What's up with these t206 sold auction prices ???
 

Yesterday (Sunday) evening an Ebay seller had a nice collection of Old Mill and Cycle t206's for sale. It was a good evening seeing as I was able to pick up 2 cycle backs for my off-back set. For the seller it was a GREAT evening...
I was hopeful to pick up a few more cards, but they were going pretty high (at least much higher than I would have guessed). These two had me totally scratching my head. Any thoughts from the t206 savants???

-Ryan

Those were ungraded too!

P.S. Since Old Mill is hot I have a Magee Portrait in Old Mill SGC 3 that I'd sell for $20,000 if anyone cares!!!

I was blown away by some of the prices. I had like 60 tabs open, ended up snagging a few. I got the Krause Old Mill for my back run for like $67. Im glad everyone stayed away from that one

Old Mills are lower pop than people realize

I needed 7 of the Old Mills. I got none. I just can't seem to get used to these new prices. Even if I had the same money as a few years ago, I don't think it would have mattered. My T206 collection might be at a stand still till the zombie apocalypse.

Have you looked at the pop reports of those two cards?

We all sound like a buncha old farts: I remember when ___.

on the Devlin, PSA has graded a whopping 1 Old Mill (a PSA 7!) and SGC has also graded only 1, an SGC 1.5.

So, yeah, pop 2.

I was able to add another Cycle 460. I probably should have bid higher on the Meyers and Schulte. This O'Leary is not bad for the price though. If you look closely, you can see the Wright brothers fishing on the pond in the background.

Yeah, I ended up seeing the psa pop. report on the Devlin...but the Ames? Pretty sure I saw 6 or so just on psa. In general, I was surprised with the closing bid amounts for raw Old Mills in decent, but not amazing, shape.
Glad you were at least able to grab the Krause James. I picked him up as well with the Cycle back 👍
(Nice 460 RC)

I picked up one, after a heads up from a couple guys on this site.
 

But it was all because of the back. 😉

Nice Krause Cycle. I put in a bid on that one, even though I already have a copy, but glad to see it ended up with a fellow board member

The Ames could be a function of a recent Sov 350 (I think) in PSA 4 that sold for what I seem to remember was a fairly high price a few months back at auction. Possibly 2 people competing to make progress on a back run. Seems like this portrait has become fairly popular and there are only a few for sale on ebay.

The Devlin nor the Ames surprised me, very tough Print Group 1 OMs

However, the common Old Mills not from Print Group 1 seemed to go too High imo. Big difference in scarcity within this sub-set for those whom do the research.

The Walsh Old Mill had a desirable “Print Mark” on the front, which advanced collectors would know made that card more desirable than a typical OM Walsh. I felt that card could have gone much higher. Someone got a very Scarce, although lower grade, tough off-back HOFer with that one, Nice Pull there

And, the strong prices for the Cycles, Well I love it.

I landed this one, an upgrade from my current Raw1. Current Combined Pop: 7, with 2 - 5’s, however it appears the same 5 was crossed over, therefore, I’m hoping this guy grades 3.5+. If so, he will be the second highest graded Malarkey Cycle 350 of only 8 graded. Fingers crossed

Cheers to All

Pop report buying seems dangerous. When no one wants to complete the Old Mill set, won't that card sell for almost nothing?

This...doesn't seem like a possible problem, honestly. The pop counts are so low, and T206's are so popular, that there never seems likely to be an oversaturation of the market.

Back collecting seems to have grown in popularity pretty substantially in recent years, I doubt people are going to suddenly lose interest in it.

The Registry is relatively new. I don't think you'd even know pop reports without it so assuming people lose their interest in the registry, what drives pop report buying?

Rare backs and finding cards that are rarely seen with certain backs are totally different animals. Lenox is generally rare and yes, generally collected. But a common with an Old Mill back isn't. Unless the registry is involved, I guess. Don't think it's apples to apples or a reason why one can't live without the other, when for most of the hobby's history there was no registry or pop count.

Well, I disagree.

I care BIG TIME about the population reports.

This hobby is moving because the advent of the population reports.

Technology has given us, not only a platform to trade on(actually multiple), but a source of data analytics. Real Data is now available. Data never known until given to us since the pop reports were A. Created, and B. Made public.

Data is now what is driving the move.

Your last statement kinda sums up your lack of understanding...... It’s not the prior century anymore, times have changed. You will either move forward or be left behind. Best of Luck

Why would I need to move forward if the registry doesn't impact my collecting? My question was whether or not collecting by pop count will continue or die off. I asked the question because pop counts have inflated the prices for these cards.

The question is of interest to me because pop count buying is speculative at best. The pop count can't factor in cards that aren't graded. So the pop count seems to be an unofficial barometer. These cards aren't collected the same way modern is, where you more or less have to grade your cards for them to retain value. If you read the board and have been around the block for a while, you know that a lot of people who collect pre-war either don't grade their cards or pop their cards out after purchasing.

Well, lets look at what we now know today (Again, due to the pop reports!)

We will take my Malarkey card above to use as an example:

Currently: combined population reports suggest the following:

Piedmont 350s: pop = 308
Sovereign 350s: pop = 56
Cycle 350s: pop = 7


So....... You’re saying “Speculative at Best” ????

While an unofficial barometer it might be,

IT IS FAR SUPERIOR TO “SPECULATIVE AT BEST”, this I promise

I think pop reports are essential, because its really kind of impossible to collect, on a serious level, without knowing how many there are of a certain item. if you want to collect every Babe Ruth card ever made, you need to know 1.) what Babe Ruth cards exist and 2.) how many of each exist

If there are literally 3 surviving copies of a card known, and 25 people want to own that card, you can see why prices are what they are.

Now you can posit that there shouldn't be 25 people who want to own card X, but that is also kind of silly.

There are more people who want to own these cards than there is supply of the card. Which is why you have a common player like Devlin go for thousands in an extremely scarce back. People want those backs. And I think they always will.

Analogies have always been an issue on this board. I am talking about collecting an Old Mill subset not Babe Ruth. I think it has been well established that there are a lot of pre-war collectors who don’t grade their cards. The pop count might be useful for cards that are overwhelming graded but I don’t think they’re a true representation of T206 commons that people have little incentive to grade unless they’re either high grade or have a back seen as generally rare like Lenox, etc.

Pop counts have their place in the hobby but will they go on to dominate pre-war? I don’t think so. Maybe good fodder for an auction description though.

“Little incentive to grade”. Again, your comment

So, how do explain 308 Piedmont 350 Malarkey cards currently being graded? When at the same time, you don’t think those submitters would submit their Cycle 350?? Your logic is off

If you don’t mind..... how old are u?

I ask that last question in hopes of pointing out a big fundamental difference between how modern collectors and prior collectors look at the hobby

It’s just not the same anymore

Your question cancels itself out and that’s my point. There aren’t only 300 copies of the card with a Piedmont back. There are only that many graded.

If you still can’t understand pop collecting after all that

So be it

I will end as I started, Best of Luck & Cheers to All

I don’t think I’ve given the impression I don’t know what it is. My comments have revolved around its sustained presence and importance in the pre-war community.

I will address your last two topics and then I have to go change a diaper

“Sustained Presence” - If you do the research that I collect by & implore, you will find that the seller of the above noted Devlin OM card did not make the eBay listing private, therefore a savvy collector can gain even more knowledge (thats what its about) by researching the “Sold Listing” on eBay.

One whom implored this strategy, has since learned that the Sold Devlin OM had more than 3 different buyers whom ALL bid over $3,000.00 on that card...........

Hmmmmmm, seems maybe I’m not the only buyer doing my homework....


And Second on your list, “Importance”?????

Really???? You’re questioning the importance of scarcity within the T206 set????

Great information and insight

Can see the value in this

appreciated

Hey Rob,
You serious about that Old Mill Magee for $2o,ooo???
PSA pop. report = zero
😊

"You serious Clark?"

Yes I'm serious and again my Magee OM is SGC graded.

Relative to scarcity don't forget not only do OM subset collectors create demand but so do back run collectors which most likely creates even more of the pent up demand in my opinion.

Interesting conversation here and I figured I'd throw in my 2 cents. A couple thoughts:

1. I have often read the sentiment that essentially boils down to, "Pop reports aren't perfect (because of cards not submitted or cards submitted multiple times) and therefore they are useless."

In my opinion this is the wrong way to look at it. Yes the Pop Reports can never be perfect, but that doesn't mean they can't be useful. If you think about it, its actually very common to use a tool that is imperfect, but can still help you get the job done.

Earlier today I needed to fix something that has 8 phillips head screws. I couldn't find a Phillips head screwdriver, but I did find a pocket knife with a Phillips head attachment. Not ideal for the job because it's very small and requires a lot of additional turning. I had the choice of not doing the project until I had a Phillips head screwdriver, or using the pocket knife. I still don't know what happened to the two phillips head screwdrivers we have, but the job is done.

My car is not that comfortable and doesn't get great gas mileage. But I have driven it on long drives, because that's the tool I had at my disposal, imperfect though it may be.

People also say that the Pop Reports are flawed because you don't know what is out there ungraded. This is true of course, but there is now so much data in the Pop Reports that you can start to estimate what else is out there. There are for sure tons of Old Mills out there ungraded, and if they all were sent to PSA tomorrow, Devlin and Ames would maintain their relative scarcity. Maybe another one or two of each player would show up in the Pop Reports, but that would likely be true for all the rarest Old Mills, and the more common 150-350 Series OMs like Delehanty and Bergen would have another 8, 10, maybe even 20 added to the Reports.

In other words, the idea that "the Pop Reports are imperfect, so maybe there are another 8 Devlin Old Mills out there" is very, very statistically unlikely to be true.

2. Secondly, it really isn't a debate solely between old school experience based collecting and collecting using Pop Reports. I've been collecting Old Mills for about 8 years now and I rely on my memory and my records just as much if not more so than the Pop Reports. The Pop Reports also aren't the only tool out there. cardtarget, VCP and good old fashioned Google are also very useful.

A little story to illustrate my point. I recently added this BL350 Huggins to my collection. According to the Pop Reports, there are 8 of these graded. That's quite a few for a BL350, so I looked into it. After I had finished my research, I knew that in fact only 4 or 5 have been graded, because my copy had been in multiple holders over the years (see attached scans).

I don't know who won the Ames and Devlin (I have a few guesses) but I imagine whoever it was is someone who has been around a little while, looking for these cards for awhile, and was basing their bids around both their experience and the available data. I don't think there are many (if any) brand new T206 collectors throwing around big money on rare combos and using only the Pop Reports to come up with their valuation for the card.

When you see really big numbers for tough combos, the experience of a collector who has been surveying the market for years, and the Pop Reports almost always tell the same story.

With the response to this thread you can see why the prices were strong. There is a lot of interest from a lot of people on tougher backs.

The T206s continue to be the most popular pre war set and do not see that ever changing.

Have fun and buy what you enjoy!!!

Lee

Strong prices for tough to find Old Mills isn't anything new a PSA 4 Cicotte Old Mill sold for over 6k in 2014.

Pop reports are not perfect, but you can still tell what seems to be more rare than other T206's or other backs. You just need to know how to use them to your advantage. Out of all the Old Mill's listed, I needed 7 of them. Four of them were from Print Group One and 3 were from Print Group 4. I knew I was in no position for any of the Print Group One's but could have probably won the 3 cards from Print Group 4 but would have felt as if I over paid for them. So I let them pass. I'm sure if I posted a want list here or on one of the Facebook groups, I'd get a few of those cards at a better price. Although I haven't purchased much lately, I do collect the Old Mill subset. After fixing my checklist, I'm at 193 out of 311 cards. I already have the 48 Old Mill SL's. I'd guess there are probably 10 hard core collectors of this subset. The recent prices were on the high side, but understandable.

Thanks Ronnie. Learning is occurring.
Can someone speak to (a cliff notes version) what the Old Mill "print groups" are all about ? I'll be checking the n54 annals as well.
-Thanks

Check out t206resource.com

Under the checklists tab, you will find a list of the print groups

Learning is half the fun! Good luck

👍
Perfect.

I thought the prices were crazy at first too. Some guys are addicts or something.

.

Been reading up on the backs and population reports (psa's at least) and have a better understanding why these particular Old Mills went for what they did. But in doing so, I've come away with two questions.

On the PSA pop. report it states (Abbaticchio for example) total Sovereign 27 but then breaks it down to Sovereign 150's 8 and Sovereign 350's 5...wasn't sure how to read this.

I also noticed Sweet Caporal 350's Fact. 25 can be exteremely low in number (sometimes lower than scarce and rare backs), yet every back scarcity checklist I've seen has them near the end as one of the most common backs.

*Sorry if these are newb inquiries

Factory 25s are more rare than Factory 30s, but I don't think most people pay much attention to it, unless you are doing a back run.

Also, the reason for the disconnect on the PSA pop reports is that PSA started out only labeling some T206s as "Sovereign" or "Cycle" and not specifying which series it was. So if a player has a 150/350 or 350/450 for one of those backs, it is likely the count won't be exact.

There are also old slabs out there that were just labeled "T206" or "Piedmont" which is also why some of the numbers for 150/350 subjects don't add up.

Old Mill Magee
 

PSA pop report is definitely not perfect.....

Well played Frank.

Thanks James, didn't catch your response until just now...was mesmerized by the Old Mill Magee.
Do you feel like the 350/25 sweet caporals should command more of a premium than they do ? I get what you're saying about not paying much attention unless it's a back run, but then wouldn't the same logic apply for Piedmont 42's ? And the big difference being where P42's are placed in the back scarcity list versus where the SC 350/25's are placed. Seems like the sweet caps should be moved WAY up the lists that are out there.

Someone with more experience can weigh in, but I think the difference between the SweetCap 25s and 30s is noticeable, but not massively so. I think part of the issue is that PSA did not always differentiate in the early stages of grading, so its hard to have a really accurate count.

For example, if you look at Chance Yellow, PSA lists 363 total SweetCap backs. They then break it down as

350/25 = 18
350/30 = 77
350-460/25 = 27
350-460/30 = 15
350-460/42 = 18
350-460/42OP = 17

That comes out to 172 total....so, there are close to 200 SweetCaps that were not labeled by series/factory. Which is a problem when trying to figure out actual pops. I think the Chance is an exception to the rule too because its a super print. The same goes for how the Piedmonts are represented in the pop report. For Chance Yellow, there are 302 Piedmonts, and then by factory number:

Piedmont 350 = 96
Piedmont 350-460/25 = 41
Piedmont 350-460/42 = 11

That gives you 148...so we are missing over 150 Piedmonts in those totals.

If you look at the Piedmont 350-460 Factory 42, there are a bunch of cards with only a handful of known examples. I'm just focused on portraits, but

Chase (Blue) - there are 4 in the PSA pop report
Murray - there is 1, compared to 63 Factory 25 and 145 total Piedmonts
Schlei - there are 2, compared to 46 Fac 25 and 114 total Piedmonts
Wiltse With Cap - there are 2, compared to 57 Fac 25 and 113 total Piedmonts

SweetCap 25s are more scarce compared to SweetCap 30s, but the raw totals aren't as stark as they are for the Piedmont Factory 42s

The pop report I created in Excel for my portrait only project combines both SGC and PSA pop reports, but SGC does not break down the SweetCaps by factory number, which is also a huge problem, though at least they break things out by series.

Here are a few notable portraits with very low SweetCap factory 25 counts

Bowerman - SweetCap 150/25 = 5, SweetCap 150/30 = 35
Bridwell No Cap - SweetCap 150/25 = 5, SweetCap 150/30 = 39
Merkle - SweetCap 150/25 = 4, SweetCap 150/30 = 35
Steinfeldt - SweetCap 150/25 = 2, SweetCap 150/30 = 31

Barger - SweetCap 350/25 = 3, SweetCap 350/30 = 31
Bowerman - SweetCap 350/25 = 1, SweetCap 350/30 = 15
Cassidy - SweetCap 350/25 = 2, SweetCap 350/30 = 24
Jimmy Collins - SweetCap 350/25 = 3, SweetCap 350/30 = 41
Kruger - SweetCap 350/25 = 1, SweetCap 350/30 = 43

Moeller and Mullen also only have 1 known 350/25. Then there are some cards where there isn't much of a difference.

Unglaub has 15 Fac 25s and 20 Fac 30s
Lumley has 56 Fac 25s and 54 Fac 30s
Gibson has 56 Fac 25s and 40 Fac 30s

(my numbers were updated a few months ago when I put this together, I figured it wouldn't change drastically so I haven't updated it since)

If you don’t mind..... how old are u?[/QUOTE]

"u"? I have a twelve year old that does that.

I agree that pops hold value for estimating, but they are highly inaccurate. I have an 880 count box slammed full of slips and many very scarce ones at that. For cards that are plentiful, pops work. For true scarcities, not so much.

This. It's pretty good for estimating relative populations, especially in more available cards where the sample size lends itself to a better proportional accuracy, to say X is more difficult than Y. When people use POP to say "there are only 3 known!" of a card they have because there are 3 in the pop report, I find that ridiculous; it is almost never true. Competitive people are driven to grading, and more likely to talk about their scarcities in forums, there are usually many more 'in the active hobby' not represented here. The extant population is almost always much higher than the POP report, there are many collections with a significant amount of tough material that simply won't hit the POP's until their owners die, if then.

There are a number of cards that most of the graded population is actually sitting in one of my shoe boxes cracked out. Crack outs, regrades and crossovers heighten the inaccuracy.

Also, I have a poor Atz with a Tolstoi back with a total POP of 5, less than the OM Ames. If anyone would like to pay me half of the Ames price for it because of its POP, I'm a seller.

James,
Great work! I find it easy to make logical assumptions using the data in which you have extracted from the pop reports. This is exactly how I go about researching all 524, or any subset within. Nope, its not perfect, but very useful. Which leads me to

Luke,
U have amazing insight and I sure wish I could articulate my words as well as u do. Thanks for the efforts to always educate the masses with excellent tid bits like “card target” and “VCP”. Yes, many tools available to us

Ryan,
Thanks for starting the thread. Your inquisitive nature will help you greatly as you continue to have fun, learn and grow within this awesome hobby. As you can see, differing opinions abound. Best of Luck and feel free to reach out with any questions, anytime. I’ll send you a PM with a bit more insight to ponder

Y’all’s Truly,

Colton

Exactly correct. Early on, PSA just did T206, then added the backs. Then they did the Series (150/350/460). Even later, they added the Factory information.
Early flip (before half grades when Fair was broken apart), just T206:
https://img.comc.com/i/Baseball/1909...&size=original
1909-11 T206 - [Base] - Piedmont 350 Back #HOBA - Home Run Baker [PSA 1 PR]
Courtesy of COMC.com

Flip starting with 209 (maybe 10 years ago): Only "Piedmont"
https://img.comc.com/i/Baseball/1909...&size=original
1909-11 T206 - [Base] - Piedmont 150 Back #BOGA - Bob Ganley [PSA 1 PR]
Courtesy of COMC.com

Flip starting with 246 (maybe 5 years ago): Piedmont 150
https://img.comc.com/i/Baseball/1909...&size=original
1909-11 T206 - [Base] - Piedmont 150 Back #GIBS - George Gibson [PSA 3 VG]
Courtesy of COMC.com

Newest flip info:
https://img.comc.com/i/Baseball/1909...&size=original
1909-11 T206 - [Base] - Piedmont 350-460 Factory No. 25 Back #LADO.2 - Larry Doyle (Portrait) [PSA 3 VG]
Courtesy of COMC.com

Someone would have to pay for reholdering to have all the true flip information added, which doesn't really make much sense unless you're trying for a Master set registry or when you're planning to sell. There are many rare backs that are still only labeled "T206". And PSA still doesn't break out T205 backs, so those are completely blind when it comes to manufacturer.