Posted By:
Bruce BabcockThanks, Tom. I remember hearing that were collectors with more than 100 N173s but I never met one. You confirmed that I wasn't imagining things. It would be amazing to see 100-200 of these in one place.
As far as N162, they are, as Julie points out, "relatively" common compared to N173, but still tough to obtain. I guess I've seen about 20 N162 Kelly cards over 25 years at shows and in catalogs but I wouldn't want to speculate how many total copies there might be. I picked up 6 N162s at the 1996 National but I wasn't looking for N173s the, so I can't make a comparison about their availability at the time.
The relative rarity of various issues, both common and tough, has always interested me. I once suggested to VCBC that they assemble three or four veteran collectors, such as Lipset, Mastro, Lifson, etc. and have a discussion about their early experiences sifting through the many large collections and "finds" that they encountered. I think that only the collectors who have sifted through countless thousands of cards can make reliable guesses as to relative rarity of the tougher issues.