scarcity of lesser known T207 players

[abmchenry]

I've been getting up to speed on this set a bit, and keep reading about how certain cards of lesser-known players are extremely hard to find. Does anyone know why this is? Is there evidence that they were short printed? (I keep seeing the Donlin card referred to as a "short print.") Or do we think that the more obscure players were just thrown away more often?

[darkhorse9]

I'm convinced the market has never compensated for the apathy of lesser players. When you look at things like Turkey Re Cabinets where you could select your player, everyone went for the stars and almost no one wanted the utility players. That should create a glut of the stars and a paucity of others.

Now, the market today still reflects that, so demand for Cobb and Mathewson will outweigh others, but those who do want a Jack Murray or Hooks Wiltse will have a much harder time finding them. Take a look at the BST here, or even ebay. The stars are plentiful, the commons are not.

This should hold true for any card where the player could be chosen before purchase. Post, Hostess, Red Man etc. The pricing gap between tier one stars and the benchwarmers should be much smaller than the gap from pack pulled cards

[markf31]

Tim Newcomb wrote a great article detailing some of the nuances of the set.

https://oldcardboard.com/eNews/2010/.../eNews74.htm#2

[frohme]

Definitely check out the article Mark refers to above.

Be sure to get your hands on the VCBC issues Tim refers to (References section) in that article as well - they're worth their weight in gold for a introductory (and beyond) understanding of T207 and its idiosyncrasies.

--
Mike

[brianp-beme]

Tim's VCBC article mentioned is the best in depth study on T207's...I second Mike's recommendation.


Below is an overview of the set that Mike (above) posted here. There are also other great T207 threads on here as well...I will add some more links if/when I come across them.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=221863


Here is the set checklist on the Old Cardboard site that identifies whether a card is from the Recruit/Napolean group or the Broadleaf/Cycle group. Pretty much any from the Broadleaf/Cycle group will be tough to come by, and there are definitely 40 to 50 of the Recruit/Napolean group tougher by various degrees (but in general not as tough to come by as the Broadleaf/Cycle cards):

https://www.oldcardboard.com/t/t207/t207list.asp


And here is a fun article from the Prewar cards site about collecting the set:

https://prewarcards.com/2021/08/03/a...ally-complete/

Brian

[abmchenry]

Thanks everyone for the responses and the resources. The oldcardboard site is great, have used that to dig deeper into other sets but didn't think to do it for T207. Scarcity correlating to back type makes sense, interested to learn more about how that. Looks like I've got some good reading ahead of me, thanks again!