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Old 03-19-2022, 11:00 PM
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Location: WI
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I don't think we should include a discussion of 50s cards still in shoeboxes here. That is a much different topic for a number of reasons - lots more people were seriously collecting cards in the 1950s, it is two generations more recent than T206, between 1909 and 1950 there were two world wars and associated paper drives, etc etc.

I also don't think we have evidence of all of the Wagners and that there are some more out there - I think the the same when I see any low pop card.

However, the Wagner isn't just any low pop card. It has been making national newspaper, magazine, tv, and internet headlines (read: being talked about outside of the hobby) for its huge sale prices for what, 50 years? And with every headline, the people who aren't collectors but have a deceased relative's cards sitting in a box somewhere are more likely to see the news and cash in. I think this makes the chances of finding a huge number of unknown Wagners a lot less likely than it would be for another low pop card that no non-serious collector ever knew was worth a ton of money.

I went with 60 because I want to think that Steve and Ryan are right and the total number is a bit above 50, but I always push my comfort on how many cards I assume are still out there. And there may well be some 90+-year-old collectors who bought unknown Wagners before the 1960s when it seems that people really started keeping track of Wagners and their stories --- or some people in their 70s whose parents bought them and passed them down and who are still silently hanging onto them, but are there many more than 14 of these people? That seems like a stretch to me.
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