OJ question

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

I was wondering if any of the OJ experts out there could give me some idea of how often a new pose or variation surfaces.

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Adam---Over the past several years about 25 new poses a year have been found. If by variations you mean varieties in the way the name/position/team are presented at the bottom of the card then there would be plenty of these found every year. Part of the reason for this is that no one that I know of, unless they are dealing with very specific players(HOFers, players from a single team, a single player), keeps track of these minute changes. I would guess if I worked at it I could find several hundred new ones in a year just by looking at ebay listed cards.

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Posted By: Tom L.

Jay is obviously the expert.

Let me answer your question with a different approach:

It is quite difficult to find a specific player's pose from a particular year with a particular name/position/team variation. Even for a common player with multiple poses from every year, it is tough to locate that one particular card. Not necessarily because of rarity - I think Jay estimated that there are somewhere around 10-20 of the more common individual cards(with a specific pose/year/variation), and as few as 1 of the rarest ones - but just because of the abundance of possibiities: hundreds of players, thousands of poses, and tens of thousands of combined variations. With the exception of the California League cards, the 1890 Player's League and NL cards, possibly a few of the early 1887 cards (e.g. the toughest of the script/spotted tie), and possibly some of the more obscure 1888 cards (e.g. a few of the Chicago Maroons), it seems that just about every catalogued card comes to market at least once over a several year period (and possibly more frequently). I'm sure Jay can name a number of unique exceptions, but that is my general perception.

As an example, I collect Baltimore OJs, and have been able to pick up about 70 different variations over the last 4 years. (There are 24 different players, plus two 2-player cards, adding up to over 140 different possible variations just listing Baltimore as the team; many more if you consider the same poses in subsequent years with different teams, or the same player from earlier years with different teams.) Additionally, I have seen most of the variations that I don't have, but it doesn't seem that they were particularly difficult; I couldn't get them either because they were already sold, they went for high prices, or they were part of a large OJ lot.

Just my two cents,
Tom

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Posted By: John/z28jd

Tom,please email me when you get a chance.Thanks

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

I have 22 total, 16 of which are HOFers (actually 19--I have 3 Radbournes and 2 Kellys). I've never had to wait more than a month to pick up a card I wanted. Admittedly, I had just started searching for a McPhee when I saw the 1888 Cincinnati scorecard, and settled for that instead, so lord knows how long it would have taken to find it. My Mack is pale, my Rusie has a soft focus, but my Griffith is nice and strong, and all the rest are quite nice. The only reason I don't have an Anson in street clothes or a Delahanty (I was offered one yesterday!) is that I ran out of money! So again: SOME pose of almost any player you want is available, but not necessarily THE pose.




Sorry he's so big.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

OJ boxers surface much less frequently than OJ baseball players; less than 25 cards a year anywhere is typical. So, when there is a new card it is a big deal. Interesting just how different the production runs were.

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Posted By: jay behrens

What happened to all the actress cards? I remember in the early 80s, it seemed that whenever there was an OJ find, most of teh cards were actresses and you'd find a few ball players. Now you hardly ever see on actress on eBay. The main reason ask is because I need an actress card so I can skin it and reback a skinned ball player I have. If anyone has one for sale I'd love to get it. consition is concern, just need the back.

Jay

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Posted By: Jeff S

There are still quite a few out there, mostly in the hands of a few sellers. Rarely a month goes by that I don't see a dozen OJ actresses sold singly or as a lot. But I've noticed a lot more baseball folks bidding on those, which suggests that more and more of them are being skinned. Kind of frustrating, I would imagine, to people that collect the actresses for the images on the front. In the year+ that I've followed actress auctions and collected them, I think the value has gone up 100% on decent condition, non-trimmed (read: usable for rebacking) OJ actresses. At the same time, similar actress cards, such as Kimball's and Sweet Caps haven't gone up at all. (I still get those for a couple bucks a piece on occasion.) A
lso be aware that some less-than-expert dealers in 19th century paper don't know just how intricate the market for actress cards is: it's fairly common to a see a lot with a mix of makers, sometimes including OJ, Lone Jack, and other rarer brands (cards that can bring $20) along with a slew of sweet caps.