What's going on at PSA in their T206 pop report?

[swarmee]

2021 - TOTAL POPULATION - 253,098
Grade - 204,043
+ - 35,942
Q - 13,113
- Autographed copies - 86


2022 Current Population

TOTAL POPULATION - 220,773
Grade - 175,175
+ - 33,889
Q - 11,709
- Autographed copies - 70

So in one year, at the peak of the market that is so backlogged that maybe 6 million cards are still sitting at PSA ready to be graded, the population of PSA graded T206 cards has DECLINED in the past year. This is coming from Gemrate, a company that monitors how many cards PSA is grading monthly.

Declined not just in a small sense, but by 33,000 slabs. That is 15% of all PSA graded T206 cards. That is also the equivalent of 63 complete sets of 524 cards. Even the biggest T206 Master Set collector, David Hall, only had like 5000 cards in this set, right?

So what's going on?
1) Did everyone who has ever cracked a PSA T206 out of slab for their binder sheets send their flips in at one time for removal?
2) Did PSA use their APR tool, VCP, Worthpoint, PWCC history, etc to figure out all the missing brands/series/factories in order to properly categorize them after having changed their set parameters over the years from just "T206", to "T206 Sweet Caporal" then "T206 Sweet Caporal 350", and now "T206 Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 25"? And they're currently masked as they replace the data in the database?
3) Is it some system glitch that only seems to be affecting T206s?
4) Something to do with the grading scandal?

It's curious. If you guys have PSA slabbed T206 cards, check and see if any of them have been removed from the registry. If so, did PSA notify you? Does the flip match the Cert Number Validation tool?

[MuncieNolePAZ]

I was looking at the WaJo pops yesterday for both poses and they definitely looked different mainly for the Piedmont and Sweet Cap versions.

Chad

[Lobo Aullando]

Two weeks ago, I recorded ~261k overall at the PSA site, and now I'm seeing the ~220k number, too. (I can't even find T206s on GemRate.)

Either the PSA site is acting funny or they fixed something very recently.

[investinrookies]

Pretty sure the PSA pop has dropped on the Magie Error as well, its under 100 now

[swarmee]

Another option then: maybe double-counting of some slabs due to the various flip label variations? Maybe the numbers were bloating over time and this was an adjustment to actuals once they detected the software summing error?

[BobC]

Has anyone who is so interested thought of reaching out to PSA and simply asking them what happened, and then report back? Would save a lot of otherwise needless conjecture and speculation.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by BobC

Has anyone who is so interested thought of reaching out to PSA and simply asking them what happened, and then report back? Would save a lot of otherwise needless conjecture and speculation.

Nonsense Bob! What fun would that be? You know we all come here to whine, complain, argue and occasionally we discuss something too.

Well usually you would be correct that going to the source is a great idea actually unless that source is a TPG company. PSA is not very transparent and keeps things very close to the vest. Whatever they are up to, assuming this is a permanent correction and not a temporary technical issue, if they had wanted anyone to know they would have let us know in advance. Otherwise they give the silent treatment. Of course this is a prefect chance for snowman to come apologize for them.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by BobC

Has anyone who is so interested thought of reaching out to PSA and simply asking them what happened, and then report back? Would save a lot of otherwise needless conjecture and speculation.

I would, but they started auto-rejecting my emails a couple of years ago when I asked them questions.

[Lobo Aullando]

I think the early slabs that had no brand attribution were counted twice.

Total Change
261.0k – 220.8k = 40.2k

Total with Brand Info at Minimum
180.0k

Total without Any Brand Info
220.8k – 180.0k = 40.8k

That means over the past couple weeks that ~600 cards were graded (and I can literally account for around 5% of them myself, not joking).

And if the dwellers of Olympus can be bothered to respond to anyone, I'm curious if this is what really happened. The numbers make sense.

Originally Posted by swarmee

Another option then: maybe double-counting of some slabs due to the various flip label variations? Maybe the numbers were bloating over time and this was an adjustment to actuals once they detected the software summing error?

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by Lobo Aullando

I think the early slabs that had no brand attribution were counted twice.

Total Change
261.0k – 220.8k = 40.2k

Total with Brand Info at Minimum
180.0k

Total without Any Brand Info
220.8k – 180.0k = 40.8k

That means over the past couple weeks that ~600 cards were graded (and I can literally account for around 5% of them myself, not joking).

And if the dwellers of Olympus can be bothered to respond to anyone, I'm curious if this is what really happened. The numbers make sense.

In January 2012 I printed out the pop reports for all of the backs, there were 63,222 unknown backs and the total cards graded was 136,903.

There was 34 Magie errors in the pop reprts then.