SGC Population report doesn't account for variations

[bn2cardz]

I know there are supporters for both SGC and PSA so I am not trying to open up the argument about who is better overall. I am not company loyal.

I do, however, have an issue with the way SGC lumps players together in their population report without regard to variations. PSA separates out variations in their population report SGC neglects this sometimes making it hard for collectors to know where the rarities are.

This is more of a specific problem with Old Judge for me right now. I knew before submitting my cards to SGC that I didn't like that, but I still felt they garnered more respect in 19th cards than PSA so I chose them to grade my Old Judge cards.

I have a King Kelly that was graded at a 40 (3) that has Kelly holding the bat left handed at 45deg and in the Chicago uniform. VCP lists this card as 260a. Yet SGC lumps this card in with every other N172 King Kelly card. So they list that 60 Kelly cards have been graded, but with out extensive research it is hard to say how many are this particular pose. Using VCP I can assume there is at least another 40 and a "A" (of course this is only cards that have sold, there is no one that would know that I have another 40 because it hasn't been sold). When I look at PSA's population report I know there is only a "A" of this pose and they make that transparent. I like that.

By lumping all the cards into the name of the player it treats them as the same card and that isn't fair to the hobby, because they aren't.

[Ronnie73]

I'm more of a PSA fan but I like SGC too. SGC does have variation flaws in their population reports. I only keep track of the T206 reports and if a card has a portrait and batting card, sometimes it will list the one for batting so does that mean the one without a variation listed is all portraits? I don't think so. Maybe SGC would know. It's as if SGC didn't know there were 524 T206 card fronts and what players had more than one card when they first started grading the cards.

[bn2cardz]

Originally Posted by Ronnie73

It's as if SGC didn't know there were 524 T206 card fronts and what players had more than one card when they first started grading the cards.

I imagine that this could be true for the Old Judges as well. I guess it would be hard to fix now without having a new population report starting after a certain date.

[DixieBaseball]

The variation of cards, poses, etc. is a mess with the grading companies. From Old Judges to Coupon's, there is a mixed bag, especially from the genesis of the pop reports. The best you can hope for is a total pop of a player's name in most cases as there is no way to know about certain variations. I will say that I have noticed of late there has been some effort to start identifying them better. Also, if a certain player has very low pop, you may be able to identify over time what poses, etc. correspond with certain grading companies as they come up for sale, or via Google. I have felt your same pain when researching certain cards.