Population Reports

[terjung]

You got it. One card on two pop reports. Actually, it is worse than that since people break cards out and resubmit them all the time in hopes of getting a grade bump. So, it goes on the pop report again and again. There are a ton of raw cards out there though, so you can't just go by pop reports as a top end either.

It is in the grading company's best interest not to remove a card from the pop report due to perceived market share. Flips sent to graders don't get removed from the pop reports for this reason - if though it would help to get more accurate counts.

Pop reports are best used for relative populations within a set (to help determining the scarcity of one card in a set over another), but even that isn't foolproof since some cards like big named HOFers may be more likely to be submitted for grading than other commons.

All in all, take pop reports with a grain of salt.