How do you price a type card?

Okay....something I've been thinking about recently and trying to really figure out. I've begun type-card collecting along with all the other various and sundry ways that I collect. Not really 'limiting' persee but I'm trying to stay with the TEN rule. Or 20th century tobacco, Early candy & Gum and 19th century tobacco types. If you've collected the issues from these ACC Classifications, you know that some of the issues can often be difficult to come by--especially some of the more obscure, rarely seen issues in the upper portions of those classifications.

The 'easier' or more pedantic stuff seems to have been reserved for the lower classification numbers--especially with the N & E cards. The N cards start with the Allen & Ginter cards in N1-N44 and then move up into the Dukes, Goodwins, Kimballs, Kinneys, Mayos, Lorillards, Buchners and then forward into the more difficult cards. The E cards start with the E1-E51 cards which, other than the E51 Hershey Fruits, are all more or less more available than the E200's and up. After the first E51's, you get into the sports issues through E107's and then into the individual companies like Cracker Jack, Ghirardelli, Heide's, Heisel's, Wallace & Co. and many more. Again, the tougher E cards are reserved for the later issues.

It is apparent that the different iterations of the American Card Catalog continued to add cards as they became available to Burdick either in checklist form from other collectors or as he added them to his voluminous collection, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. My thoughts about the collection had always been that Burdick must have had everything in the collection that he had checklisted, but recent discussions with Bob Forbes--one of the authors of American Tobacco Cards--led me to the fact that many of Burdick's volumes in the Met are not complete nor do they even have cards from every issue outlined in the ACC. There are issues which aren't represented by a single card or are under-represented. You can see from the way card sets were added to the end of the N's and E's section that he would be presented with and add 6-8-10 sets for each update to the ACC. The 1960 version of the ACC is the last version that Burdick was able to complete prior to his death in 1963.

The 20th century tobacco or T cards are covered in the T1-T352 and then card sets issued abroad T400-T499. Unlike the N or E classified cards, the T classifications contain most 20th century tobacco organized by the name of the set and within the T1-T182 classifications of nonsports cards, many difficult types can be found. From there, into the T400-T499 cards issued abroad, these issues can also be difficult to find and often have to be found from sources in Australia, Great Britain, China, Japan and other countries where the ATC or American Tobacco Company sent the cards inside packs of their products.

So....FINALLY to the crux of the post......how do you price a type card? I recently bought a number of type cards from a prominent nonsports dealer from a type card collection that he'd purchased. When it comes to pricing issues in the N classification, for instance, there are almost daily sales on ebay that allow you to see price points for almost every type of card issued by the major tobacco companies like Allen & Ginter, Dukes, Kimballs, Mayo, Goodwin, Kinney and others. And, with that many sales, they aren't difficult, so purchasing them isn't a calculated risk. You know what you're getting for what you're paying. But that's just for the 'easy' or frequently seen cards. What about the toughies?

What do you do when you see a T90 card? An N472 G.B. Miller tobacco card of Abraham Lincoln? An E12 Hershey's Fruits card of a Banana? As there are more and more type collectors out there, competition for the really tough issues is growing daily. A $50 bid on a T90 won't do it anymore. The most recent T90 Nature Card sold for $225 or so on ebay after a group had sold for $300 each prior to that. I've never seen an E12 Hershey's card for sale on ebay. And, in the instance fo the N472 Abraham Lincoln card, you are having to deal with collector's of Lincoln, Presidential Images or memorabilia, card collectors, tobacco collectors or others. What should I bid?

So....like many other aspects of collecting cards in general or tough cards in particular, you have to develop a feel for just how difficult the issue is. Then you have to gauge just how many people you think will be interested in the card enough to bid. Sniping bids are frequently employed for tougher cards or for cards where people don't want to place a 'marker' or early bid for fear that other people are watching their bids.

Buying lots of touger cards often proves to be fruitful and using the duplicates or extra cards for trading or selling. I recently purchased a lot of N158 Spanish American War News Photo cards which aren't exactly TOUGH but they are tougher than many of the regular A&G and Dukes issues. They will make good trade bait for other cards from the set or other tougher types that I need to bolster my type collection.

When it comes to type collecting, I think it's pretty easy, although not cheap anymore, to get to 300-400 N types as there are that many that are pretty easily found on ebay within a given period. For the T cards, 250-300 is probably attainable in a short period and for the E's, 100-150 are relatively quickly found. All the numbers above are assuming nonsports cards only. Adding in the sports cards, these numbers would move up.

So....if you're a typecard collector, please drop some notes in the comments on how you collect type cards and how you figure out what to pay for additions to your collection--especially the tough additions.