T206 Sweet Caporal Census Project

[steve B]

Are the VCP numbers representing unique serial numbers? Or jut total sales?

If they're unique serial numbers, what immediately strikes me is the very high turnover percentage. Like on Arellanes, where PSA shows 40 factory 30s, and VCP shows 31 sales.

That's amazing, and makes me wonder if a visual census of nearly all the graded examples might be possible.
I've done some work on it with a known "rare" card, and it's very interesting. And I got nowhere near getting every copy.

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by steve B

Are the VCP numbers representing unique serial numbers? Or jut total sales?

If they're unique serial numbers, what immediately strikes me is the very high turnover percentage. Like on Arellanes, where PSA shows 40 factory 30s, and VCP shows 31 sales.

That's amazing, and makes me wonder if a visual census of nearly all the graded examples might be possible.
I've done some work on it with a known "rare" card, and it's very interesting. And I got nowhere near getting every copy.

I use the actual cert label number from PSA/SGC and have conditional formatting set so that if a duplicate label number appears, it does not get double counted. Here is an example of what my Excel file looks like



I only use the date column periodically so that if I accidentally close the window, I can get back to the last place I was without having to re-open 50 images to find my place.

I don't bother with the grade of the card, with the unique label number, I am able to weed out duplicates. Of course, if a card was originally in a T206 or T206 SweetCap holder and it was re-holdered into a factory specific slab, then I think the cert number changes. I expect those are very rare here, especially for the commons. The other benefit of using the cert number is that some of the very old scans available, say, from 2007 or 2008, may be too blurry to see the factory number, but I log the cert, and sometimes that card was re-sold years later, with a better scan, and I am able to identify it, which is oddly satisfying, lol.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

I use the actual cert label number from PSA/SGC and have conditional formatting set so that if a duplicate label number appears, it does not get double counted. Here is an example of what my Excel file looks like



I only use the date column periodically so that if I accidentally close the window, I can get back to the last place I was without having to re-open 50 images to find my place.

I don't bother with the grade of the card, with the unique label number, I am able to weed out duplicates. Of course, if a card was originally in a T206 or T206 SweetCap holder and it was re-holdered into a factory specific slab, then I think the cert number changes. I expect those are very rare here, especially for the commons. The other benefit of using the cert number is that some of the very old scans available, say, from 2007 or 2008, may be too blurry to see the factory number, but I log the cert, and sometimes that card was re-sold years later, with a better scan, and I am able to identify it, which is oddly satisfying, lol.

Hey James,

The Arellanes on your chart with the ??? on the back is a factory 25.

Arellanes.jpg

[53toppscollector]

Awesome! I will update it in my spreadsheet. Thanks for that.

[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

I use the actual cert label number from PSA/SGC and have conditional formatting set so that if a duplicate label number appears, it does not get double counted. Here is an example of what my Excel file looks like



I only use the date column periodically so that if I accidentally close the window, I can get back to the last place I was without having to re-open 50 images to find my place.

I don't bother with the grade of the card, with the unique label number, I am able to weed out duplicates. Of course, if a card was originally in a T206 or T206 SweetCap holder and it was re-holdered into a factory specific slab, then I think the cert number changes. I expect those are very rare here, especially for the commons. The other benefit of using the cert number is that some of the very old scans available, say, from 2007 or 2008, may be too blurry to see the factory number, but I log the cert, and sometimes that card was re-sold years later, with a better scan, and I am able to identify it, which is oddly satisfying, lol.

I actually like looking at this info just as much as the one's you have been posting. I like the Cert info on each card mostly. I did that with David Hall's collection.

[Rhotchkiss]

Another great example of how/why pop reports should be used as guides and not gospel. Here, we can use them to extrapolate relative scarcity compared to other series/factory numbers; not so great when comparing to an entirely different back.

What is abundantly clear, and a major (largely) overlooked fact about t206 backs, is that SC Factory 25s are much rarer than factory 30s. This is especially true in the 350 series

[frankbmd]

Quite a project, but perhaps paralysis by analysis.

I reminded of launch angles and exit speed velocities.

Babe Ruth hit a lot of home runs without them and not a single home run has been attributed to them that hasn't gone over the fence.

Good luck and carry on.

[53toppscollector]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Another great example of how/why pop reports should be used as guides and not gospel. Here, we can use them to extrapolate relative scarcity compared to other series/factory numbers; not so great when comparing to an entirely different back.

What is abundantly clear, and a major (largely) overlooked fact about t206 backs, is that SC Factory 25s are much rarer than factory 30s. This is especially true in the 350 series

The most interesting thing to me is that most of the T206 rules are not universal, and there are outliers. For example, I was just looking at two different 350 series cards in the PSA pop report and they have very different Fac 25/30 splits:

Byrne has (14) Fac 25s and (18) Fac 30s....not a big split.

Butler has (4) Fac 25s and (32) Fac 30s...a huge split

Other than this random huge gap in their Sweet Cap factory distribution, there is nothing else really distinguishing them. They have an almost identical total number of Sweet Caps, Byrne has none of the rare backs while Butler has only a BL350.

You are right, the majority of the Factory 25s are much more rare, but not in all cases. Which makes you wonder why. These oddities pop up everywhere, like the Tannehill above, the fact that the Exclusive 12 are so abundant in AB460 backs, while the rest of the AB460s are extremely difficult and low population.

The journey continues.

[53toppscollector]

12. Armbruster (Print Group 2)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory number: 10 (plus 5 that were too blurry to see)
T206 > Factory number: 4 (plus 4 Piedmont 350s)

Armbruster is an interesting one. He is one of the nicest looking portraits, imo, with the lovely red background. But his card is pretty scarce overall. Based on total population numbers (which are a few months old), he was ranked 91st in terms of total population. He has only 102 total Sweet Caps graded between PSA and SGC. Based on the above numbers, his Factory 25 falls into the "very very rare" bucket. I saw only 3 graded copies total between PSA and SGC.

[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

12. Armbruster (Print Group 2)

Armbruster is an interesting one. He is one of the nicest looking portraits, imo, with the lovely red background. But his card is pretty scarce overall. Based on total population numbers (which are a few months old), he was ranked 91st in terms of total population. He has only 102 total Sweet Caps graded between PSA and SGC. Based on the above numbers, his Factory 25 falls into the "very very rare" bucket. I saw only 3 graded copies total between PSA and SGC.

I just checked, but my SC350/25 is ungraded.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by 53toppscollector

The most interesting thing to me is that most of the T206 rules are not universal, and there are outliers. For example, I was just looking at two different 350 series cards in the PSA pop report and they have very different Fac 25/30 splits:

Byrne has (14) Fac 25s and (18) Fac 30s....not a big split.

Butler has (4) Fac 25s and (32) Fac 30s...a huge split

Other than this random huge gap in their Sweet Cap factory distribution, there is nothing else really distinguishing them. They have an almost identical total number of Sweet Caps, Byrne has none of the rare backs while Butler has only a BL350.

You are right, the majority of the Factory 25s are much more rare, but not in all cases. Which makes you wonder why. These oddities pop up everywhere, like the Tannehill above, the fact that the Exclusive 12 are so abundant in AB460 backs, while the rest of the AB460s are extremely difficult and low population.

The journey continues.

I'm thinking this has to do with what fronts were available in the printers at the time they filled the order. The ones with big splits are most likely either the end of a front run that was finished off using the 25 backs, OR fronts that were only available one particular time the 25s were finished.

The ones with more equal splits were probably available during different press runs.

That the data used weeds out duplicates is both proper and wonderful, as it makes the pop report data much more useful.

I think eventually we'll see groups of cards based on the splits between factories, and that will give a very approximate idea of what cards were on the same sheet.
One of the guys here did some work separating the 350-460s by group, and what he came up with was pretty impressive. Even more so when I looked up the pop report numbers, and all but two cards matched up nicely within those groups.

[53toppscollector]

13. Arndt (Print Group 2)



Discoveries:

T206 Sweet Caporal > Factory: 7 (plus 3 cards that were too blurry to see)
T206 > Factory: 3 (plus 7 Piedmont 350s)

You can add Arndt into the very tough Sweet Caporal bucket. Less than 100 total Sweet Caps graded, and only 13% were Factory 25s in my census.