The Brown Hindu subset holds a special place in the hearts of many T206 collectors. Brown Hindu backs are always in high demand for a few reasons. For one thing, they feature a very unique and visually appealing design. In addition, they offer some back variety in the 150-350 Series, which does not offer many options for back collectors. Brown Hindus are the most valuable of all 150-350 Series backs, and the same holds true with regard to Southern Leaguers.
The Cycle 460 subset, on the other hand, tends to fly under the radar, despite a similar level of scarcity. A couple of possible reasons for this come to mind. First, the Cycle back is not unique to the 460 Series. Cycle 350 backs are one of the more plentiful “Mid-Tier” backs, and this may contribute to the lukewarm demand for Cycle 460 backs. Collectors may think to themselves something along the lines of, “I already have a Cycle 350, so I’m not in any hurry to get a Cycle 460 back.” Secondly, Cycle 460 is a scarce back, but it is never the most valuable back for a given pose like Brown Hindu is. If you want the most valuable back for the Mordecai Brown Portrait, you know you need to get a copy with a Brown Hindu back. The same can’t be said for Cycle 460. If you want the scarcest back for Mordecai Brown’s Chicago on shirt pose, you are going to want a Broad Leaf 460, Red Hindu, or Lenox. A Cycle 460 might be a nice alternative as those other three backs would be near impossible to track down, but it wouldn’t be your first choice.
The Cycle 460 checklist features 109 Major Leaguers from Print Groups 3, 4 & 5 (350-460, 460 Only, Super Prints). The Brown Hindu subset features a total of 136 poses, 102 of which are Major Leaguers from Print Group 1 (the 150-350 Series) The other 34 poses are Southern Leaguers. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be focusing on just the Major Leaguers. Because the two checklists have a very similar number of Major Leaguers, these two backs lend themselves to comparison quite well.
Checklists for each back, courtesy of the fine folks at T206resource.com:
Brown Hindu
Cycle 460
My Hypothesis:
These two backs tend to sell for very similar prices. However, it is my contention that Cycle 460s are undervalued relative to Brown Hindu because Cycle 460s are much scarcer. I conducted the research below to see if the reality matched my hypothesis.
Explanation of Research:
In an attempt to compare two similar sets of data, I began by finding all of the players in the T206 set who have a pose in both the Brown Hindu subset and the Cycle 460 subset.
Throughout this series of articles, I have used only the PSA Pop Reports to test the hypothesis. I chose to do this for a couple different reasons. First, the PSA Pop Report is a little easier (and quicker) to use when checking a number of different players with the same back. Secondly, there can be some confusion on the SGC Pop Reports when a player has one pose that was printed with a Brown Hindu back and another pose that was printed with a Red Hindu back. The same holds true for American Beauty 350 With Frame & American Beauty 350 No Frame. I wanted to have data that was completely uniform and I didn’t want to use any entry that included any ambiguity.
There are 44 players who have at least one pose in both the Brown Hindu and Cycle 460 subsets. Tinker has two poses in each subset. This brings us to a total of 45 pairs of front/back combos. However, there are two pairs we won’t be able to use. Both Evers Yellow Sky and Mathewson Dark Cap were printed with both a Cycle 350 and a Cycle 460 back. Because PSA used a generic “Cycle” label for a few years, the Pop Report data for these two cards is not as accurate as the other Cycle 460s in this group. Which leaves us with a total of 43 players with matched Brown Hindu and Cycle 460 poses. Check out the table below to see how much scarcer Cycle 460s are than their Brown Hindu counterparts.
As you can see, there is quite a significant gap is Population between the two samples. Granted there will be a certain margin of error for this sample since it does not include the entire Population of graded Brown Hindu and Cycle 460 backs from both PSA and SGC. However, it is a pretty significant sample size, and the results don’t leave much question of which back is scarcer.
In addition, my research doesn’t include the 34 Southern Leaguers who were printed with Brown Hindu backs. When you add those in, it’s likely that Brown Hindu backs actually outnumber Cycle 460 backs by a 3:1 ratio.
In conclusion, Brown Hindu and Cycle 460 backs may sell for very similar prices, but it is clear Cycle 460 backs are by far the scarcer back.
