Late Night Pointless Topsun Population Speculations

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Hello its late at night I’m all alone in my mother’s basement on my $4000 gaming setup and I was comparing these 1997 Topsun releases; which seem to lead to interesting speculation. Graded population is full of various potential contributing factors including consistency of the grading company itself which is one of the more subjective kind of factors; and consistency itself varies from time to time based on many factors relating to the work environment of the company (some could argue for instance PSA was more consistent at one point in time and less consistent say when they hired a bunch of new people and had to train them and were overloaded with a giant backlog)

But putting all the grading company factors aside, is print run quality (whether it be card stock, ink, production management, etc.) the primary factor here in difference in PSA 10 ratio? Or is it because the no numbers were released first and therefore weren’t as likely to be cared for? Like for instance how much of first edition base Pokemon was immediately trash condition because people weren’t thinking of it as a hot commodity that everyone wants; but then once it became a social trend people began to think about keeping them in better condition? Or is the answer more just a numbers game of because there is so much more abundance of supply out there of numbered Charizards that more potential 10s are found and actually graded; so it’s conditional rarity leading to more discriminatory submissions vs absolute rarity leading to less discriminatory submissions, dictating the lower 10 ratio because there just aren’t many gem mint copies because there aren’t many copies total (at least in comparison to numbered). Or is PFM gonna hit me with that hard facts about unreliability of smaller sample sizes?

No Number: 2/75 = 2.67% PSA 10
Blue Back: 24/252 = 9.52% PSA 10
Green Back: 47/225 = 20.89% PSA 10

Green back being more than double the ratio of 10s as blue back I feel like either has to be print quality (maybe centering even?) or maybe I’m underestimating how much better condition people keep their cards as time goes on? Like maybe more green back product went unopened for a longer time leading to more 10s from freshly opened packs people opened even up until more recent years?

Perhaps no one can truly answer these questions, and there is only speculation. But I wanted to post this to find out what other efour members might think about something like this (even if you think its crapsun)

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Best post intro ever.

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Sample size is indeed important. There’s a reason the best schools (and the worst schools) are small - because the more samples you draw, the less variability between the observed mean and the underlying true mean.

In other words, a smaller school is more likely - by random chance alone - to be an outlier. The more kids at the school, the closer to “average” it will be.

In the same sense, you should consider how the difference in sample size could be misleading. Clearly you’re aware of this because I was called out directly.

Fortunately in this case, the sample sizes arent too small and the difference is quite large so at the very least you can probably rule out “random chance” as a likely explanation for the difference

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I feel like a boomer with the size 18 font double space

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