Here's a weird one: 1969 Topps #88 Rich Nye PSA Pop Report
 

So I had a blazer of a card that I just sent in to PSA and was pleased when it got a PSA 9 Mint. However, for some reason, this card has 52 PSA 10 copies, along with 214 PSA 9s out of 537 graded. So half of all copies of this card passing through PSA are Mint or Gem Mint. There are also three times the number of this card graded than most commons.
Compare that to the 1969 Topps Reggie Jackson RC with 5,800 copies graded and only a single PSA 10.

Is there a Rich Nye 1969 Topps supercollector out there hoarding PSA 9s and 10s of this card? Is it Rich Nye himself? Why so many graded? Triple printed? Why are they all in pristine condition?

You caught me. I've been secretly printing stacks of 1969 Rich Nye cards for years hoping against hope that his popularity would increase and I'd get freaking rich. I guess that ship has sailed.

I remember being in a card shop back in the early '80s going through the dealer's inventory of 1966 Topps. I got to card #394 Ron Brand, and to my dismay, there were somewhere around 50 copies of Ron that were completely mint. No other card in his inventory was as nice, and all 50+ cards were identical. I should have grabbed the whole batch, but those were different times, and I simply picked out one of them and paid my 25 cents (or so).

A long answer that converts to "I dunno. It's baffling."

I bet Bob thought this post out over a bowl of Rice Krispies this morning.

Maybe there's someone out there with a really high end 10 that keeps resubmitting hoping for an 11 thus skewing the population report

I got a bunch of '69s from my cousin many years ago. Probably about 500 cards. I think there were about 9 Rich Nye's in there. Also centered pretty well and in good condition.

Given the fact he became an exotic avian specialist after baseball despite graduating initially with an engineering degree makes this all very suspicious.

Best we check Ron Brand as well.

Edited---adding to the mystery, Brand was a catcher who later played 22 games at shortstop. I think there is more to this card oddity than appears at first glance

In seeing that this Nye card appears in a column/row that was not near an edge, it is not surprising at all there are so many high end copies of this card. The Lou Brock card is tough to find in higher grades (only 6 9s, 0 10s) and it is located on the upper left corner. What is strange is that the card right below the Nye card on this sheet is the Boog Powell card, a card that I have always considered tough and has a much lower pop ( x94 9s/ x4 10s) than the Nye card. There are some other tough low-pop cards from this column also, IE Joe Niekro on top edge.

Also, the cards that are in the same row as the Nye card I have stacks of as compared to cards in other rows such as the top row. The Lonborg row is repeated twice on this sheet with different rows above it each time, but the same row below it. I suspect that the two rows (including the Nye row) below the Krausse row are also DPs base on the large quantities of those cards that I have, however, they are just not repeated on this sheet as the Lonborg and Krausse rows are.

I'm a conspiracy theorist at heart, so I think PSA takes into account who's on the card (superstar/common), and who submitted the card for grading (auction house/regular guy), and hands out the grade accordingly. If you have a superstar, but you're a regular guy you can't get higher than a PSA 8. If you are an auction house, you automatically get a 1 to 2 point bump from whatever the regular guy would have gotten for the same card. The only way for a regular guy to get a PSA 10 is to submit a 1969 Rich Nye. ;)

David--- see the 59 thread here. Don is not normal. He is weird just like the rest of us collectors here, but he is pretty much a "regular" guy with an eye for 9s and 10s :)

As a kid I can remember pulling tons of Rich Nye's from 1st Series packs. Sometimes 2 in one nickel pack.
RayB

At least part of it has to be that there is no reason to send in a Rich Nye for grading unless you expect a very high grade.