Gem Rate: Universal Population Reports
 

Hi Guys and Gals,

Public Service Announcement: I'm sure there are more than a few of you who are aware of this already...but, in case you are not among the enlightened.

Just watched a video on You Tube about a site called Gem Rate gemrate.com that provides Universal Pop Reports from all 4 major grading companies (PSA, SGC, Beckett and CGC) as well as trends and other potentially useful tools. Just learned about it and have no affiliation with them. Thought it was pretty cool to see Pop reports from all sources. Doesn't cost anything either!

Have fun with it...I did.

Kindest regards,

JT

How well does it capture the right details?

I've heard that for some of the TPGs, their inconsistent labeling and naming conventions can make it difficult to aggregate the data properly.

I only know what I wrote...how accurate it is? I really don't know. In the absence of anything else, I feel like it's a nice little tool.

Yeah, if someone could explain this example from SGC about 1887 N284 Gold Coin populations I'm all ears...

https://www.gosgc.com/pop-report/res...84%29/Baseball

https://www.gosgc.com/pop-report/res...84%29/Baseball

Gemrate's data quality is as good as the data quality of the TPGs. They're probably not gong to try to hunt down all the data discrepancies hidden away in the TPG databases.

SGC pop report is a mess

You have multiple set listings for the same set. There is no roll up

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...4e6e597687.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...b94cddd602.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...5598f00ec7.jpg

For E98s, one set lists color variations, the other doesn’t

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...e69a33f7d4.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...fb8a2d8d75.jpg

This is one of the primary reasons that they still don't have a set registry. It's a lot of work to dig through the database and correct all these data quality issues. Also, the data that was collected with older cert cards is less comprehensive than it is with newer certs. I think it is likely that Collectors will be making an effort to clean this data over the next year or two. I would predict that we will see a fully functional SGC registry within 5 years, and it wouldn't surprise me to see one within 2-3 years. I'm actually betting on it, as I've been picking up some high-grade SGC slabs recently that I wouldn't have previously bought, and I'm holding some high-grade SGC slabs that I otherwise would have sold by now.

Another challenge is that our knowledge of the different variations has evolved over time. In the earlier days of grading, they simply didn't differentiate between differences that were either unknown or deemed irrelevant. And they don't have scans of those cards, so there's really no way to accurately recreate pop reports if we want them to be at the variations level of granularity. The best they could do is use statistical sampling of the known examples and make retrodictions about what they were likely to have been for the cards that were graded prior to when those distinctions were made.

Then there's the fact that countless cards have been cracked and resubmitted. That's a much more difficult problem to solve though. I have some ideas about how to estimate that, but any useful solution would be fairly complex and would be subject to fairly large error rates.

Snow, I would hope so, but I have heard the same thing for years. Maybe it does change with the CU acquisition, but I am on the other end of that spectrum. As I have said on other posts, if I don't see any enhancements or improvements at SGC in the next 6 months, I will be concerned.

Snow, curious on your SGC pickups. Modern? Vintage? And hundred dollars cards or thousand dollar cards?

I have also picked up some cheaper SGC cards that I think are undervalued.

I think the primary barrier to SGC's inability to produce a working registry has been that they simply lacked the technical talent necessary to get it done. It's a massive investment. They need to upgrade their data warehouse, clean up old messy data, and build new tools and infrastructure on the front end. It's a multi-million dollar up-front investment in addition to the ongoing costs associated with hiring developers and IT workers that are capable of managing and maintaining the servers and building out customer-facing tools.

Bringing Collectors into the picture solves most of these problems for them. Sure, Collectors would have to allocate resources, but at least they already have the data warehouse and the talent. To me, this is a no-brainer next step from a business perspective. It will also be very telling about Collectors' true incentives for buying SGC. If they do indeed intend to maintain both brands going forward, then I would fully expect to see a working registry as one of their first improvements. If, however, we fail to see them making any investments/promises toward that goal, then I would assume they lied about their true intentions and that they actually did purchase SGC with the goal of eventually phasing them out (which I highly doubt is the case).

All vintage cards, but that's mainly because I still think the modern market is unstable and over-valued. Most are between the $500 to $10k range.

Gem Rate: Universal Population Reports
 

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Snowman - What timeline would you think that we would see this rolled out? Would they maybe announce their intentions early, so that they can get us all excited about it? Or would they do it on the sly, and then roll it out in a couple of years once it's ready for prime time?

Naturally, if they keep it secret, then we might not know until it happens, which might take a while. And therefore it might not tell us much about what the future holds for the SGC brand in the interim, at least until they actually roll it out.