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.