The difficulty in assigning value to the card is that we don't know the print run. We don't know just how rare the card is. Tracking Ebay sales is some help. I've counted 30 different sales of the card since March, 2012, none of which were sold by the same account that bought the card. The average price of the 30 is $97.70. Would it be a good guess that 63 of these were made (for the 1963 set Heritage 2012 is based on)?
Now fast forward to 2013 and Heritage has included a SP parallel set, the Venezuelan set, featuring cards with a black back. Again, no print run is mentioned, but educated dealers put the run at 64 cards each.
I've been tracking the sales of the Barney Venezuelan card, and as of today, a total of seven have been sold. The average price...$3.81!
There have been 40 days since the first one was sold. In 2012, after 40 days, twelve of the No Position cards were sold...nearly twice as many as the Venezuelan. And the price of those twelve...$88.55...which is better than 20 times the price of the Venezuelan!
So why are the Venezuelan cards, which may have the same or an even smaller print run going for such a low price?
One reason...set collectors. Master set builders needed the No Position card and Heritage has plenty of set builders. They'll drive the price up to complete their set.
Another reason...player/team collectors....I doubt that too many set builders will try to put together a Venezuelan set. That leaves only team and player collectors as a market for the Venezuelan cards. Smaller market = smaller prices
Third reason...lack of knowledge...since the Venezuelan cards don't have a print run listed, I doubt the casual collector knows just how rare the card is. I bet many see it as just a novelty parallel.
Fourth reason...it's Darwin Barney! Maybe a big name player will go for more than $3.81, but Barney isn't very well known.
Bottom line...$97 for the No Position...too much....$3.81 for the Venezuelan...good deal!
In fact, too good a deal...tomorrow I'll show you what I mean.
I think it's not just print run. The print run is probably similar, but only because there are 525 (it may be 550, but I think 525) Venezuelan cards. There may be the same number of the Venezuelan cards out there, but the odds of pulling ANY Venezuelan card are far far easier than any of the 10-12 SSP's from 2012. I think that's a big factor.
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