PSA Population Report to be free as of 1/1/2012
 

Just got an email from PSA about changes in 2012. Of note:

"As an added bonus and for the first time in PSA's history, we have decided to make the Online SMR and PSA Population Report FREE! Both of these resources are essential to any collector of PSA-certified items.

The SMR Online contains over 300,000 prices for a host of different collectibles and is the most comprehensive price guide in the hobby.

The PSA Population Report is a complete listing of every item graded by PSA since our inception in 1991. The Pop Report currently contains data on nearly 20 million items. These changes will go into effect January 1, 2012."

Two highly accurate market tools, for free!

This is a smart business move. SGC, Got any countermeasures?

SGC's pop report has always been free.

[QUOTE=Ladder7;944790]Two highly accurate market tools, for free!QUOTE]

:D

Now all they have to do is improve their customer service and their obnoxious attitudes especially at shows.

The old adage, "You get what you pay for" never rang truer.

Am I reading this correctly? Have they graded 20 million items?

Doug

Doug G
 

I'd bet that, that "items" number includes a huge number of COINS (and other goodies).


Regards,

TED Z

Thanx Ted.

I've been playing with the number of minutes / seconds in a work day and how that number interacts with 20 million items graded since they began operations. Pretty entertaining stuff. They must work pretty quick. Good thing they are so qualified.

Doug

You would lose that bet too....and to add why....according to sources I have, PSA grades +/- 120k cards a month....so the 20M is probably pretty close to accurate.....and I understand all of the little caveats, but my guess is that they have indeed graded that many cards....though maybe a small bit more or less...



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120,000 cards per month...

Assuming a 6 day work week, and an 10 hour day (not including breaks), that's between 7 and 8 cards graded every minute.

Insert smiley face here.

I currently have 43,052 pre-1992 Topps cards, If I took them all in to get graded today, it seems like I might be able to get them back in time for Christmas.

Doug

If they had one dude doing it that would be a stretch. I would guess they have more than that though. The number I quoted is fairly accurate I believe. It was from a few reliable sources.

I don't recall the numbers, but they are a publicly traded company and they do publish the numbers in their annual report. So it definitely is not some trade secret and can be looked up.

If you assume a 40 hour work week, and 1 minute per card, then they need 12 graders to do 120k per month.

Of course, if they work a bit faster, they won't need so many graders.

Doug

Leon, It is very accurate. On PSA's front page of their website, they have a counter that
changes every month, its at 18,390,660 now

I might have been thinking of 1.2M a yr therefore 100k a month......but regardless, take a card and a loupe and look at it for 1 full minute. It's actually longer than you think it is. Going back to the original question though, I do think 20M isn't far off and that was the whole premise of this. Now back to sparring with David on the other side of the board. My post count is skyrocketing today!!

Thanks Jay....I guess I was off some...but not too, too much.

Yeah, but those aren't are all cards. It says 18,390,660 Collectibles Certified. Many of those items are PSA/DNA.

I agree that 1 minute can be a long time to look at a card, but if we all take that minute to think about what would actually be involved in the grading process, checking front and back and sides, looking for imperfections, and then making some sort of notation, that brings up some interesting ideas about how much time is actually spent by a grader looking at a specific card.

Obviously there are more than 12 people involved in the process, and most of them don't do the actual grading, but we are talking about looking at card after card after card after card. And, each is different from the one before, so it must be hard to develop a rhythm. This process needs to be done carefully enough so as to not damage a small piece of paper.

When I have multiple copies of the same card, it often takes me a minute or two to decide which one is the "best" card, and that is just ranking them against each other, I don't have to assign them numbers on a 1 to 19 scale (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 ... 8.5, 9. 9.5. 10 is a effectively a scale of 1 to 19)

As a guy who doesn't agree with the whole grading "thing", I am obviously biased in my thoughts, but these are pure numbers we are talking about, and numbers tend to be unbiased, if looked at correctly.

We have threads on this forum that stretch onto many pages discussing whether a specific card should be given a specific grade, but we can see that, on the average, all cards are looked at by a grader for a period of time that is probably less than one minute, during which time they need to decide if it's a 15 or a 16 on the scale.

The key missing fact in my equations is the actual number of graders. Maybe they have a hundred people who get paid to grade sports cards / collectibles for a living. That would give them a lot more time per item. I'm just curious where these people come from. Maybe the really cool bagger at my local grocery store who just quit, found a new calling.

Doug

I would like to think that an autograph gets more than the minute I have conjectured, since I would think it would need to be compared to others. And that an old photo needs a bit of time to determine if it was printed within a certain time frame of when the photo was taken. Both of these items whould then leave even less time for the cards.

Sorry guys, I'll stop posting on this thread, my ranting is starting to annoy even myself.

:)

Doug

I've been surprised that it wasn't freely accessible long before now. It is a marketing tool for them. Absolutely no reason to keep it hidden.

Good math check. This sort of reminds me of Wilt Chamberlain claiming that he slept with over 20,000 women.

Laughing.

The thing about that claim is that if he started when he was 18 and "slept" with one woman a day until a year before he died, we're talking over 16,000 women.

I've spent the last 28 years working for an assortment of rockstars and there are a few of them who have accumulated some numbers that make me think Wilt's claims might be true.

I'm of course using the Clinton method to define "sleeping with".

Doug

Don't be sorry I agree with your opinion on grading. I think it is way too much as far as a 10 point scale with little sub grades in between (Ex. 3.5).

I don't have a problem with graders taking a minute or less to grade a card. I can tell if a card is authentic in seconds and can make a judgement of what it should grade in a few more seconds. Then take 20 seconds to look at it closely. Walla you have a graded card. Then there is likely an example set to compare your grade to quickly then you move on.

IT AIN'T ROCKET SURGERY.

PSA Population Report to be free as of 1/1/2012 Reply to Thread
 

This was a very good move, because I started drifting away from PSA this year.

Jimmy

You are welcome to pay Mint 9 prices for 7.5 cards, 7 prices for 5.5 cards, and 5 prices for 3.5 cards. Let me know when you are ready to start paying these prices because I have some cards to sell you.:p

Oops now that you pointed that out looks like I am a little off in what I wrote:o

A few seconds? Well if PSA does the same, that explains a lot

Nah, Like any repititive job, after handling a couplea thousand, you'd get pretty quick at it... I'd bet a few of the older folks here had such a job at one time.
http://www.kenokel.com/blog/wp-conte...te-factory.jpg

...and as was mentioned through-out this post, PSA made their pop report free as promised. Whether you have any interest in looking at it or not is up to you.

In re to the SMR, some might maintain that its cost now more closely aligns with its value.

How accurate are Pop reports?
 

Anyone have a guess how accurate Pop reports from PSA, SGC, BVG, or anyone for that matter really are?

For instance, I can tell you at least 30 of the E98s on PSA's Pop report no longer exist in a PSA holder. I crossed them all over to SGC. Not here to bash PSA because I'm sure many a collector has taken SGC cards and done the same to PSA. I just prefer the look and quality grading of SGC (A topic that has been debated many times!) There is no way any grading company could accurately show the numbers of what is really out there, just the number in which they have graded. But it would be neat to see the numbers on how many "cross-overs" that the companies get.

Just some thoughts.
Best Wishes,
Tim Kindler

I only have a handful of cards graded by PSA, 6 to be exact. I just checked 4 were there, but 2 were not. Both N172 old Judge cards

Brouthers Bat on shoulder nm 7 and Sam Thompson Bat in right hand at side good 2. I'm guessing these might be put in one of the other poses of the players.

Found the other 4 cards N28, N29, T206 and e210

Joe

There is innaccuracy, my N172 Comisky is a PSA "A," yet the pop report shows they have no Auths.

I used to track Old Judge Population reports for SGC and to a lesser extent, PSA. SGC always had growing populations but strangely, PSA didn't. For example, on October 22nd, 2004, PSA had graded 13 total Monte Ward Old Judge cards. Fast forward about a year, September, 2005, and PSA had a total population of zero (Monte Ward). The population reduction only seemed to affect some players in the Old Judge set. I wouldn't be surprised at finding some PSA graded Old Judges that are no longer reflected in the population reports. Can't speak for other sets.

Pop Report
 

Anyone know if PSA will be offering refunds or credits for the remaining months of paid online population report/smr by users. I renewed my subscription in November so I had 10 months remaining that I had paid for.

but not always useful like PSA's...

for instance, how can SGC not differentiate the 3 different E90-1 cards of willie keeler (red, pink, horizontal)???? there are about 20 players in the E90-1 set that have multiple poses/different cards, but you wouldnt know it by looking at the SGC POP reports....

makes no sense IMO....

The SGC pop reports for E90-1 are broken out by variation. You have to click on the + sign to the left of the player to expand the variation listings. Adding variation specific information to the pop reports has been a priority for about the past two years. Prior to that, the variations weren't always broken out specifically, so the numbers won't always be accurate, but they can give an idea as to the relative scarcity of a variation.

For your example, SGC has graded 121 Keelers of which 80 are unclassified, 25 are pink, 5 are red, and 11 are throwing.

thanks for the update and thanks for SGC to correct this but these missed the boat : your example of Keelers with 80 unclassified means that info is just about useless....they should have started the variations listings from the beginning...

Hi Scott,

I agree that both pop reports have big weaknesses. PSA missed the boat by not differentiating T206 backs for many, many years. So their report is practically worthless to the growing number of T206 back collectors.

Gotta take all this info with a giant box of salt...makes me laugh when auction results show people put thousands of dollars into a card based on a grading company pop report...

Cheers,
Blair

metoo. any help?

Credit
 

PSA gave me the refund to use on PSA products or grading. They refused to credit my credit card.