Posted By:
Dan Kravitz"Dan - there is a balance between saying the pop reports are worthless and saying they are accurate. Claims of a cards worth due to the exact number of cards in the pop report are indeed not accurate, for the reasons you pointed out. However, the pop reports can give you a measure of how scarce the card is and in that, they do have value."
Matt-
I have a card that is not in the pop reports. Does that make it more valuable? If a card has been submitted 5 times, how can you assess true scarcity or value? I will agree that if there is only one card that has been graded by PSA in the reports, you would think that it is accurate, but I mentioned that I have cards that are miss-labeled and do not show up in the proper category. PSA is careless with their labeling and therefore can not be trusted to give us an accurate account of cards slabbed, giving us an unclear picture on quantity or scarcity. In my opinion, PSA pop reports are worthless.
If you collect rare back cards, it's even worse. I have a blue Croft's Candy Wagner batting in a PSA holder. The label does not say blue Croft's Candy on it, and therefore has no category to be placed in other than Croft's Candy. I have no idea how many black, blue, or red Croft's Candy Wagner's are even out there. And to make it worse, they didn't designate that it is the batting pose, which is another vital issue that PSA missed. I think PSA's approach to the vintage hobby is careless, but I understand that they do not really understand our hobby, just the business end of it.