Population & Cross-over

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Posted By: Dan Kravitz

I recently sent in most of my PSA, GAI, and BVG cards to SGC. Why? Because I think SGC is the most consistent company and I display my cards so it looks uniform (daddy like SGC). I was apprehensive to cross-over some of my cards because they are considered very very difficult, and I did not want to inflate the population of these cards for obvious reasons. Since a card will typically sell for more money at auction, I would imagine that eventually most cards will be slabed (unfortunately we can't take them with us when we die). My question is what percentage of cards is authenticated by a 3rd party? How many authentication companies are there? Has anyone on the board ever cracked out a card just to bring it back to its raw form? Should 3rd parties remove cards from their pop reports when a card has been crossed-over? What happens to the empty cases that the graded cards were originally in? If all cards were graded and able to be tracked, would the price of vintage cards skyrocket because we have an accurate accounting of them? Should we even have pop reports? It seems that they are highly susceptible to inflated or inaccurate accounting. Because of cross-over grading and the ability to crack out a card with no documentation, we will never have an accurate account of the population of most cards. That's OK, but I think the recent run up in prices has more to do with people believing the card is more rare than it is, rather than the idea that collectors are holding on to these cards so there are fewer floating around. I think not knowing the actual pop of a card is part of the mystic and adds to excitement of collecting vintage cards.

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

They have been flawed from the first days of their use because of rampant resubmittals of tweeners. I bought a really nice PSA 7 1954 Aaron several years ago. It was a PSA 7 after three submittals and returns from PSA because the dealer thought it had a chance at an 8. The pop of PSA 7 Aarons is at least 2 over reality. This is a common practice and pattern and it has only worsened since cross-overs started. I've crossed cards from PSA to SGC for the 1/2 grade bump and have even seen them crossed back!

There is no way to know what % of cards are actually slabbed but it is a virtual certainty that the pop reports dramatically overstate the number of cards that have been slabbed.