I just think its questionable that they can get an AI grading cards with QR codes for a stored database that you can’t access…but they can’t publish a basic list. Its been over a year since they started grading, and the card grading back end was probably in the works for at least 6 months…so I figure 2 years. That is past due date in my books and I question whether this is by design.
I can only speculate why they haven’t released the pop report or registry yet, but I doubt it’s for some sinister purpose of manipulating the markets. The CGC pop report will be magnitudes smaller than the PSA pop report. An estimation of how many graded x-condition cards are out there can easily be obtained by looking at the PSA pop reports.
I agree if you’re talking about 1st ed woct 8s,9s,10s but I’m pretty sure the millions of cards being sent are unlimited base 7s and modern. The unimaginable volume of cards being graded at the moment are modern charizards and I think they are all going to cgc…and that’s what people new to the hobby are buying in droves. Cgc modern and unlimited…but yeah, that’s just what I think anyway.
Again, thanks for the reply. Appreciate you balancing my opinions on this.
Very good points. I do think that there are plenty of low pop psa cards that aren’t rare though, and people have capitalised on that (base charmander). But yes, you do raise a good points. Thank you
1st ed jungle eevee PSA 10 was a prime example. Low pop for YEARS because it wasn’t worth grading. Then all of a sudden one sells for like $300+ and people go crazy. Now there’s currently 561 PSA 10s and I imagine quite a bit more that will be filtering out of the backlog. In the last 5 weeks the PSA 10 Population of 1st ed Jungle Eevees has grown by 63 (12.63%).
Low pop MAY mean something is rare/scarce, or nobody has cared about grading it until now.
This is my favorite when you see a listing for “LOW POP card” for some common / non-holo from some random set. It’s low pop not because it’s rare… it’s low pop because it’s worthless lmao
are you telling me that me the pop 2 ex sandstorm non holo anorith is only pop 2 because nobody cares about it and not because it is omega rare and valuable? I’m calling BS
The lack of pop report is definitely overblown. People aren’t buying charizard because of the pop. Its obvious what is difficult to acquire in every market. Feel free to search sealed mario 64 right now, to save you time, there are 0 available. Pop information isn’t an indicator of current supply.
I think the pop mainly matters for people making claims about owning the copy of a certain grade. Or if you want to get an impression on how difficult something is to grade. However, the data requires interpretation. I’d argue the interpretation of the data is more valuable than the literal data. For example, according to the pop, charizard is 9x more common than all other 1st ed base cards. Or that modern energy cards are pop 0, thus much rarer than charizord.
If you can’t answer, “where is the cheaper option”, the pop report is irrelevant. Either way, you can just call Wata and they can tell you.
Pop information is an indicator of potential future supply*.* Is the single listed mario 64 WATA 9.8 the ONLY existing copy? Is it 1/10, 1/100? The larger the supply, the larger potential a copy will become available.
The WATA spider-man is an example where this happened. A copy sold for $9k. Would it have sold that high if the bidders knew another 50 copies were sitting and ready to hit the market at any moment? Maybe. Heck maybe they all called WATA and checked on the pop beforehand.
I’m not sure why we keep trying to compare charizards to energy cards. Scott, you made an entire video on Popularity vs. Rarity. There’s a reason no one is knocking on Dacks door for his box of sealed “biggest loser” nintendo DS games, and if he graded a single copy at WATA 9.8 I doubt it’s going for $1.5MM
“The value of your ford focus is irrelevant to a tesla. They’re just not the same thing. If you want more data for this, go look at the pop report for 1st edition base”
I’m not sure what you mean with my quote. The Mario 64 9.8 is the Tesla in this case.
I’m not denying the pop has relevancy, I’m saying the point is overblown. Especially when the examples used for the argument are the top items. As mentioned with the SM64, there are 0 sealed copies available.
I was relating the quote to the graded charizard pop vs graded energy pop comment, with charizard being the tesla.
The spirit of my original comment in this thread was that graded video games, without transparency into the potential supply of the graded copies, is highly speculative. Pop reports provide context into the rarity of an item, that has to be paired with additional information, like the fact that there may not be any available raw copies to grade (in the case of Mario 64), and demand is high (e.g. it’s a tesla).
I would continue to hypothesize that someone bidding on an item in which they are unsure of how many exist, will bid differently then someone having the context of a pop report. As for overblown, I have no idea the scale at which speculation is impacted, but the point of it not really impacting the creme de la creme is likely spot on.
Just further to this, does anyone actually know what a CGC perfect 10 goes for when compared to a PSA 10? I’d say that this would be the area open to manipulation and deception. Transparency, i’ve only been in the game for a few years, but based on the content I’ve seen, CGC is more difficult to get a perfect 10 or even a 10 for that matter. That would be the area I would manipulate, perfect with no pop report.
Just to be clear, im not saying it IS happening. I’m saying there is room for it to be directly manipulated by CGC, and with PWCC/ebay and now this stuff on WATA…I don’t think its insignificant.
But I am new…so I guess this could just be how things are… trimmed cards n all.
I’ve tried this in the past and again today when I saw your post but was told - again - that they where not setup to disclose such information.
How did you succeed with getting an answer?
Yes they are definitely trained not to provide it under any circumstances. I’ve tried 2 or 3 different ways to get the pop report from them for a game I have, with no luck.
