Quote:
Originally Posted by Tao_Moko
I agree that pops hold value for estimating, but they are highly inaccurate. I have an 880 count box slammed full of slips and many very scarce ones at that. For cards that are plentiful, pops work. For true scarcities, not so much.
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This. It's pretty good for estimating relative populations, especially in more available cards where the sample size lends itself to a better proportional accuracy, to say X is more difficult than Y. When people use POP to say "there are only 3 known!" of a card they have because there are 3 in the pop report, I find that ridiculous; it is almost never true. Competitive people are driven to grading, and more likely to talk about their scarcities in forums, there are usually many more 'in the active hobby' not represented here. The extant population is almost always much higher than the POP report, there are many collections with a significant amount of tough material that simply won't hit the POP's until their owners die, if then.
There are a number of cards that most of the graded population is actually sitting in one of my shoe boxes cracked out. Crack outs, regrades and crossovers heighten the inaccuracy.