

I collect 1907 & 1908 Cubs, I am 26% HOF by card count. I also don't view cards as an 'investment' and keep my collection below 2.5% of my net worth. If I was an 'investor' I would have a higher HOF %.

[riggs336]

No clue. I collect sets.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by BearBailey

No idea? As a set collector I just don’t look at it that way, while the HOFer might cost more not any more important to me?

Same here

[Leon]

I prefer HOF'ers but with some rare, type cards (a few collectors do the set) you take what you can get.

[ty_cobb]

I will be in the 25% range for Hofer's in T206, but pre-divorce would have been much, much higher. its not the % of pre-war, its the % of pre-divorce that skews the numbers way,way down! ,,lol

now keep in mind I also collect Blacksox, so that also skews the numbers way lower too,,,

[donmuth]

I am in the 10% range for HOFers in my T206 collection currently. That will go up and down as I work to complete the set.

I only have a handful of non-T206 pre-war cards, so I didn't specifically count those but they are likely around the same percentage.

Unless I move away from set collecting, I will always have a much higher percentage of non-HOFers.

On the post-war side, I have been focusing much more on acquiring more HOFers over the last couple of years, but I want to finish the entire 1948-1980 set runs eventually so....

[joshuabotnick2]

Id say 85-90% but my collection is pretty tight knit.

[brianp-beme]

Now that the poll has been up for some time, I thought I would chime in with my interpretation of the results.

Currently close to 52% of the votes cast by, surpisingly, voters, indicated that 50% or more of their Prewar collections consist of cards of Hall of Famers. At the other end of the spectrum, about 38% voted that 24% or less of their Prewar collections consisted of Hall of Famers. And the final 10% or so collections rest in the 25% to 49% range.

What do I make of this info? To my eyes it certainly seems like the collecting focus has shifted to Hall of Fame collecting (Hall of Fame status was an easy way to delineate things, but I imagine if I were to add very popular players to the mix, for example Black Sox players, Hal Chase, certain other non-HOF stars, etc., the percentages in the 50% and above categories would be substantially higher still). The comparative rise in value of these cards, versus the regular schlubs, not only supports this apparent shift, but in my mind reflects the investment aspect that has come to dominate our little crevice of the card collecting hobby, just as it has definitely done so in the much more larger mainstream modern sports cards sector.

Also, in regards to the lower end percentages, folks that are more set, team, type, or budget collectors would likely fall into the 24% or less category, with the natural range for them falling in the 6 to 15% groupings, if hypothetically a collector would not pay any attention to the players when collecting. I have a feeling that this indicates, while still a popular avenue for Prewar collecting, an overall shift towards collecting Hall of Fame and very popular player cards. The ones who responded with posts commenting that they did not participate in the poll, because they didn't think of their collections in this fashion, etc., would likely be in this grouping.

If a similar poll had been conducted 10-20 years ago, I imagine that percentages would have skewed toward the lower end. Unfortunately my time machine has been on the fritz lately so it is unlikely that I will be able to slip in a poll thread to the beginning of this board or its precursors, so we will not know how exactly those collectors would have responded. If we were to push things back a decade or two earlier, pre-internet days, I feel strongly that the vast majority of folks would fall in the lower percentage ranges.

Just a few thoughts, perhaps share some of yours?

Brian

[Schlesinj]

My percentage is a little lower as I focus mostly in Yankees related items and negro leaguers, so a few negro leaguers on my roster are not HOF yet like Dobie Moore or Oms. That could change as more players get added and the stats continue to be gathered.