What Is the Median Scarcity for Old Judge Poses?
 

Question for Jay or Joe or whoever else wants to chime in:

What is the median scarcity for Old Judge poses?

By this I mean how many copies exist of the Old Judge pose that is right in the middle of the 2000+ pose scarcity continuum?

Obviously just looking for an informed estimate here.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday and thanks in advance for the feedback.

Scot

Im curious as well about this. I would like to know how many examples of my one OJ card exists George Myers (catching)

I would guess the average is right around 15-20, figuring 2460 poses and a somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 Old Judge cards exist. The average pose would then have about 15-20 examples.

To answer the Myers question, he is a common player to find, but certain poses are tougher to find even among common players, so the only way to really find out how many approximately exist is keeping track over a long time. I would say at least 100 Myers cards exist and his tagging player pose doesn't show up often, so the breakdown of his three cards could be 40-40-20(tagging). Just a rough estimate based on what I've seen.

Thanks for the input. 15-20 is lower than I would have guessed -- but my guess would have been totally uninformed.

So every Old Judge card is rarer than the T206 Honus Wagner.

Well, many of the Old Judge poses are extremely rare, so they drag down the average. If you saw the thread where we talked about Taylor Shafer, we mentioned that one of his cards(any pose) probably hasn't been for sale publicly for at least 12 years, but he has five poses in the set. I can't imagine more than five exist of any of his poses. There are a few players who fit that same mold as well, so they lower the average

OJ population by pose varies significantly and is best discussed by first understanding to which years/subsets the pose belongs. George Myers, for example, has three poses as follows:

337-1 Bat at ready, looking at camera = Issued 1887 (type A & B), 1888 (Fb), & 1889 (Fc)
337-2 Stooping, hands waist high = Issued 1887 (type A & B) & 1888 (Fb)
337-3 Tagging player on ground = Issued 1888 (Fb)

John's estimate is certainly in the ball park but suspect George Myers is an easier subject with closer to 100 copies pose 1, 70 copies pose 2, and 15 copies pose 3. This is merely a guess and reserve the right to answer differently next time.

Pose population is far from normal distribution. While 1887 cards, for example, are generally easy there are many outliers (Madden "bat against rock" for example :) )

I think John approached this the right way. There are about 2535 poses known and if you assume 50,000 cards that would average out to slightly less than 20 copies/pose, on average. This is based on 50,000 cards being known, which may be high. The three biggest private Old Judge collections have under 8000 cards in aggregate. I would bet the next twenty have under 10,000 cards. After that you are down to a lot of small collections. Very few dealers have much of a stock. If the correct number was 40,000 cards then you are down to a average pose having 16 copies. If I had to hang my hat on a number, I would go with 16, which is in John's original range. Again, there are lots of unique or 2-3 copy poses. All the rarities fall into this category (except for Behel and Brady--they probably have 5-10 copies each, but they are there since they only have one pose).

Of the 2500+ variations what would be the "range" from least amount of copies for any one pose to the most ? ( 1-100 ?)

My dad found 3 OJ's "in the wild" (new to the hobby)...early 1980s at an estate auction. I have found only 4 OJ's "in the wild" in probably 30 years of attending thousands of estate sales, garage sales, antique shows and flea markets. 50,000 is probably about right.

The low number is certainly one. The high number probably represents a common pose that was issued in 1887 and reissued in 1888-1890. I would guess that number is south of 100, but probably not a lot south, perhaps 80-90.

I still think 50,000 seems high. I wonder how many people on the board have any Old Judges.

Is it time for a "What is Your OJ Number?" thread?

(Watch out Frank, the N guys are gunning for you!)

I know some have been graded more than once but here's the numbers from the graders " PSA 3,855 and SGC 8,855 = 12,710 graded.

Some may remember a similar discussion last year (OJ survival rate of up to 50k cards).

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...d.php?t=196113

I agree that the most common OJ is likely around 100 and I place the first pose of George Myers in that category with both type A & B zero number cards, an Fb, and Fc. FWIW, my estimates were arrived at as follows:

no more than 40 cards from 1887 type A zero number
no more than 20 cards from 1887 type B zero number
no more than 15 cards from 1888 (Fb)
no more than 30 cards from 1889 (Fc)

This gives a total of 105 which I rounded down to 100 but could easily be less (70-100 would be good guesstimate) for pose 1. The same math was used on pose 2 & 3 and recommend that if you wish to collect all three poses of George Myers that you don't pass on the next pose 3 that surfaces (Fb only).

I should note that there are many examples of Fb cards with less than 15 examples. Fb Anson in street clothes may hit 15 while Anson in Uniform is 4 (or 5). Fb Deacon White poses 2 & 8 are maybe around 10 apiece while the other 7 are ~2-5.

There are many very tough poses. The largest population of new poses surfaced in 1888 and 1888 is likewise the year with the highest count for single year poses. These are generally very tough cards. These coupled with a handful of Script cards and 1889 California League cards together with the many recently added poses that are cropping variations (with ball / without ball) and you are able to pull the common poses that are known at ~100 copies down to the ~20 copy average.

Old Judge
 

Fascinating info. Keep the theories coming.

I have lived in Central Indiana for about 25 years now. About 20 years ago, I found nine Old Judges at an auction.

They were:

Anson, Chicago's
Ewing, fielding grounder
Rusie, pitching, hands at neck
Faatz, Cleveland
Klusman, Denver
Powell, Sioux City
Strauss, Omaha
Van Haltren, Chicago, NL
Williamson, Chicago, NL

About four years ago, I found one OJ common at an auction (I thought it sold for too much but I didn't have the OJ book at that time, so, who knows, it could have been a rare common).

Two years ago, there was a find of 17 OJ's in or around Indianapolis.

Of course, there was a LARGE find in 2006 by Dave of Dave's Vintage Cards of 215 OJ's originating somewhere in Indianapolis.

That is all I have found or heard of,

David

I have a comiskey sliding, and a run of all poses Billy Sundays. It's been fun, but I'm probably happy where I am with them.

So all OJ owner's could safely say any given card they own is AS scarce if not more so than the T206 Wagner?

If you define it as known N172 copies of same variation, yes. In most cases, you could add up all known variations of a given pose and be well below pop report of T206 Wagner.

Among the OJ finds that come to mind of better than a hundred cards . . .

Dave Levin 2004 Oregon Find – 1400 OJs
Dave Levin 2006 Indy Find – 215 OJs
Goldin Auction 2013 Cambridge Find – 170 OJs (many other cards outside of OJ)

Uh oh, 20 posts and no cards shown. :) Here's a new arrival (I only have 6 OJs, no HOFers yet).

Hello again,

I got hung up with scanning my OJ's with my new scanner and forgot the rest, which was the point I was trying to make.

So, the point was this; living near Indianapolis, a large, older city which HAD a pro base ball team which HAD cards of its players issued in the OJ series, knowing or hearing about less than 250 OJ's being found in a 25 year time period should say something about the scarcity of the cards.

Follow-Up
 

Thanks for the great information guys.

Joe, I collect the Denver team, which I gather is 1889 only. Can I glean from your post about Myers that roughly 30 copies of the most common Denver poses (e.g. some of the Silch poses) exist? Or would it be lower (e.g. due to the Brooklyn/Denver team change) or perhaps higher? Thanks. Scot

Scot--Based on my experience, 30 copies is very high for any Denver pose. I would put the correct number in the ballpark 15-20 range for the most common Denver pose.
Joe and I will do some chatting to try to arrive at a "unified" guess to your original question.

Thank you Jay.

Here is my experience with N172 Denvers. They are tough. At least I have one of each player. :)

Pose / Have? / Offered for sale* (since 2007)?

Dalrymple 113-1 No None
Darymple 113-2 Yes Multiple
Dalrymple 113-3 No None
Darnbrough 118-1 Yes Multiple
Darnbrough 118-2 No One
Dolan 126-1 Yes Multiple
Dolan 126-2 Yes Multiple
Fagan 151-1 Yes One
Healy 219-1 Yes One
Hoffman 228-1 No None
Hoffman 228-2 No None
Hoffman 228-3 No None
Hoffman 228-4 No None
Hoffman 228-5 Yes One
Klusman 265-1 No None
Klusman 265-2 Yes Multiple
Klusman 265-3 Yes Multiple
Klusman 265-4 Yes One
Klusman 265-5 No None
McClellan 304-1 No None
McClellan 304-3 Yes Multiple
McQuaid 318-1 Yes One
McQuaid 318-2 No None
McQuaid 318-3 Yes One
McQuaid 318-4 Yes One
McVey 321-1 No None
McVey 321-2 Yes One
McVey 321-3 Yes One
McVey 321-4 No None
McVey 321-5 No None
Rowe 393-1 No None
Rowe 393-2 Yes One
Rowe 393-3 No None
Silch 419-1 No One
Silch 419-3 Yes Multiple
Silch 419-4 Yes Multiple
Silch 419-5 Yes One
Treadway 463-1 Yes One

*What I have seen. Does not include lots.

N172 Denver
 

Here are 318-4 McQuaid Denver and 321-2 McVey Denvers from a lot from the recent Heritage auction. I don't know if they are included in your Denver census or not. When I was going through the lot, I stopped and looked at these and thought,"It seems like I don't see many Denvers that often"...

Hi RC,

Thanks for the post. Beautiful cards, and I happen to have a copy of those poses. I sometimes miss the big lots, so lots are not be included in my survey. Still interesting to me since that is only the second copy of those poses I have seen offered in the last several years.

Scot

Old judges
 

Hi All,
Here are my 5 old judges 2 Kelly's, 2 Toole's and a Denny
best regards
Ron

Missing OJ Posts...
 

Thanks for starting this thread Scot! I have been missing the OJ discussions... Great knowledge and thanks to all for sharing.

It was mentioned in this thread earlier that OJ's are all more scarce than T206 Wagner, and it prompted me to think about an old thread where we asked Net 54 members to posts a card they own that is more rare/scarce than the T-Wags, and basically after thousands of posts, we realized that the T Wags is not rare and probably not even scarce. If the George Myers 100 pose is common, then the Wagner is common.
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=199179

Now, back to original thread... I checked and I have 28 OJ's and one being an McVey Denver. I collect OJ players that played in Nashville and are featured on a OJ cards... Obviously there are 2 Nashville players that played in California League (Dooley & Kremmeyer), that are impossible, so I will never get to all 30 Nashville players...

Informative Thread -

The Omahas I used to own. Wish I had kept working at the set.

Scans
 

A hard to find player and a nicer example from my Denvers group.

I love the fact they went to the trouble to block-out the MILWAUKEE team name on Klusman's shirt (reminds me of Topps' practice of airbrushing caps and batting helmets on 1970s cards).

Wow that klusman is crisp.

I'd like to see all of the Toad Ramsey OJs out there. There are three known poses with two being batting poses, which I find ridiculous because Toad was a sucky hitter and was always known for his pitching prowess. So my favorite Toad pose is of him pitching.


Whenever I Google Ramsey I come across the Burdick Toads and stare at them for a while. The pitching Burdick Toad has such a clear image, along with a dollop of cured glue at the bottom...
http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImage...e/DP845925.jpg

Another one I like to gaze upon is from the Dave's Vintage page, which I guess came from one of the two "finds" from over 10 years ago. It's a sweet one...
https://www.gfg.com/LLojfind/oj64.jpg


So if you have a Toad of any pose, please post a scan. I'd especially like to see the SGC 70 and SGC 60 examples that show up in the population report search. I'm disappointed that SGC doesn't specify poses in their registry. I'm curious if one of the SGC Toads is the Dave's Vintage Toad.

Here is mine, which I've posted before...

Thanks Pete. It's an amazing card; looks like it was pulled from a pack this morning. I bought it from Jay 6 or 7 years ago. Maybe he knows something about its origin (sorry Jay -- no pressure!) . . . .

Unfortunately, I don't remember where it came from.

I have about 35 Old Judge cards. includes all the 1887 Detroit Wolverines, all poses. I find the Detroit players are difficult to find , especially for me.

Joe

Joe, I think I saw your post from a while ago showing all those Old Judge Detroit guys. Very impressive. I have the #1 ranked 1978 Burger King Detroit Tigers set on the PSA Registry... so if you ever want to trade sets, send me a message!

Joe, Kevin Cummings and myself have performed some extensive analysis, and the quick and dirty is that we think the best guess as to the number of baseball Old Judges (N172s) in existence, both in private hands and in public venues, is about 35,000. This implies that on average there are about 14 copies per pose. However, the variation around this number is pretty wide. Joe will post more about this, including some year by year details, at a later time.

Wow, thanks guys for your efforts on this. It really puts OJ scarcity into perspective. Jay/Joe/Richard's book relates so much detail with so much seeming ease that it lulls the casual reader into thinking these cards must be more common than 14 per pose by at least an order of magnitude!

Thanks for putting in the work Jay and Joe. I figured the 40K guess wasn't far off. With the new number I realized I own at least 1% of all OJ cards, higher % for some individual players

Here's the SGC70 Ramsey......formerly in my collection.

http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QE...0-Ic42/oj2.jpg

And 2 of the 3 Brownings I once had......

http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Eh...browning_1.jpg http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-M5...browning_2.jpg

Sorry the photos aren't a little bigger/better.............

I also show that I had an SGC60 Ramsey but I don't have a photo of that one...........the Brownings were subsequently SGC graded as a 30 and 40 respectively. Not sure about the third one I had.

Tom:

I believe this is your "missing" Ramsey! : )

Kevin

Not to go off on too much of at agent but the relative small number of individual OJ cards puts into perspective how truly scarce some of the other 19th century issue like Lone Jacks,SF Hess, G&Bs and kbats are.

Every photographic 19th century set is at the least scarce, and in many cases rare. When you talk about Lone Jacks, G&Bs, Yum Yums, NY K-Bats, Four Base Hits, etc you are talking about sets where even the most common cards have five copies or less.

I am not sure there are 3 of any of the Four Base Hits cards. I loved 19th century when I collected it but it can be pricey....

Toad update
 

Thanks for posting the SGC 60 & 70 Ramsey photos, guys.

So here are all the N172 Toad Ramsey cards I have seen photos of so far.

If anyone can share more examples, please post the photos. There are two other SGC-graded Toads (poses unknown) that I haven't seen, one graded 'Authentic' and another 'SGC 20'. There are also two PSA Toads graded 'Authenic', both of the 379-1 variety. It's possible some of the photos of the cards currently featured in this post were subsequently graded, aside from the Burdick museum Toads of course.

Updated with 1888 "Trimmed Toad" pitching pose. Thanks, Joe G. & John D. Also, it was recommended that I separate the 1888 and 1889 Toads so they aren't all jumbled together, so I did.

So I stumbled upon images of 2 more pitching Toads (379-3) from old auctions. I added them in the above post. I am waiting on the image of yet another trimmed example of that card, which would bring the current pitching pose Toad total to nine. I'm finding more than I though I would.

Anyone have any OJ Chicago Maroons to trade or sell ?

I have three in a BST ad