T206 Back Scarcity, Pricing, and Other Tidbits

[HobokenJon]

Grazie.

You’re right about brown Hindu backs being overrated, of course. But they look so, so cool.

When I look at the numbers, the glaring candidates for most overrated are the Polar Bear Demmitt and O’Hara. I realize these subjects are less common than most Piedmont and Sweet Cap backs, and it’s also true that every 520 set needs both. But they are not rare. A Tolstoi Demmitt (N.Y.) is far rarer than a Polar Bear Demmitt (St. Louis), just as an Old Mill Magee is much scarcer than a Piedmont Magie error card. Maybe someday more Monster collectors will care.

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by HobokenJon

Grazie.

You’re right about brown Hindu backs being overrated, of course. But they look so, so cool.

When I look at the numbers, the glaring candidates for most overrated are the Polar Bear Demmitt and O’Hara. I realize these subjects are less common than most Piedmont and Sweet Cap backs, and it’s also true that every 520 set needs both. But they are not rare. A Tolstoi Demmitt (N.Y.) is far rarer than a Polar Bear Demmitt (St. Louis), just as an Old Mill Magee is much scarcer than a Piedmont Magie error card. Maybe someday more Monster collectors will care.

I'm of two minds on the O'Hara and Demmitt. I mean, the only way to get that FRONT is to get a Polar Bear back, and there are a finite number of them available, thus, limiting the ability to get a complete 520 set to whatever the actual population is on those 2 cards. My counts from a few months ago have Demmitt at 292 and O'Hara at 269. There is a raw Demmitt on ebay now. Where I do agree though is that the Southern Leaguers, though expensive, are FAR less expensive despite their low population counts. For example, the 10 cards with the lowest TOTAL populations (all fronts/backs) are

O'Hara STL (269)
Demmitt STL (292)
Cranston (366)
Violat (379)
Helm (389)
Mullaney (391)
Ryan (411)
Hickman (422)
Perdue (423)
Greminger (426)

There are about 100 more copies of a Cranston compared to O'Hara STL. That is a difference....but is it that huge of a difference? You can pick up a Cranston in low grade for less than $150-200. O'Hara STL goes for like $3k-4k now.

Theoretically, the max number of T206 520 card sets is 269.....obviously there are likely a bunch of raw copies out there, and I suspect some of the cards have been crossed over so the 269 is close, but not exact. If we say 300, that means there can only be 300 sets of 520, which does make that card pretty important, all things considered. Assuming you care about a 520 set, of course

The idea of putting together a master set is really interesting. I assume David Hall gave up on his project because he started to hit a lot of the 1 of 1s and when he found who had the card and they said they wouldn't sell, he didn't want to wait 5 years to see if another copy surfaced.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

I'm of two minds on the O'Hara and Demmitt. I mean, the only way to get that FRONT is to get a Polar Bear back, and there are a finite number of them available, thus, limiting the ability to get a complete 520 set to whatever the actual population is on those 2 cards. My counts from a few months ago have Demmitt at 292 and O'Hara at 269. There is a raw Demmitt on ebay now. Where I do agree though is that the Southern Leaguers, though expensive, are FAR less expensive despite their low population counts. For example, the 10 cards with the lowest TOTAL populations (all fronts/backs) are

O'Hara STL (269)
Demmitt STL (292)
Cranston (366)
Violat (379)
Helm (389)
Mullaney (391)
Ryan (411)
Hickman (422)
Perdue (423)
Greminger (426)

There are about 100 more copies of a Cranston compared to O'Hara STL. That is a difference....but is it that huge of a difference? You can pick up a Cranston in low grade for less than $150-200. O'Hara STL goes for like $3k-4k now.

Theoretically, the max number of T206 520 card sets is 269.....obviously there are likely a bunch of raw copies out there, and I suspect some of the cards have been crossed over so the 269 is close, but not exact. If we say 300, that means there can only be 300 sets of 520, which does make that card pretty important, all things considered. Assuming you care about a 520 set, of course

The idea of putting together a master set is really interesting. I assume David Hall gave up on his project because he started to hit a lot of the 1 of 1s and when he found who had the card and they said they wouldn't sell, he didn't want to wait 5 years to see if another copy surfaced.

James, I think there are far more than 100 copies of Cranston compared to O'hara. I know there's raw Demmitt on Ebay now but that one was even an attempted grade. You rarely see a Demmitt or O'hara that's not graded today but there are lots of ungraded southern leaguers. A search I just did on ebay resulted in 77 graded and 38 ungraded southern leaguers.


I just did a quick search of past sales for Demmitt, O'hara and Cranston this is the graded vs ungraded numbers

Cranston 322 total
250 - graded
72 - ungraded

Demmitt 234 total
223 graded
11 - ungraded

O'Hara 210 total
206 graded
4 - ungraded

[53toppscollector]

Sure, there are definitely more copies of Cranston than there are O'Hara, but I guess the question is, how many more? From your numbers, there were 112 more sales of the Cranston than O'Hara. So there are more, definitely. But, do you think are, say 600 Cranstons in total? 700? If there are, say, 50% more Cranstons than what shows up on the combined pop report, then are there are also 50% more copies of a more common card like Herbie Moran?

My point was more, the O'Hara/Demmitt are very rare. But based on population reports, the Southern Leaguers are also very rare but do not command anywhere near that premium. An O'Hara costs basically 20x a Southern Leaguer, and if you map that out, then 20x the population would be like 5300, and I think we can agree there aren't 5300 copies of Cranston out there.

It is all relative, obviously. My point was only that in degrees of rarity, the pricing never seems to line up properly.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

Sure, there are definitely more copies of Cranston than there are O'Hara, but I guess the question is, how many more? From your numbers, there were 112 more sales of the Cranston than O'Hara. So there are more, definitely. But, do you think are, say 600 Cranstons in total? 700? If there are, say, 50% more Cranstons than what shows up on the combined pop report, then are there are also 50% more copies of a more common card like Herbie Moran?

My point was more, the O'Hara/Demmitt are very rare. But based on population reports, the Southern Leaguers are also very rare but do not command anywhere near that premium. An O'Hara costs basically 20x a Southern Leaguer, and if you map that out, then 20x the population would be like 5300, and I think we can agree there aren't 5300 copies of Cranston out there.

It is all relative, obviously. My point was only that in degrees of rarity, the pricing never seems to line up properly.

I was mainly just questioning the number comparison of the Cranston's to the O'Hara's. The degree of rarity and pricing has always been all over the place in the whole set I don't think there are many examples where they do line up.

Using Ludgren as one example his total pop numbers are 580 for Chicago and 489 for KC but his KC cards sell for 20% of what his comparative Chicago cards sell for.