How much vintage is out there!?

[steve B]

There are very certain things that affected both production figures and survival for almost anything made pre WWII compared to postwar.

The depression would have lowered production, and at least in cards there was some competition that spread the buying dollars out over different companies. That would have held for most of the 1930's.

At the time as well, there were scrap paper dealers that would buy accumulations of anything paper. (Actually there were scrappers for very nearly everything) The opportunity to sell whatever "junk" paper items were around the house would have been very attractive especially at the worst of times.


The with WWII we had paper drives, metal drives, etc. A big portion of what didn't get scrapped in the 30's went in the mid 40's.


Afterwards? We had a few decades of general prosperity, ups and downs, but seldom bad enough that digging those old cards out of an attic would have been a priority. Plus the collecting/hoarding attitude leftover from the depression leading to people saving stuff for a "rainy day" that rarely came.
Stuff might have gotten tossed in a cleaning frenzy, but more often it was saved. Oddly, even when being tossed some stuff might get saved. Like a kids box of cards being thrown out or given away but their favorite players kept. (Even into the 80's, I bought two small collections being sold by the kids parent, each held back the kids favorite players. )