cracked cards on psa pop reports and registry?

[DixieBaseball]

I return my flips about twice a year. My guess would be at least half or more don't return flips, so the pop reports would all be a bit on the high side of estimates. My fuzzy math for pop reports is to take the pop number and subtract 20% from that number to get probably a more real number.

On some of the more scarce to rare issues, I feel the numbers may be a bit more accurate but probably a tad high.... As the years go by and these cards reside on the registry, I still think they provide invaluable data on just how rare/scarce some issues might be....

We have discussed this before, but if you take the Pop number from PSA, SGC, and BVG and then guestimate the raw number range, you can get a pretty good feel for just how many of a certain type of each player may be out there.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by NashvilleBaseball

We have discussed this before, but if you take the Pop number from PSA, SGC, and BVG and then guestimate the raw number range, you can get a pretty good feel for just how many of a certain type of each player may be out there.

And that's the key; to add the pop reports and come to the conclusion that only 7 of a card exists is a huge mistake. However if the combined pop is a 7, and another card has a combined pop of 50, you can get a good sense that the first is a tougher card.

[ChuckRoss]

I've pondered this question myself and I think that the comment about relative scarcity (i.e. 7 vs 50) is about the only worthwhile thing you can garner from these lists, and only then if the numbers are big enough to be statistically relevant. I would bet that for many cards on the population reports there are many more examples ungraded than there are on the report.