I hope this post will be helpful to any and all collectors, but T206 collectors in particular definitely need to know this stuff. When you are dealing with some of the more scarce T206 backs, it can be very helpful to take a look at the Pop Reports.
The term “Pop Report” is short for “Population Report” and population just means all of the cards that PSA has graded. It’s a powerful tool which can help you understand the relative scarcity of a given card.
It is important to note that the PSA Pop Report only shows the cards that have been graded by PSA. It doesn’t show cards graded by SGC, BVG, or any other company and it doesn’t show ungraded cards. So, for one individual front/back combo, the Pop Report certainly does not tell you the whole story. But when you look at a lot of different cards and compare the data, you are going to have a very good idea about relative scarcity of your sample.
I think the best to way to show you how to use the report is with an example. I recently picked up this T206 PSA 3 Ossie Schreck with Cycle 350 back. Pretty sweet huh? Now, I want to know how many Schreck Cycle 350s have been graded and what is the highest graded copy.
The first step is to go to the PSA home page at psacard.com. The page looks like this. Follow the red arrow above and click on POP REPORT.
Now click on “item search”. That will take you to this page:
Enter “T206 Schreck Cycle” into Search terms and hit enter. You’ll get the page below:
To the right of each description is the “Show Pop” link. Click on that link for both of the Cycle Schreck listings:
The first listing shows every copy of Schreck with a Cycle back that has been graded. The second listing shows the ones that have been graded recently, since they began writing the series number on the PSA label. As you can see, there is only one card in the Cycle 350 list, and it is this card. This means that there are five copies of Schreck Cycle out there in PSA holders that simply say “T206 Schreck Cycle” and this one that says “T206 Schreck Cycle 350”. So, PSA has graded 6 Schreck Cycle 350s and the highest graded are a couple of PSA 4s.
Once you are on this page, you can delete “Schreck Cycle” and type in another player’s last name and back. Your new search results will instantly load without you needing to hit enter. This is a pretty slick feature that makes doing research quick and easy.
Now that you know how to use the PSA Pop Report, you can play around with it a little to start to understand relative scarcity. Returning to the Schreck example, 6 is a pretty small number, but it doesn’t really tell you much until you understand what that number means in terms of relative scarcity. Are other Cycle 350s tougher to find, or easier to find? Take a look at the other backs that you know are more common and see how many have been graded, and do the same for the very scarce backs.
It will take a little while, but using the Pop Report will give you a good sense for which backs are toughest to find and which individual front/back combos are scarce or more common within a series.