PSA & SGC combined T206 pop numbers as of 12/22/23

[Pat R]

I have done the pop numbers in the past for several things like different backs and certain players but I never did a combined PSA & SGC pop on the 524 card set before and I must say it was enlightening,

There are many T206 collectors that say the pop reports are inaccurate. Well yeah there is quite a bit of inaccuracy with some of the rare backs and certain subjects because of crossovers and resubmissions etc... but as a whole I have always felt that they are a great resource and also pretty accurate in general.

I think most advanced T206 collectors would agree that these total combined pop numbers seem to reflect their accuracy.

There are some things that stood out to me and I will point a few of them out at the end of this post.

I assigned a color to each print group and also put the number of backs that each subject is currently confirmed with. I'm sure I have made some mistakes so feel free to correct me or offer any suggestions.


Some of the colors didn't come out on the printer that great but this is what they are for each print group.

Print group 1 150/350 = white
Print group 2 350 only = green
print group 3 350/460 = blue
print group 4 460 only = yellow
Print group 5 super prints = red/orange (it's orange on my excel sheet)
Print group 6 Southern Leaguers = light green/gray (it's gray on my sheet)

Hof's are in red writing

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I have been doing a lot of different types of research on the set for quite a few years now but doing this has pointed me in a slightly different direction on how the printing might have been done on some of these groups.

Monte Cross is an odd subject (along with a few other subjects but Cross stands out the most). He was only printed with 4 backs and like most people I always thought he was pulled or something happened and he was left out for a significant portion of the printing but when you look at his numbers along with some other similar subjects it doesn't seem like he or many of the other limited back subjects were pulled or left out. Cross is a print group 2 subject and despite the fact that he was only printed on 4 backs there are 26 print group 2 subjects with lower total pops than his.

I have said for a long time that it didn't seem like it would have been practical to remove subjects during the printing process and working on this it seems to me like it was more like they were being printed in several different places and how the subjects got moved around in the printing of the different backs that created some of the discrepancies.

I haven't actually taken any time to look at it because I just finished the excel sheet but while I was working on this it seems that a great deal of subjects with fewer backs have significantly higher numbers than some subject from the same print group. My thought is that while the subjects with higher number backs were being printed on some of the less common backs subjects like Cross were still being printed on Piedmont and Sweet Caporal sheets with another group of subjects from that print group. We know for sure that Rossman another subject that was printed on a limited number of backs (5) is found with two different subjects above him McBride and Thomas.

I think that might have been what also took place with the Southern Leaguers and it could be the reason most of the 14 that weren't printed with Hindu backs have higher pops than the 34 that were. We do know from some of the ads that they had originally intended to print all of the Southern Leaguers with Hindu backs.

In general you can see the consistency between the PSA and SGC pop numbers. For the most part SGC pops are around 60% of the PSA numbers
for most subjects with the Hof's being slightly higher.

One subject that stood out to me is the Ever's Cubs on shirt with almost equal numbers for both.

[Ronnie73]

Great research Pat!! Or I should say, thank you for taking the excessive time to do this and share it. I did a similar list around 8 years ago, so I knew exactly how cards 450 to 524 were going to look. Nearly all HOF cards. The totals look to be around triple the amount also. This is the first step needed, to continue with the future steps of the breakdown of the set. Are the different back numbers from the population reports or from your known master checklist? The Rossman is one of a small handful of oddball unknowns. I still need the Tolstoi. I'm going to have to dig out my Sovereign 350, because it might need upgrading. Especially after I saw that I paid $18.18 for it lol. At least my Sweet Caporal 350/25 is a PSA 4.

I'm not sure how you captured the sections of the spreadsheet, but if you are on a Windows system, I use the snipping tool, which does a nice clear job with bright colors.

[ahmanfan]

Great job!


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[Aquarian Sports Cards]

First - what do you mean Steve Evans isn't the rarest card in the set?

Second (and more seriously) If one assumes a higher percentage of extant Cobbs are graded than of any other "normal" card, it should give you a starting point to extrapolate overall numbers for commons.

OK Cobb might have been saved more often than other players due to his stature but the question becomes what percentage of Cobb cards does the collecting world suspect are graded? I know we have gotten in a few raw ones over the last 5 years (that we of course graded) but there's obviously a decent number of ungraded copies out there.

[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

First - what do you mean Steve Evans isn't the rarest card in the set?

Second (and more seriously) If one assumes a higher percentage of extant Cobbs are graded than of any other "normal" card, it should give you a starting point to extrapolate overall numbers for commons.

OK Cobb might have been saved more often than other players due to his stature but the question becomes what percentage of Cobb cards does the collecting world suspect are graded? I know we have gotten in a few raw ones over the last 5 years (that we of course graded) but there's obviously a decent number of ungraded copies out there.

I agree that certain HOF cards could actually give you an idea of the quantity of the more common cards that were not graded as much. I wouldn't use the Red Cobb though, because it's a Super Print. Maybe use an average of the Cy Young with Glove and the Johnson Hand at Chest. I don't think many collectors would just hold on to a few of the stars and toss the rest. Also, for a few years, I payed attention to a certain group of cards and made sure none were counted twice, and I found that with these certain common cards, on average, 75% were coming up ungraded, with the rest being graded. So, from my past research, multiplying a common graded card total by 4 would give you a close number in existance. Obviously, there are some commons that won't fit that 4x quantity rule.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by Ronnie73

Great research Pat!! Or I should say, thank you for taking the excessive time to do this and share it. I did a similar list around 8 years ago, so I knew exactly how cards 450 to 524 were going to look. Nearly all HOF cards. The totals look to be around triple the amount also. This is the first step needed, to continue with the future steps of the breakdown of the set. Are the different back numbers from the population reports or from your known master checklist? The Rossman is one of a small handful of oddball unknowns. I still need the Tolstoi. I'm going to have to dig out my Sovereign 350, because it might need upgrading. Especially after I saw that I paid $18.18 for it lol. At least my Sweet Caporal 350/25 is a PSA 4.

I'm not sure how you captured the sections of the spreadsheet, but if you are on a Windows system, I use the snipping tool, which does a nice clear job with bright colors.

Thanks Ron. I have done something similar using the PSA pop report going all the way back to 2012 but I never did the print groups and backs or included the SGC pops before.

I lost all of my data when my old computer died so I only have stuff that I printed and saved.

Here are the first 3 pages of the PSA pop numbers from 2012.

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[Kidnapped18]

Great job Pat! Well done. I have put together similar lists in the past with PSA and SGC pops and the least graded players dominated by the SLers are pretty much the same with the exception of a few. I have always thought that Cranston and Violat should command a higher premium based on the low numbers even though I have seen quite a few raw Cranstons for sale.
Same numbers wise with the high graded ones which are dominated by the HOFers.

I am currently working through the PSA SLers pop list and tracking down each cert which is over 14,000 at this point. I am working on Foster for a few more minutes today.

[Kidnapped18]

Here is a sample

[brianp-beme]

Nice Pat...I love this kind of research work. And being the papery fellow that I am, I have already printed out a black ink version (time to replace the color ink cartridges in my printer). It does give me the excuse to instead mark up these copies with print group indications, which should be some between the holiday fun for me, and will probably force me to get a real good feel for the differences in availability between and within the groups.


Brian

[Pat R]

Posting this for someone who asked for the list in alphabetical order.


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[Cory]

For doing this - this is awesome data!

[Pat R]

You're welcome and thank you Cory.

I found one mistake that I made and I'm sure there are more. Baker's total should be in blue because he is a print group 3 subject.

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by Pat R

You're welcome and thank you Cory.

I found one mistake that I made and I'm sure there are more. Baker's total should be in blue because he is a print group 3 subject.

Thanks Pat... thankfully for me it was easy to erase my penciled-in '2' and change it to a '3'. I knew there was an advantage to printing it out with black ink!

Not that important, but I did notice that the Huggins (hands at mouth) entry has his name incorrectly spelled as 'Higgins'.

Brian

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

Thanks Pat... thankfully for me it was easy to erase my penciled-in '2' and change it to a '3'. I knew there was an advantage to printing it out with black ink!

Not that important, but I did notice that the Huggins (hands at mouth) entry has his name incorrectly spelled as 'Higgins'.

Brian

Thanks for pointing that out Brian. I made the corrections on my excel sheet. I will replace the Baker and Huggins sheets on here tomorrow.

I was able to locate one Higgins.

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Made corrections on both lists.

[rebelsart]

Thank you Patrick. Excellent research! A++
Art M.

[Pat R]

Thank you Art and Happy Holidays.

[Pat R]

I did another chart with where I broke them down by print groups and in doing so I discovered another error.
I had the wrong color code on Rudolph He should be Green for print group 2 but I had him in print group 1 white.

Print Group 1 150/350
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Print Group 2 350 only
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Print Group 3 350/460
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Print Group 4 460 only
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Print Group 5 Super Prints
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Print Group 6 Southern Leaguers
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I noticed something interesting while doing this. O'Leary is the only non Hall of Famer from print group 1 that was printed with all 12 of the available backs from print group 1.
The only other subjects that were printed with all 12 backs are Bresnahan (portrait), Griffith (portrait) and Johnson (portrait).

Another interesting fact about those 4 subjects is they are the only portraits on one of the plate scratch sheets and O'leary, Johnson and Bresnahan
are on one end of the sheet together while Griffith is on the other end of that sheet.

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[Pat R]

I want to thank Brian P for checking the lists and pointing out that I had Needham in the wrong print group. I think I've made the correction on all of the lists.
If anyone spots any other errors please let me know and I will make the changes.

[brianp-beme]

Pat posted a link to this thread in another recent thread, but I thought it was worth bringing this thread back to the surface for more eyes to see because of all the great T206 information it contains.

Brian