Steve, thats right, it took me about 5 years to finish the set. It is not that five years is a tremendous amount of time, but I lived and breathed 1914 CJ's for at least 4 of those years and don't think I purchased a single "non-red" card in that time. Not to sound like a DB, but money was not the issue in completing the set…….availability was. This may have changed slightly in the past year or two with several sets being disassembled and hitting the market, but it is still a tremendously difficult set to COLLECT.
I capitalized "collect" to bring up the point that, of the four complete sets listed on the SGC and PSA sites, two of them were purchased as complete sets or essentially complete sets, and one was (as legend holds) obtained directly from the CJ factory There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it is very different than collecting a set one/several card(s) at a time.
The other point I would bring up is, whereas the population reports are the best that we have, they clearly overestimate the populations of graded cards (by how much, I don't know) because there are many cards that get broken out of their holders and get resubmitted to another company, either for the sake of registry completeness, perceived under grading or the perception that a different holder will instill additional value to the card. Again, I don't say this disparagingly, but it is a fact (I know I have been complicit…..). I think this is especially true of the rarer cards and perhaps the key expensive cards in the set.
I maintain that I can't imagine there being more than 10-12 complete sets.
Sorry Tom……I know this missive doesn't address the main question that you posed regarding the rarity of other sets, but even back in high school I always had trouble actually answering the question that was posed…....
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