Interesting conversation here and I figured I'd throw in my 2 cents. A couple thoughts:
1. I have often read the sentiment that essentially boils down to, "Pop reports aren't perfect (because of cards not submitted or cards submitted multiple times) and therefore they are useless."
In my opinion this is the wrong way to look at it. Yes the Pop Reports can never be perfect, but that doesn't mean they can't be useful. If you think about it, its actually very common to use a tool that is imperfect, but can still help you get the job done.
Earlier today I needed to fix something that has 8 phillips head screws. I couldn't find a Phillips head screwdriver, but I did find a pocket knife with a Phillips head attachment. Not ideal for the job because it's very small and requires a lot of additional turning. I had the choice of not doing the project until I had a Phillips head screwdriver, or using the pocket knife. I still don't know what happened to the two phillips head screwdrivers we have, but the job is done.
My car is not that comfortable and doesn't get great gas mileage. But I have driven it on long drives, because that's the tool I had at my disposal, imperfect though it may be.
People also say that the Pop Reports are flawed because you don't know what is out there ungraded. This is true of course, but there is now so much data in the Pop Reports that you can start to estimate what else is out there. There are for sure tons of Old Mills out there ungraded, and if they all were sent to PSA tomorrow, Devlin and Ames would maintain their relative scarcity. Maybe another one or two of each player would show up in the Pop Reports, but that would likely be true for all the rarest Old Mills, and the more common 150-350 Series OMs like Delehanty and Bergen would have another 8, 10, maybe even 20 added to the Reports.
In other words, the idea that "the Pop Reports are imperfect, so maybe there are another 8 Devlin Old Mills out there" is very, very statistically unlikely to be true.
2. Secondly, it really isn't a debate solely between old school experience based collecting and collecting using Pop Reports. I've been collecting Old Mills for about 8 years now and I rely on my memory and my records just as much if not more so than the Pop Reports. The Pop Reports also aren't the only tool out there. cardtarget, VCP and good old fashioned Google are also very useful.
A little story to illustrate my point. I recently added this BL350 Huggins to my collection. According to the Pop Reports, there are 8 of these graded. That's quite a few for a BL350, so I looked into it. After I had finished my research, I knew that in fact only 4 or 5 have been graded, because my copy had been in multiple holders over the years (see attached scans).
I don't know who won the Ames and Devlin (I have a few guesses) but I imagine whoever it was is someone who has been around a little while, looking for these cards for awhile, and was basing their bids around both their experience and the available data. I don't think there are many (if any) brand new T206 collectors throwing around big money on rare combos and using only the Pop Reports to come up with their valuation for the card.
When you see really big numbers for tough combos, the experience of a collector who has been surveying the market for years, and the Pop Reports almost always tell the same story.
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