Scarcity vs. Condition

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Posted By: leon

Since my goal is to have 1 of each pre-WWII baseball card in the ACC, I will have to agree with our beloved great grandfather of collecting, Mr.Burdick. My preference is a HOF'er but a hole is a hole in the collection. A beat up common will suffice until I can upgrade. In some sets the mere existence of an available card, HOF'er or not, is so seldom seen that one must jump at the chance to "fill the void". I would offer a different view on the rare sets ,like Orange Borders, commons vis a vis HOF'ers. I think there are so few cards circulating that whether it's a HOF'er or not, they are all darn scarce (or "rare" if I must). In this case, and others like it, I don't think the HOF'ers were necessarily collected more then the regular players and therefore the population of such is almost equal. There are many sets I can name (Tango Eggs, E92 Nadja's, E105 Mello Mints, etc...) where the availability of high grade commons is unequal to that of HOF'ers....In other words there seem to be more high grade commons than HOF'ers, which would disprove this collecting theory of high grade HOF'ers. BTW, if the Matty Orange Border didn't have the hole I would have gobbled it up...but since I already have a team Orange Border, and there are others that come up for sale every so often, I chose to wait. regards