2012 Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards

[fkw]

I have the 2010 edition .... and memorized now

I may buy the 2013 edition next year.

Sometimes good questions will go unanswered, many times Ive posted questions and they go well over 100+ views before I get a reply, but I expect it, if I have a question that I dont know the answer to after 30+ years of PreWar, I dont expect many to know the answer.. or I should already know it too

as far as the T206 150 series having a premium in guides, maybe a slight premium but nothing more. The whole damn T206 set is extremely common with 98% of the poses existing with a couple thousand examples known (population).

But then again the 150 series is full of portrait cards, and many including myself think the portrait cards are better looking thus more popular, and also the 150 series is 1-2 years older than the 350-460 series, so being older lol should add some premium maybe 1% for being older and 4-9% for being a portrait card...

E90-1 is a different animal, kids bought candy cards, and kids ALWAYS destroy cards, making them far more difficult to find now in nice shape, and overall, compared to the T206 (tobacco) cards of the same 3 year span.
Both sets have scarcity levels, but the average collector looking at E90-1 (not a E90-1 expert) will have to use a price guide to see the different scarcity tiers, because the backs are all the same making the cards look all the same (unlike the T206 set where there are different brands, series, fac#, overprints, etc. on back)

I still use the guides for scarcity tiers when I see E90-1 cards that Im unsure of how scarce they are, same with some T207 cards too.
With me, T206 is memorized to a point. ... and way overrated, but thats for another thread lol

[tonyo]

Originally Posted by fkw

..........the average collector ............... will have to use a price guide to see the different scarcity tiers, .................

I have the 2011 SCD. After about a 10 year hiatus from card collecting, I jumped back in 2 years ago and started collecting pre-war. It took me a while to realize that there are very few hard and fast rules and mostly card prices are set by the current market.

I bought the 2011 SCD hoping it would be a good price guide, but I've quickly evolved to using it for relative scarcity as Frank mentioned, a checklist, as some others have mentioned, and to gain some education on some sets I'm not familiar with. Still love the book and I refer to it fairly regularly. I personally do use it as a price guide - but mostly to set limits/starting points for myself.

If I target a particular card for example, I start with the limit I have set for myself based on the 2011 SCD. When I repeatedly come up short trying to buy a card for that price, It's pretty easy to determine the current real value of the card (the level of card I chase anyway). Then I get to decide if I want to up my personal limit. By the same token, If I set my sights on a card, start watching for it, and it rarely comes up for sale, then I know when it does come up, I may need to stretch my limit a little if I really want it.

t207 is a good example - I started watching that set and collecting a certain subset within the set maybe 5 or 6 months ago. 2011 SCD listed maybe 60 cards from my subset priced at $70 in vg. I set myself a limit and bought about half of them pretty quickly. The other half? I bet I've seen half of those come up, but they always fly past my limit. The remaining quarter? I may not have seen them at all in the 5 or 6 months I've been watching. The half I have already purchased? I probably could have bought them all again 2 or 3 times at the price I paid. Not sure what the moral is there, other than.......You just have to watch and develop your own price guide using SCD,VCP, ebay history, net54 BST, etc as guides.