What percentage are graded?
 

A while ago we had a thread about the percentage of pre-war cards that are graded. The consensus seemed to be that it's in the low single-digits. And that's got to be right. However, anyone who is curious about this question is not interested in low-grade Heinie Groh strip cards. They're interested in significant cards. This is harder to figure a priori, so I thought that a poll is in order.

So the question for the poll: if you have a T205 Matty, is it graded or raw? If you have more than one, put your best one in the poll and then mention any other(s) in the comments.

I picked the T205 Matty because it's a significant but not a rare card. So we should get a decently sized sample. I also picked it because I don't have one, so I'm not biasing the results any.

One downside I can see to picking this card is that T205 is a popular set for set builders, and plenty of set builders like to keep their cards in binders, so the proportion of raw T205 cards is probably greater than for cards from sets that people don't build.

Another problem with doing a poll like this here is that I gather that the people on the board are not casual baseball card collectors, so you folks are really not a random sample. On the other hand, collecting pre-war baseball cards isn't the sort of thing that people tend to do casually - so maybe skewing the sample towards serious collectors isn't that big of a deal.

I have 2 both graded the lesser grade is the Cycle variation.

I would say that the percentage on here with graded cards is going to be much higher than the general population. Active collectors are more likely to have graded cards than older inactive collectors.

My best one is graded. I have one raw as well.

Do not have this card, but if I did, it will likely be raw.

just a hunch...
 

I could be wrong, but of the raw T205 Matty's I bet the majority would be equivalent to third party grades of 4 or less. Of the true honest EX 5 or better, possibly a higher percentage are slabbed. Same goes for the major HOF'ers in the T206's.

I collected the set and all the T205s are in a binder. The Matty is EX.

My continuing partial set is a mix of raw and graded as I plod along. The Matty is graded. I have to think that higher end HOF'ers have a higher percentage of them being graded too. So another question might be more broad and only ask how many T205s are graded vs ungraded? And I think the original hypothesis that there are more folks doing the T205 set than some more obscure ones, set builders like binders and binders are more conducive to raw cards. Therefore, there might be a higher percentage of raw T205s than others, is accurate too. I guess there are approx. 6-12%, known T205s which are graded. Of known Matty's I think you could triple that number. Those are wild guesses because who really knows? :)

I’ve got 3 higher ones graded and a lower (fair) Piedmont 42 ungraded.

The poll has been running for a week, it sounds like a good time to try to draw some conclusions.

Including those mentioned in the thread, 66% of the T205 Mattys represented here are graded. There were a total of 80 cards reported.

rats60 is thinking that inactive collectors (who aren't reading net54) are less likely to have graded cards. So maybe 66% is an over-estimation. On the other hand, for sets that are less set-builder-friendly, you'd expect a higher percentage to be graded. (The hazard of doing a poll on a card from a non-set-builder-friendly set is that the sample reported wouldn't be big enough to generalize from.) So we have two considerations that are external to the poll, which would push the results in opposite directions.

So even if the over all percentage of pre-war cards that are graded is very small (and it must be), it seems that the percentage of significant pre-war cards that are graded is pretty healthy. Maybe even >50%, if the population of non-active collectors isn't too big.

I think there are a LOT of collectors who don't do grading and don't do internet (forums.) That number is shrinking daily though. :o