Video: Testing Explanations for the Low PSA 10 Pop of the 1980 Henderson Rookie
 

I'm a relatively infrequent poster here, but I wanted to share this research I've been doing on the 1980 Topps Henderson rookie card. I have been struck that PSA has only given out 24 Gem Mint 10 grades out of almost 21,000 cards submitted. That seemed very unusual, so I set out to test (as scientifically as possible) the explanations that collectors are frequently given.

It's a long video with a lot of analytical data, but I felt it was justified given the stature of this card in our Hobby.

https://youtu.be/6wTMS1dmddc

I hope you enjoy it.

Great video. I agree nothing about the % of 10's make sense.

Some of your points are lacking a little bit of basic understanding. Comparing a HOF rookie card's percentage of qualifiers to the nickel commons in the same set with qualifiers is a fool's errand. No one submits off-centered 1980 Topps commons to any grading company. However, a bunch of people submit off-centered Henderson rookies in the off-chance they get PSA 8s and have some value graded.
Same for print defects. People will send in valuable cards with print defects, but not commons. You seem to hand-wave at that, but these cards are not needed to make your point.

Using the '52 Mantle in your comparisons is also a bad selection. Unopened packs of 1980 Topps are still very common, while there is no true access to unopened 1952 Topps High Numbers anymore. So IMO there is no utility to the 9s vs. 10s ratio between these two cards. Jeter is a much better example.

I would agree with your premise that many of the 9s could/should be 10s, and that PSA is likely to be keeping them close hold like Bitcoins being mined at a slow rate to increase their after-market value.

BTW, did you happen to see that many of the PSA 10 Henderson's have been removed (temporarily?) from the Pop Report?
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...derson&page=44

I purchased hundreds of packs back in 1980 to try to complete this set. I then purchased 4 vending boxes from a vendor in the sporting news and still was 2 cards short of a complete set.

Anyway, i ended up with 12 Rickey Henderson rookie cards. Every one was off-centered. Ending up selling them at auction in the spring of 1992 at the Strongville Ohio show for something like 35 dollars.

That is weird. I have pulled at least 4 myself, and every one had great centering.
Do you think there is something to that?
Like are there perhaps "versions" of the card?

I don't think there are different versions of the Henderson rookie. I'm sure with any 1980 card you are going to have a fair number OC and a good number that are centered. What I focused on in the video is what happens when a collector submits a card to PSA that they think should be either a 9 or 10 (and PSA agrees). What happens then? The answer is that 81x more often PSA is giving that card a 9. That's what I find so strange and what seems counter to the way other vintage cards are graded. From what I've seen on a number of cards, when a card has a low number of 10's, we see a low number of 9's too.