Old Judge(N172) or T206 Set (Which is harder to complete?

[insidethewrapper]

2 Questions:
First, if someone was starting at zero on both the Old Judge N172 ( 521 cards with 29 HOF cards ) and T206 ( 524 with 76 HOF cards with 38 different players ) complete "basic " sets.
Which one would be " easier " to completely assemble ?

Second: Which would take more money to assemble ? Any estimates on both , without regarding grading factors , average set ?


I would think the Old Judge N172 would be harder to complete but the T206 more expensive , any other thoughts.

[prewarsports]

Elon buying Twitter is an easier transaction than completing an Old Judge set would be.

Money is not the issue, but if it was, it would be many many millions. Even with a mid-level T206 Wager, the Old Judge set would be more expensive in a hypothetical world were every Old Judge card known suddenly became available.

[G1911]

N172 and it is not even close.

T206 is not very hard to complete. Every card in the set is easy to find (even Wagner, there are several available every year) except for the Doyle variation. There is 1 difficult card, the rest of the set is pretty much available to purchase at any time. One only needs to be rich to have a T206 set -Doyle if they really want one. Doyle has several copies out there, but is the clear limiting card.

N172 is truly difficult, even if someone as rich as Elon decided to go for it he'd have a hard time; there are so many extremely rare poses that acquiring them all would be exceptionally difficult and impressive regardless of how much cash one threw at it.

[oldjudge]

Clearly Old Judge. Even if a set was defined as one card of each player it would be virtually impossible since many are unique or unique in private hands. T206 is a great set, but with the exception of Doyle NY it is just not that rare.

[Fred]

The T206 set can be completed if you have the resources ($$$). You can probably find at least 70% of the cards on ebay at any given point in time.

Even if you have all the $$$ available, you're just not going to find all the differnt cards/poses for N172.

Does anybody have the latest count on the number of unique poses for N172?

[insidethewrapper]

Not counting all the poses of the N172 Old Judge Set, just 1 of each player (521) is what I was asking for estimates.

Any cost estimates to put together these 2 sets . I was thinking about 2-3 million + for T206 ( 524 set), the N172 Old Judge appears to be impossible. What is the the closest collection to completion of the 521 subjects ? 450 ? 500 ? How much ($$$) to get close to completion ???

[G1911]

Originally Posted by insidethewrapper

Any cost estimates to put together these 2 sets . I was thinking about 2-3 million + for T206 ( 524 set), the N172 Old Judge appears to be impossible. What is the the closest collection to completion of the 521 subjects ? 450 ? 500 ? How much to get close to completion ???

I think a beat to hell Wagner is worth $2-$3 million at this point.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by insidethewrapper

Not counting all the poses of the N172 Old Judge Set, just 1 of each player (521) is what I was asking for estimates.

Any cost estimates to put together these 2 sets . I was thinking about 2-3 million + for T206 ( 524 set), the N172 Old Judge appears to be impossible. What is the the closest collection to completion of the 521 subjects ? 450 ? 500 ? How much ($$$) to get close to completion ???

The Old Judge N172 set, even at just 1 card per player, is a virtually impossible set to complete. Jay, Joe, and Richard's book even lists out the 100 toughest players to find cards of as of the time of its publication. That list is topped by California league players of which there may only be a card or two of many of the 18 different players in that subgroup. In all my years I have yet to even see a California league player card available for sale.

Plus, when that Goodwin/Old Judge book was originally published in 2008, it only listed 512 different players in the set. Yet if memory serves, by the time the last Krause/SCD vintage catalog came out around 2017, it was showing there were now 525 different players in the Old Judge set. And I would have to think that for any of the new players who were found since 2008, there's likely only going to be a card or two existing for any of them, making them uber-rare as well, on a par with many of the California League player cards.

And with virtually no real current (or recent past) sales history to look at for any of these uber-rare OJ cards, who knows what they could end up going for if they came up for sale in today's market. I would expect most of them individually to easily go for six-figure amounts though. The problem is ever finding all the N172 Old Judge player cards for sale to actually complete a full player set. Because of so many rare cards in the set, it is virtually impossible to make a well educated guess as to what a complete OJ player set would cost in today's market. I could easily see it topping $5M, but where it could end up, who knows? It would be a unique set due to the various 1-of-1 player cards in it.

Meanwhile, there are/have been several documented complete 524 card T206 sets put together, with each set's overall value probably most dependent on condition. Especially the condition of the big four" cards, and with emphasis on the Wagner most of all.