What Is the Median Scarcity for Old Judge Poses?

[sreader3]

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

[sandmountainslim]

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

[z28jd]

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.

[sreader3]

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

[slidekellyslide]

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

[z28jd]

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

[Joe_G.]

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 )

[oldjudge]

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).