M116 Sporting Life 1910-1912

In my opinion, the M116 set is under-appreciated. The set contains all portrait cards which is a turn off to some collectors since the action shots are much loved. It has all the stars of the era including a great picture of Honus wagner in a pastel or blue background. Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Smokey Joe Wood have great photos also.

There are some super rare cards in the set, (2) team change cards are sought after (McConnell and McQuillan). It would take me a long time to write anymore so i refer anyone interested in the set to buy issue #18 (Winter 2009) for $10...or i could scan mine and send in an email attachment. GREAT ARTICLE and would advise reading it. There is one mistake in the article, Ted listed the size of the cards as 1 1/2 X 2 3/4---i believe the correct size is 1 1/2 X 2 5/8.


Mark

In reading this article, I was struck by an interesting data point. Regarding the blue background cards than can be found for Series 1 and Series 2, Mr. Newcomb looks at the PSA populations. They show that for Series 1, roughly twice as many pastels were graded as opposed to blues. This is consistent with the long-held notion that the blues are scarcer, and with the price guides that ascribe a higher value to the blues.

However, for Series 2, the numbers show that nearly twice as many blues were graded than pastels. This leads the author to attempt to explain that for Series 2, the blues are more common than pastels. (This is a bit of a simplification, but basically, that is the gist.)

I believe this is not necessarily so.

The most important point to note is that Series 1 is chocked with HOF players and with the most popular players of the day. In general, Series 2 has many more commons and lower-end HOFers (with apologies to Nap Lajoie).

Now consider that we have all been told for years that the blues are worth considerably more money. I know for a fact that if I had a pastel common, I would be unlikely to submit it, whereas if I had a blue common I would certainly submit it. I suspect this is the case with many collectors. When this is reflected in a pop report, it could lead to the false conclusion that blues are in fact more common than pastels.

Now if I had a pastel top HOF'er (much more likely in Series 1), I would be likely to submit it as it would be worth the trouble and submission fee.

This alone could account for a great deal of the discrepancy with the Series 1 versus Series 2 numbers.

I certainly don't think we could draw any real conclusions from the PSA pop reports and would caution against doing so in this case.

We need to be very careful to look at the psychology of submitting cards before we can begin to use things like pop reports as a measure of scarcity.


Cheers,
Blair