Does anyone know why the 2nd William Paterson set from 1924-1925 is so hard to find in comparison to the first set issued a year earlier? I've been trying to complete this set for 20 years.
I still need 7 cards from that set and have been trying for longer than you.
It makes me wonder how many are still in existence. Maybe no more than 10 of each card??
Somebody had the Stan Jackson for sale recently on eBay and I needed that one, but got outbid.
Very interesting question !! First off, Paterson had the hockey market somewhat to themselves in 1923-24 and possibly did more than one print run.
The second year it appears that they made the cards smaller and this way they could fit more on the sheet because the set increased from 40 with a short print to 60 without.
They probably kept the set redemptions for the skates but lost the short print, however 20 more cards or chocolate bars purchases probably made up for the difference.
It would seem consumers may have been disenchanted with their first offering and how hard it was to make a set. So the second year they didn't purchase and bought other products...
1924-25 seen Maple Crispette, Dominion Chocolate, William Paterson plus out west we seen Paulin's, Holland Creameries, Crescent Selkirks and an anonymous set to boot. Lots more competition sure made for a less products sold.
Bobby, your post makes a lot of sense. It would be nice to know what the production run was for both years. The other poster mentioned he thought there were less than 10 of each card still extant. That sounds a bit low. Do you think there are really that few? If there are no more than 10 cards for each player, I might as well give up on completing this set. Even the Honus Wagner T206 is more abundant than that.
I have 5 from this series (Connell, Ironstone, Munro, Redding, John Roach). They were hard to come by, but the Ironstone was a killer for me to find. I've seen 2 or 3 come around in the last 3 years, and the one I got cost me a pretty penny. I might believe there are 10 or 20 Ironstone cards, but the rest I think are more like 100 or more of each. Just my opinion...
I was referring to the 2nd series and not the 1st. If memory serves me correctly, there have only been about an average of 4 of each card graded by PSA. That would suggest a existing population of only 10 or so of each card wouldn't it?
PSA pop reports do not have a direct relationship to production numbers on any given set. I doubt that PSA has graded even 5%, let alone 40% of any vintage hockey set. I'm sure there are hundreds of hockey card collections north of the border (and quite a few south also) that exist contentedly raw.
I think you can use pop reports to determine relative rarity between vintage sets but not for total production.
I agree with Mark regarding the correlation between production numbers and the population reports. A lot of people are old time collectors who haven't gotten into grading. There are people on this forum who prefer raw cards too. The population reports are only useful when comparing them to other cards within that particular set.
Within a set, you may find certain cards that have very few graded examples. In this case, then I can see that there may be a correlation. If there are 34-40 graded examples of most cards, but less than 10 of 2 within a certain set, then those cards may well be short printed.
Bobby makes some interesting points also. I never realized how many sets were produced during that year!
