So many great cards and photos and autographs in this thread. And so many great insights. I've really enjoyed following it.
It's funny...relative to the card market in general (and that's a big relative), I think Ruth stuff is pretty reasonable and some of it even underpriced.
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Originally Posted by Snowman
It definitely makes sense from an economic theory perspective. I would imagine that value likely follows some sort of an S-curve similar to an adoption curve with respect to scarcity/supply. If there are too few of something, it often doesn't have a strong demand simply because people are unaware of its existence, but if you make too many of them, then everyone has one. There is always an overall market cap for the current relative value of something (which, of course, changes over time with respect to market conditions that affect that item).
However, there's also an interesting phenomenon that comes into play where something that is extremely rare can still have remarkably strong demand if it is associated with something else that has high population counts & demand. A prime example of this is, of course, the T206 Wagner card. The reason that card is so valuable isn't just because there are only ~50 of them known to exist (or whatever the number is), but rather because there are ~50 from an otherwise massively produced and widely collected set. Contrast that with something like the 1929 Churchman's Cigarettes Babe Ruth card which is far more rare than many of his more popular and valuable cards (PSA's pop count is only 308), but because it belongs to a set that is otherwise not widely collected or known about, it has very little relative value today....
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Agreed. This also probably goes a long way toward explaining why one can pick up some really magnificent Type 1 Ruth photos (some of them one of a kind or one of only a handful of known examples) or even original glass negatives for less than the price of a dog-chewed playing days card. I've purchased quite a few over the years because they are really beautiful baseball artifacts, but they will probably always remain on the wrong side of that curve for someone in it for the money....