Question about Population reports?

felix76

If as many people as I've heard talk about cracking and resubmitting actually do it, can the population reports be completely correct?

I just heard some guys at the card shop today talking about cracking and resubmitting. They were telling their stories about which cards gave them the hardest problems and whatnot. General B.S.

Does anyone have an idea about how far off population reports are off?

If a person is unhappy with a card and has it re-graded 3 times, that should lead to 4 cards in the pop report, but only one true one in existence, Correct?

Vargha

Correct.

wolfbear

Incorrect, because everyone religiously sends the labels from the old slabs back to PSA,
and likewise PSA religiously deletes them from the population reports.

Anyway, that's how it's supposed to work ...

Vargha

There's been some backsliders.

felix76

So, hypothetically speaking of course, a card with a low pop of 50, could be even lower.
How do you know what to bid on aggressively and what is in high population?

scottsusor

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) there's no way to really know what the correct numbers are for any given card. The pop reports show only the total PSA has graded in each respective grade for each respective card. Its probably a pretty low percentage that get cracked and resubmitted -- I'd guess less than 10% so just use the old statistical 10% variance and you'll at least be close. But overall, you can rely on the fact that there are fewer PSA graded cards in the world than what shows on the pop reports because so many of the cracks/resubmits are represented 2, 3, or more times on the reports.

Scott