i found a helpful website about caramel cards which listed each series in order of difficulty. just wondered if some of the caramel experts on the board could weigh in on the list and give some opinions on the current state of the market, etc... thanks

E90.1 The most commonly found.
E95 Commonly found.
E92 Dockman Commonly found.
E91 Commonly found.
E96 Harder to find, not difficult.
E93 Harder to find, not difficult.
E101 A little harder to find, but not difficult.
E98 A little harder to find, borderline difficult.
E92 Croft's & Allen Difficult.
E106 Difficult.
The availability of the above sets as compared to the rest of the sets on this list is
rather pronounce. Even though E94 comes after E106 in this chart the
difference in availability between the 2 sets is quite dramatic.
E94 Very difficult.
E102 Very difficult.
E92 Croft's Cocoa Very difficult - almost as hard as Nadjas.
E92 Nadja Very difficult.
E103 Very difficult.
E97 Extremely difficult.
E90.2 Extremely difficult.
E90.3 Extremely difficult.
E99 & E100 Extremely difficult.
E105 Extremely difficult.
E104 Extremely difficult.
E107 Near Impossible - see one - BUY IT.
E97 Black & White Near Impossible - you don't buy it, I will.
E94 Overprints Near Impossible - you don't buy it, I will.

I thought E106s are more difficult then E94s; he claims E94s are significantly more difficult.

DAVID....you listed...."E90.1 The most commonly found"

Not so quick....there are 20 cards that were "short-printed" and issued in the last Series (1910) that are extremely tough.
Tougher than many cards in the subsequent Caramel sets.

TED Z

I would agree with the chart that E94 is tougher than E106. Ebay has had the same one or two E94s for a couple of months now. In that list I think the E94s through E90-3 are all roughly equal in toughness. I think there is another big jump beginning with E99 and E100 to the end of that list. Those are all seriously difficult.
JimB
P.S. Ted makes a good point. In some sets, like E90.1, while generally it is not hard to get a type example, there are a number of very tough individual cards. The problem probably gets exacerbated by the number of set collectors of E90.1 who all need copies of those toughies.

E104-III is significantly more difficult than E104-II and E104-I. Fully 20% of the "set" has been catalogued in the last decade, and there are still more uncatalogued examples out there.

That website (which is a great reference resources) only looks at a subset of the caramel cards, too. If you want to do a comprehensive list, there are some huge toughies that need to be considered:

E223 G&B chewing gum is exceptionally tough...examples tend to sell for thousands upon thousands of dollars, even in low grade.

E221 are very tough

E222's are also very tough. Exceedingly rare, there was a collective furor when a handful of examples found their way onto Ebay last year.

E224 Texas Tommy's are also very tough. There are a few set builders of this issue, but finding specific type examples can be quite a challenge.

E300 Plow's Candy are among the more beautiful and larger issues form the 1910s. These are also exceedingly tough to find, with most examples coming from a large near set break-up a few years back.

Is that Pete's list?

I think the E97 B/W are way over-rated for difficulty. Seems like everyone on this board has one.

I would mostly agree with the list and can understand how some e90-1 are more tough to get than others. Almost all of these E sets have 1 or more toughies.


Another layer of this is condition. I watch a fair amount of E type auctions, and IMO e93,e96, e90-1, e92,e98,e101, e102 and to some extent e94 are all somewhat common to FIND (at almost any given time you can locate atleast 1 auction going for one of these), but once you start looking for an EX or better example, I think they are almost on the same playing field. Equally tough or maybe even in a different Difficulty order. For example, I see way more E93 in EX or higher than E92 Dockman (which is considered the easiest E92).

The E102's are not that difficult and should be put in an easier group.

Barry,

Please sell me some affordable, easy to obtain E102s. I have about a dozen, would like to get some of the commons I lack in G-VG.

Thank you in advance.

Frank.

calling e97 B/W and e107's "near impossible" is a little extreme. They are tough and you don't see them on ebay too often, but are fairly available in most major auctions.

Yes, Pete's website, one of the BEST !!!!!!!!!!

http://www.caramel-cards.com/

........... and although I can't look back at selling my e90-1's, I do miss talking about them (net54-wise) with Ted Z. and other's of like-minds .....

I would put E99 and E100 more in the if you see it, buy it category.
I'd put the E104-1 and E104-2's in the very difficult category
I'd put E104-3's where they are in the extremely difficult
I'd put E97 b&w's in the very difficult category (seems like there has been alot of them, but I think most came from one hoard)

Nice E94s have pretty much dried up. There are a few which pop up on ebay but there are several players in the set which seem to appear only very, very rarely. Because of their eye appeal, the violets and golds have become extremely tough to find.

I think the discussion here has split - are we talking about how hard the issue is to find, or how hard the issue is to find in good condition?

" I see way more E93 in EX or higher than E92 Dockman (which is considered the easiest E92)."

I would beg to differ on this. E93s in ex or lower are not extraordinarily tough, but ex/mt or above is very hard. Most of the known examples in ex/mt or above have come from three small finds in the last 20 years and they are mostly (90%) concentrated in a couple of sets that won't be available for sale any time soon. The PSA 6 Clarke that sold last night in Goodwin's auction had paper loss on the back and IMHO, would not count as high grade, for example. I know of one raw set that I have not seen which was described to me as ex/mt about ten or twelve years ago, but other than that, I don't think there are that many more out there.
JimB

I think Pete's list is pretty darn good.

When you look at particular issues like E104 and E97 B & W, a lot of the examples that I see are just recycled over and over back into the hobby. They're very tough.

I agree with others that each issue has it's tougher variations like E90.

I have found E103 to be more difficult than E90-2, E90-3, and E97.

E97's lack of popularity hides the fact that they're pretty uncommon.

If the list represented which are the toughest sets to complete it might look a lot different but I think this list was intended to show how difficult one example is to find.

Rob

The following Subjects were issued in 1910 (last series) and are extremely tough to find.....

Bemis Cleveland AL
Brown Boston NL (horiz)
Clarke Pittsburg
Duffy Mgr. Chicago AL
Gibson Pittsburg (Back view)
Graham Boston NL
Hall Boston AL (horiz)
Joss Cleveland (horiz)
Karger Boston AL
Keeler New York NL (horiz)
McLean Cincinnati
Mitchell Cincinnati
Shean Boston NL
Siegle Cincinnati (horiz)
Speaker Boston AL
Stahl Boston AL
Sweeney Boston NL
Upp Cleveland
Walsh Chicago AL
CYoung Cleveland


These mid-Series Subjects are somewhat tough to find.....

Bescher Cincinnati
Bransfield Phila. NL (Pink)
Dougherty Chicago AL
Lobert Cincinnati
Wagner Pittsburg (throwing)


TED Z

are probably overrated. Most everyone would agree they are not in the ballpark of E107, and they seem to have less interest than they did 5 years ago or so.

Does anyone think I can Pete to make good on his "I'll buy em" statement. I sure do need to sell a few, at least at what they used to bring.

Scott

"I would beg to differ on this. E93s in ex or lower are not extraordinarily tough, but ex/mt or above is very hard."

After reading you response to my quote, I went to PSA and SGC to check their pop report. Pop reports aren't perfect as we all know due to crossovers, etc. but it is a telling set of numbers below in relation to my comment that highgrade(I said ex in my first post)Dockman e92's are more difficult to find.

Numbers below show how many have been graded at a certain level
SGC Grade 60 70 80 84 86 88 92 96

E92 Dockman 56 15 14 2 1 1 0 0 Total in EX or higher= 89

E93 87 30 31 25 3 7 1 4 Total in EX or higher= 188

With SGC, there are more E93's graded in EX that ALL of the e92 Dockmans COMBINED.



PSA Grade 5 6 7 8 9

E92 Dockman 77 49 38 20 1 Total in EX or higher = 185

E93 136 83 30 20 9 Total in EX or higher = 278

For fun, E95 132 66 32 9 0 Total in EX or higher = 239

Also.....

"of the known examples in ex/mt or above have come from three small finds in the last 20 years and they are mostly (90%) concentrated in a couple of sets that won't be available for sale any time soon. "

Same goes for E92 Dockman. Check out the PSA registry for E92. They have a hoard of almost all existing 7 and highers.

Summary, to date there have been a total of 466 E93 verified/certified EX or better cards and only 274 E92 Dokman verified/certified in EX condition. If not as many exist then by deduction we must say they are harder to find.

E106 without the crease down the middle are tough.

Anyone know why so many E106 cards have this crease? I know most if not all of the creased E106s are heavily worn too, do they all come from the same old school collection where someone folded them in half? Or were they sometimes originally packaged folded like some of the E105's?

Gotta disagree in that there is no way E106's are more plentiful than E94's and E102's. Just my experience
-Rhett

I agree with Rhett

I agree with Rhett also. The e106s are underappreciated and I found them tougher than e94 and e102.

Well I offered an E106 as trade bait for E102s I was after, no takers...

Kelly,
On the one hand, it appears you are right with regards to ex or higher. If we limit it to nm or higher both Dockman and E93 have 59 graded examples by PSA. They are exactly equal. The numbers are different for Dockmans in SGC holders but my guess is that that is because Mastro had a high grade set of E93s all graded by SGC. The buyer of that lot then crossed a bunch of previously PSA graded nm and above cards to SGC to match his set. Part of our difference may be in definition of high grade. I think it is reasonable to consider ex and above high-grade for any caramel set, perhaps you are right. If we push the envelop to ex/mt or nm, the discrepancy shrinks.
Best,
JimB

Frank- I will be selling loads of E102's on ebay later this month, and in my May auction. But they are all slabbed.

Personally I feel any e card in ex or better is fairly high grade. The one I have seen the least of for sale is E221 Bishops.....

Leon- about ten years ago I purchased two E221's from a collector in NY, and I would say each was at least EX/EX-MT. I don't recall either having a crease.

A prominent West Coast PCL collector won them both, and I bet he still has them.

Thank you, Barry. I can bust 'em out if I can win 'em.

I'll keep an eye out for what harrywright is selling.

Frank W.

Barry- I think you verified my point. How many have you had or have seen for sale since then? Now compare it to any other E card and tell me you have seen less ......Also, these things are rather long and I thought each had to have at least one fold in the middle to put in the candy bars? Maybe Mark M will chime in for us......regards

Agreed with the general concensus about E106s being tougher than they are given credit for. Especially when trying to find an example without the crease/fold down the middle.

On E97 B&Ws, I think that they are in the same ballpark with E107s with respect to scarcity but definitely not in the same league when it comes to popularity.

I think, as mentioned by someone else in the thread, that a lot of the E97 B&W examples which have come up for sale in the past couple of years have included a lot of the same cards which have been recycled a couple of times within the hobby.