Absolutely spot on Michael - finding them for sale irrespective of the price is the hardest part. Take Card Zone for example - they have no Marsh/Lillee sigs, no Warne hat-trick sigs, no Mark Waugh World Cup Master Batsman sigs - if the biggest card shop in Australia doesn't have them well where do you find them?? The old supply vs demand argument, and why the price of these cards will keep going up - especially the Warne hat-trick sig, given Warne refused to sign for Select this year. Who knows if he will ever sign for a trading card company again? He may only ever have 3 signature cards for us to collect (94/95, 95/96 and 04/05).
People seem willing to pay more for the low number sigs generally I think because they are thought to be harder to get - that the hard core collectors snap them up and tuck them away in their collections and they rarely come into the marketplace. I agree that it shouldn't really matter what the number is so long as you have one! But I do believe that a set of sigs all with the same number should certainly command a higher price. I think the lower numbers are more sought after when the cards are inserted straight into packets as opposed to a redemption (ie 08/09 state sigs).
People seem willing to pay more for the low number sigs generally I think because they are thought to be harder to get - that the hard core collectors snap them up and tuck them away in their collections and they rarely come into the marketplace. I agree that it shouldn't really matter what the number is so long as you have one! But I do believe that a set of sigs all with the same number should certainly command a higher price. I think the lower numbers are more sought after when the cards are inserted straight into packets as opposed to a redemption (ie 08/09 state sigs).