Posted By:
Jim CrandellI thought it would be interesting to take a pre-war set and look at the population totals by grade. I arbitrarily picked 1934 Goudey as it is one I collect.
PSA
Total population 9368
PSA 10s 13(.14%)
PSA 9s 126(1.35%)
PSA 8s 1227(13.1%)
PSA 7s 1566 (16.7%)
Percentage PSA 7 or better 31.3%
SGC
Total Population 1288
SGC 10(incl 98 and 100) 2(.15%)
SGC 9 13(1.0%)
SGC 8(incl 88 and 92) 59(4.6%)
SGC 7(incl 84 and 86) 119(9.2%)
Percentage SGC 7 or better 15.0%
Conclusions: While it may be true that PSA gets a higher percentage of high end cards and that cards submitted to SGC are more by "true collectors", I think that given that PSA has graded twice as much 7 or higher is indicative of more lenient grading overall.
While the two highest value cards and the highest pops in each set are the Gehrigs(although one may be able to make an argument for the Foxx on price), it is likely that in high grade that the next highest values are the low pop commons. PSA has two pop 6 commons in 8 or better(#4 English and #24 Berge). Given the number of collectors trying to put this set together in psa 8 or better, I would value these at least at $6,000 as there was a pop 8 common which went for $5,500 and the Frederick(pop 7) recently went for $4,250. By means of comparison, the higher pop commons would go for close to smr in 8($450-$750--there are pops in 8 of 20 or more).
One other aside--for the two pop 6s SGC also has these as two of their lower pop cards with no SGC 8s or better.
Thus, my conclusion from this is what is lower pop today will likely be lower pop years from now and given the growing numbers of collectors trying to put this set together in 8 or better, values will grow.
Cmoking and Mike Murray who know the set extremely well as well as others will no doubt have more to add here.
Jim