(2 Years Later) PSA vs. SGC - A look at the T206 set

[jhs5120]

Almost two years ago to the day I wrote about the trends and differences between PSA and SGC in regards to the t206 set. The research I performed can be found here.

I wanted to better understand the market differences between SGC and PSA as well as the collecting and price trends between collectors of both TPG’s. In the previous thread I came to the following conclusion: Premium is established to the TPG company with the more readily accessible commons.

I thought it would be neat to come back and perform the research again to find the difference two years has made on the t206 market. I wanted to see:

• How many new cards are entering the population reports at each condition level
• How much has the value of the t206 set appreciated (or depreciated)
• How population increases have affected the value of t206 cards

I started with the population reports and immediately noticed two things. A lot of collectors are sending their cards to PSA and the population of SGC 7 cards actually went down! See below:








Obviously it’s impossible to know how many cards have been cracked or reviewed or resubbed multiple times, but I will assume the amount of resubs happens at a similar rate between PSA and SGC. A few notes, I rounded half grades down and I did the standard minus 2 points for qualifiers. I obviously excluded the big three and random "error" cards from the totals.

Considering my previous hypothesis that the price of a set is determined by how easily accessible the commons are I determined that low grade PSA cards increased in value at a higher rate than SGC cards. I was correct:



It should be noted that not every sale is recorded here, just sales from VCP. A great example of how this might change is the most recent Saco River find and auction.

I think the most startling item of note is that the value of low grade SGC sets have decreased marginally, while PSA has seen a significant increase in collector grade cards. Why did this happen? The supply of low grade PSA t206 cards has increased by 20-30% (see above) making the set much more attainable to collectors who focus on affordable cards. Overall the value of the set has held its value well, but over the past two years it’s clear to see collectors gravitate more towards PSA cards. Below is the average value per grade:






I'll spend some time digging into it a bit deeper this weekend, but I thought this was pretty neat.

Jason Simonds