PSA & SGC combined T206 pop numbers as of 12/22/23

[Pat R]

I have done the pop numbers in the past for several things like different backs and certain players but I never did a combined PSA & SGC pop on the 524 card set before and I must say it was enlightening,

There are many T206 collectors that say the pop reports are inaccurate. Well yeah there is quite a bit of inaccuracy with some of the rare backs and certain subjects because of crossovers and resubmissions etc... but as a whole I have always felt that they are a great resource and also pretty accurate in general.

I think most advanced T206 collectors would agree that these total combined pop numbers seem to reflect their accuracy.

There are some things that stood out to me and I will point a few of them out at the end of this post.

I assigned a color to each print group and also put the number of backs that each subject is currently confirmed with. I'm sure I have made some mistakes so feel free to correct me or offer any suggestions.


Some of the colors didn't come out on the printer that great but this is what they are for each print group.

Print group 1 150/350 = white
Print group 2 350 only = green
print group 3 350/460 = blue
print group 4 460 only = yellow
Print group 5 super prints = red/orange (it's orange on my excel sheet)
Print group 6 Southern Leaguers = light green/gray (it's gray on my sheet)

Hof's are in red writing

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I have been doing a lot of different types of research on the set for quite a few years now but doing this has pointed me in a slightly different direction on how the printing might have been done on some of these groups.

Monte Cross is an odd subject (along with a few other subjects but Cross stands out the most). He was only printed with 4 backs and like most people I always thought he was pulled or something happened and he was left out for a significant portion of the printing but when you look at his numbers along with some other similar subjects it doesn't seem like he or many of the other limited back subjects were pulled or left out. Cross is a print group 2 subject and despite the fact that he was only printed on 4 backs there are 26 print group 2 subjects with lower total pops than his.

I have said for a long time that it didn't seem like it would have been practical to remove subjects during the printing process and working on this it seems to me like it was more like they were being printed in several different places and how the subjects got moved around in the printing of the different backs that created some of the discrepancies.

I haven't actually taken any time to look at it because I just finished the excel sheet but while I was working on this it seems that a great deal of subjects with fewer backs have significantly higher numbers than some subject from the same print group. My thought is that while the subjects with higher number backs were being printed on some of the less common backs subjects like Cross were still being printed on Piedmont and Sweet Caporal sheets with another group of subjects from that print group. We know for sure that Rossman another subject that was printed on a limited number of backs (5) is found with two different subjects above him McBride and Thomas.

I think that might have been what also took place with the Southern Leaguers and it could be the reason most of the 14 that weren't printed with Hindu backs have higher pops than the 34 that were. We do know from some of the ads that they had originally intended to print all of the Southern Leaguers with Hindu backs.

In general you can see the consistency between the PSA and SGC pop numbers. For the most part SGC pops are around 60% of the PSA numbers
for most subjects with the Hof's being slightly higher.

One subject that stood out to me is the Ever's Cubs on shirt with almost equal numbers for both.