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.

[mdschulze]

I'm fairly new to this and I really didn't know how this all plays in with the grading companies. Thanks for the information!

[T206Collector]

A lot of high grade collectors depend heavily on low pop reports to determine the value of their cards. So a PSA Pop 1 of 1 is worth a lot to them. But Pop reports are not an exact science and the numbers are often very misleading as a result of things like crossovers, resubmits and raw collections. As was previously said, Pop reports help with things like relative scarcity -- but even there you have to be aware that rare cards get graded more frequently than common cards and the pop reports will reflect that, too, suggesting that certain common cards are equally scarce as rare cards when in fact they aren't.

[HRBAKER]

To me the cross and crack games have made the pop reports pretty meaningless for several years.

[tbob]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

To me the cross and crack games have made the pop reports pretty meaningless for several years.

Absolutely Jeff.

[glchen]

FYI, low pop figures should be fairly accurate, however, since it's the rare collector who will crossover a Pop 1 of 1 card. Still, as mentioned, raw cards still exist, so those low pop numbers can change as more and more cards get graded.

[M's_Fan]

The cross and crack games have made population reports meaningless. I agree.

But the grading companies still don't communicate when they cross over a card, supposedly to protect their percieved market share.

But by not doing this they have destroyed the meaning of the pop reports, so it doesn't make sense. It would seem that to protect the integrity of the pop report, and to protect the integrity of their percieved market share, they should share information, or else the whole thing is pointless and meaningless.

It just doesn't make sense to me that the grading companies go to all this trouble but then undermine themselves by not sharing information when they cross over cards.

Of course this couldn't prevent someone cracking and resubmitting, but it would be a big improvement. The high dollar cards are rarely cracked and resubmitted due to the big risk, unless it is obviously undergraded.

[sox1903wschamp]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

To me the cross and crack games have made the pop reports pretty meaningless for several years.

"Cross and crack". There is a joke in there somewhere
And yes, because of this and raw cards in collections, your head could explode trying figure pop reports so I ignore them. But boy do these reports bring high dollar to mainstream Topps and Bowman sets.