"Pop" irritates me.....just a small rant....

[Leon]

Does anyone else get just a little annoyed whenever they hear the word "pop", regarding population? (and I realize this has to do with graded blah blah blah) Who the heck really knows what is out there? Quite some time ago, when I was selling my 19th century stuff, a friend/dealer asked me the "pop" of one of the super rare ones. He asked "what is the pop on it?" I said I think it is "there goes the weasel".

There were 2 known of that card.

[E93]

Originally Posted by Leon

There were 2 known of that card.

That is probably what he wanted to know.
JimB

[Leon]

Originally Posted by E93

That is probably what he wanted to know.
JimB

Yes Jim...and there is a Santa Claus.

btw, Jim....I did let him know about the "real" known population as well as what I thought about the word "pop".

[barrysloate]

It bothers me too, for any number of reasons. First, what we have is a hobby, something that should be enjoyed in one's leisure time. When I hear pop report, it makes that pleasure of collecting feel a little too much like Wall Street. Most collectors want to know the pop report to determine rarity and value. That sounds a little too investment oriented for me.

Second, I don't believe pop reports are accurate, and I think the information they provide is greatly manipulated. So many cards are resubmitted, information from one grading service does not translate to that of another (collectors will call a PSA card a "pop 1" when SGC might have graded two others at the same level), and it's human nature to fudge the truth, so I feel at times these population numbers are not even close to what's actually out there.

I know the registry collectors live and die by pop numbers, but the average collector doesn't care about them at all.

[HRBAKER]

It's a big tent, some folks are more numeral collecting oriented I guess. To me the whole notion that the pop report for most cards is reliable is flawed.

[barrysloate]

What annoys me the most about it is a seller's deliberate omission of cards graded at the same or higher level by other grading companies. I believe we had this discussion a few months back (or my memory is off), but a 1914 Cracker Jack set was being auctioned as the #1 set graded by PSA. That's great, and I'm sure it was a beautiful set. But shouldn't prospective bidders be told that the finest 1914 CJ set by far was graded by SGC, and that the winner will not own the finest set but the second finest one? Information like that is often conveniently left out of auction descriptions.

[Robextend]

Any pop report statement should be taken with a grain of salt keeping in mind that the system is extremely flawed

[tedzan]

Leon

That is great....your sense of humor never ceases to amaze me.

From my perspective....this hobby does not live by Graded cards alone.

The "population report" (PR) system is "over-graded" (pun intended). There are many ungraded (high grade) cards out there that,
if their owners decided to get them graded, would shake up this PR system.

Not to mention the constant crossing-over of graded cards that skew the PR numbers.


T-Rex TED