T206 Sweet Caporal Census Project

[53toppscollector]

Hello. Apologies for cluttering up the main board, but I wanted to start a new thread for this project, as I suspect it will require a lot of posts, and I want to keep it organized and in its own place, instead of lumping it into my other thread of stats and curiosities.

Judging from the thread title, you probably already know what this is going to be. I have only been on this board for a little over a year, so if something like this has been done before, you can blast this thread into the sun and I won't be offended.

I'm a curious person, and one thing that has always bothered me with the population reports for PSA and SGC is how poorly they handle the Sweet Cap factory numbers. If you are the type to care about such things, then you know that in the beginning of (graded card time), PSA did not adequately label their slabs with the requisite information. They only added "T206" and then eventually "T206 Sweet Caporal", before finally reaching an enlightened state and adding "T206 Sweet Caporal 350/25" to the labels. The result is that there are a lot of SweetCap PSA slabs out there with no identifying info on the flip to id which factory the card was from, and as a result, the population reports are not very accurate. SGC is actually worse, in that they do not catalog any of their SweetCap factory numbers. So, we have zero actual info from them. Not great!

Being the sicko that I am, I've decided I want to try and rectify this to a degree, so this project is born. I actually just did one card, it took some time, but it was actually kind of thrilling (again, I am a sicko) clicking through old scans and uncovering treasure (cardboard factory numbers). I am going to use this thread to catalog my research, devoting a new post to a new card and then cataloging the results in this main post.

Before I get into the data, I want to add some reminders and notes here so I don't have to repeat them every time I make an update. I'm big on explaining methodologies so others can crosscheck if they would like to.

Methodology

* VCP has sales data for T206s dating back to 2006, maybe even older. For each sale, they also include scans of the card. The quality of the scans varies. Some are crystal clear, others are blurry and hard to zoom in on. On the whole, I was pleasantly surprised how useful the images were.

* Older listings typically only have the front of the card image available. **Price Is Right Loser Horn Sound** For these, I did not include them in my census.

* VCP lumps in all of the SweetCap and Piedmont Sales together. I am also checking the Piedmont 350/460s (quickly) to see if they missed any Factory 42s on the labels

* If I cannot read the scan and determine the factory number, I am going to make a notation of ??? in the data. I don't want to just guess, that is the whole point of doing this census, to try and take away some of the guesswork. I will identify these cards separately.

* I am tracking the cert numbers from PSA and SGC, which helps identify cards sold more than once. In my tracking of the first card, I actually had the first instance where the scan was too blurry, but a second sale had a better quality scan, and I was able to accurately label it.

* When I show the charts with the population reports from SGC and PSA, I will include the total number graded by SGC, but obviously there is no factory number breakdown because SGC does not put that info on their flip. They group the Sweet Caps as 1909 Sweet Caporal (SC 150), 1910 Sweet Caporal (SC 350) and 1911 Sweet Caporal (SC 460) so we will only have their aggregate totals. I will include them just for reference.

* I'm going to go alphabetical through the set. I debated going by print groups, but, I'm just going to go alphabetical. Each player will get his own post with the stats.

* I reserve the right to give up on this fairly ridiculous journey at any point. Though I am genuinely curious about this, so I want to see it through. The pace of my updates will depend on other stuff that comes up.

Caveats

* This is only a look at graded cards, and only those cards in the VCP database. VCP collects data from ebay and other auction houses, so it is a good source, maybe the best source we have, especially since ebay sold listings vanish after 3 months. I have scans here on sales from like 2014. We all know that for a lot of these cards, there are a ton of raw copies floating around. This is meant to give us a decent sample that we can analyze and discuss

* Some of these cards may have been crossed over or reholdered. I can't do anything about that.

* Some cards get graded and never sold, so my census will not match up 1:1 with the population reports. Obviously.

Here is a quick visual of why the PSA pop report is tough, if you haven't ever looked at it:



This will hopefully make more sense when I show the first card in the set and how I designed my chart.

Error Log:

Atz: SC 350/25 slab has an SC 350/30 back
Baker: An SC 460/42 slab has an SC 460/42OP back
Baker: An SC 350/30 slab has an SC 350/25 back
Baker: An SC 350/25 slab has an SC 460/25 back (PSA DNA card)