T206 Sweet Caporal Census Project

[RCFire82]

James,
Quick rule of thumb I use when looking at psa's pop. report on Sweet Caporals is to use ratios. For example on the Abbaticchio (blue sleeves) above:
Let's say total Sweet Caporals graded is 160 (which is close) and 80 (or exactly half) have been identified with Factory numbers. I would say it's safe to say each Factory graded total, 460 25 (10 total), 460 30 (58 total), and 460 op (12 total) can be multiplied by 2. So one would expect to see an additional 10 460 fac 25's, 58 more 460 fac 30's, and 24 total 460 over prints when examining the 80 earlier non Factory labeled psa graded cards.

[Lobo Aullando]

That's my back-of-the-envelope rule of thumb in a nutshell. (Who doesn't love idioms?)

Also, one doesn't have to do a full census to get a good picture of the whole. A sample of 30 or so would get a pretty good estimate of what those ratios should be. (Picking every 17th card might be better than doing all the A name cards because it's less likely to encounter clustering.) It's even possible to get a good error range with that few.

Originally Posted by RCFire82

James,
Quick rule of thumb I use when looking at psa's pop. report on Sweet Caporals is to use ratios. For example on the Abbaticchio (blue sleeves) above:
Let's say total Sweet Caporals graded is 160 (which is close) and 80 (or exactly half) have been identified with Factory numbers. I would say it's safe to say each Factory graded total, 460 25 (10 total), 460 30 (58 total), and 460 op (12 total) can be multiplied by 2. So one would expect to see an additional 10 460 fac 25's, 58 more 460 fac 30's, and 24 total 460 over prints when examining the 80 earlier non Factory labeled psa graded cards.

Edited to add:


Just following the rules, even though I love the pretty tables.

[53toppscollector]

4. Abstein (Print Group 2)



An interesting note here, I found an Abstein with a "T206 Harris Collection" flip, hadn't seen that before. I think it was a PSA 8 of a Piedmont 350. Cool.

Discoveries within the Abstein scans:

T206 > Factory numbers: 4 (13 Piedmont 350s)
T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory numbers: 11 (1 that was not readable)

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by RCFire82

James,
Quick rule of thumb I use when looking at psa's pop. report on Sweet Caporals is to use ratios. For example on the Abbaticchio (blue sleeves) above:
Let's say total Sweet Caporals graded is 160 (which is close) and 80 (or exactly half) have been identified with Factory numbers. I would say it's safe to say each Factory graded total, 460 25 (10 total), 460 30 (58 total), and 460 op (12 total) can be multiplied by 2. So one would expect to see an additional 10 460 fac 25's, 58 more 460 fac 30's, and 24 total 460 over prints when examining the 80 earlier non Factory labeled psa graded cards.

Yeah, this is kind of how I think about it in my head, but I think the reason I wanted to do this project was just to see if my assumptions generally track across the board, or if there are weird outliers that may not really be known just be using the ratios/estimates. Plus, looking through old scans is actually kind of fun, to be honest.

Originally Posted by Lobo Aullando

Also, one doesn't have to do a full census to get a good picture of the whole. A sample of 30 or so would get a pretty good estimate of what those ratios should be. (Picking every 17th card might be better than doing all the A name cards because it's less likely to encounter clustering.) It's even possible to get a good error range with that few.

Sure, that is fine for estimates. And ballpark estimates are fine for most. I just really want to dig in here and see what kind of things I can uncover by methodically going through everything available. I do understand it is a bit insane

[Prof]

I can't really offer any help. But, I love the undertaking of ideas like this.

It's really cool to see the passion, fun to follow along, and it can produce valuable information for collectors.

Good luck.

[53toppscollector]

5. Adkins (Print Group 2)



Discoveries:

T206 label > Factory number: 1
T206 Sweet Caporal label > Factory number: 10

Of the 35 Adkins PSA scans I looked at, 12 of them had the old "T206" label, and most of them were Piedmont 350s.

We all know the good doctor is one of those cards that was/is hoarded, so I wasn't shocked to find a limited sampling of cards to look at.

[53toppscollector]

6. Alperman (Print Group 1)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 15 (5 not cataloged due to blurriness)
T206 > Factory: 11 (6 Piedmonts, 2 were too blurry to read)

Lots of 649 Overprints here.

The PSA population report shows 21 copies (which we know is incomplete), but I found 22 alone in the 70 PSA slabs I looked at. Some of the 649OPs look to be a lot more populous than others, will be interesting to see if that plays out as I go through all 34 cards in the sub-set

[53toppscollector]

7. Ames Hands At Chest (Print Group 1 // 150 Only)



Ames Hands At Chest only comes in 150 series backs, so no SC 350/25 or SC 350/30.

Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 11 (5 not cataloged due to blurriness)
T206 > Factory: 3 (plus 9 Piedmont 150s and 3 that were SCs but too blurry to ID the factory number)


From what I've noticed anecdotally when doing my every 6 months pop report update in Excel, there are basically 2 groups of Sweet Cap 150s in terms of population between the two factories....those in the 2:1 ratio of 30s to 25s, and those closer to 4:1 or 5:1 in terms of 30s to 25s. I will have more on this in a few months when I do a comprehensive population report update. Based on this census, Ames falls sort of in between, but is definitely not in "rare" bucket for Factory 25s in the 150 series.

[steve B]

When I looked at overall populations of the 150 only and a few others a few years ago the Hof cards seemed to be about double the number of the commons.

I put that down to higher demand and grading returns.

Have you noticed the same thing?


I didn't look at factory differences, it may be long enough ago that PSA wasn't doing them then.

I think this sort of deeper look at what data we can get is going to eventually be a key to sheet composition. For example, backing out from High demand/low demand, and getting approximate numbers can show that the 2:1 and 4-5:1 were not on the same sheets.
It would be interesting to compare this data to the Plate scratch reconstruction Pat has done. That might answer if production was done as generic fronts that got specific backs to fill orders, or if each brand got their own.