What if grading pop reports didn’t exist? In this hypothetical world, cards would still be graded but the consumer wouldn’t know the population of each grade.
How would prices shift?
Would certain cards become more/less desirable?
How have pop reports skewed collectors’ opinions?
CGC pop report didn’t exist for quite a while. I don’t recall CGC prices moving much after the report came out. But maybe that’s because people had some idea of populations via PSA pop reports.
I think in general, collectors have a pretty good idea of how rare a card is without even looking at pop reports. Or as with the case of modern, they simply don’t care for them lol.
I always thought and do believe demand is the driving force behind the price of cards. Maybe since I don’t collect graded cards, when I am trying to buy a card, I never look at pop reports. I only look at the raw prices and if I can pay for the offer at hand. Even if the Pop report is really low, it won’t matter if no one is willing to buy the card. For exclusive promos, I think people will buy it irrespective of the pop (eg. Japanese stamp promos).
Maybe the black label prices will be affected a bit, otherwise I think with the lack of a pop report, people will buy what they like, with the better grade fetching a better price.
Cheers!
I’m thinking if pop report is missing, the high-end cards will drop a bit.
Price gap between grade 9 and 10 will be smaller.
All speculation all the time. Massive swings when something that hasn’t been on the market in a while goes up for sale, followed by half a dozen copy cats listing theirs after the sale
Many many collectors with an interest in graded cards don’t pay any attention to pop reports at all.
I never in my life looked at population reports until I wanted to see if CGC had ever graded Perfect 10s for some of my favorite cards. That’s 10+ years of collecting where I never once looked at the pop report for any of the graded cards I bought.
I think the population report is one of those upper tier things devoted collectors monitor and check but it’s not even on an ordinary collector’s radar. Whether or not you want a card in a certain grade isn’t really relevant to how many exist - only whether or not one is for sale.
No more “pop 1” crap, paradise.
Replaced by pop 1? Lol.
I use the pop report as another way to determine which vintage items may be a better long term hold (1st Ed jungle/fossil vs. Shadowless for example). I think without it you’d still be able to decipher what is more available and what’s more scarce based on listings and sealed product available. So for me it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
You mean poop 1?
Wishful thinking, instead it would be every post is pop 1 and unverifiable 
Prices of “low pop” are gone because people dont actually care about the card -
High end High grade is easier to manipulate
Not a fan of pop report but I find it fundamental in being an established market
Good example is the video game market over the past 5 years and all the funny business
Without pop reports, would cards like Typhlosion T17 still command high premiums in PSA 10? (Forgive me if T17 actually isn’t a super hard PSA 10–this is what I think I remember reading) Would this knowledge somehow come to be known anyway, or would it just be lost without the aggregate of the collective experience.
I was at a community trade night recently.
Tons of children running around with their parents and playing makeshift Pokemon card gambling games. Lots of young and middle-aged men holding slab briefcases (a bit cringe in my opinion), scrolling vigorously through eBay sold auctions to quote prices to each other. Every 30-45 minutes another kid would yell, “LET’S GOOOOOOOO!!!” because they pulled a big card.
I asked someone what he liked to collect to start up conversation, and he stated:
I only collect cards with low pop reports.
He was holding a BGS 10 Pristine Moonbreon and was telling me how much rarer it was compared to the PSA 10 because the pop report was so low. He then showed me a few modern Japanese Black Labels, and quoted the PSA 10 multiplier that they should achieve because of their pop report.
I asked him why he only liked to collect cards with low pop reports, and he said:
I like to collect cards that other people can’t own.
And at that moment, I politely excused myself from the conversation and moved on with my evening. 
That sentiment left a sour taste in my mouth the whole night. There are so many collectors solely in the hobby to: 1) make money, and 2) flex their wealth (or perceived wealth). They don’t necessarily care about the art or the history/story; they care about clout-chasing and achieving a higher social status with their shiny Pokemon cards. I try to stay away from that crowd in person and online, but recently it’s felt more suffocating than ever.
Maybe it’s fueled by BGS Black Labels going to the moon. Maybe it’s the Reddit and Instagram “crowd” with the loudest, most vocal, opinions. Maybe they know something that I don’t know. Or maybe the hobby is still quite young and needs some maturing.
Whatever it is, I hope it changes.
We would have happen to us like we saw in the Wata sealed videogames. Certain cards would be going for like triple what they are and even the 2020 bubble prices wouldn’t compare to it. Ultra modern 10s like moonbreon would be around 3-4K for a psa 10, first Ed charizard would be selling at half a million it would be disgusting.
I thought about wata too, but I believe they were doing some other big shenanigans. I don’t think that simply hiding pop reports caused that, there were fake auctions, shill bidding, self grading games ( huge conflict of interest), and so on.
I feel like if no pop reports same players would have done that in Pokémon. Goldin and heritage would be doing shady stuff. Sorts cards investor the king of shill bidding would have gone way up. I don’t think there would have been self grading but I definitely see way more chaotic things going on. Even cards like Pokémon go charizard in 10 which is a 80-90 card would be like 500 bucks. One thing I’ve learned In my 25 years of collecting. I have about 4 years in Pokémon and videogames but my grandpa got me in sports cards and coins at the age of 5 the same players who did crazy market manipulation back then would be doing things in these hobbies today. Any market they will try to make a quick buck. It’s why pop reports are so important.
Dyl I think I love you and this post
Did he mention when he started collecting? jw
