I think we can probably count on one hand the amount of customers refusing to use someone’s service because it lacks a pop report. This is a business making business decisions. A pop report isn’t going to impact their revenue.
2nd hand market is where pop reports come into play, whether it’s investors, speculators, collectors w/e. Knowing something is “LOW POP!?” doesn’t drive business to the grading company.
I know this is a WATA thread but clearly the topic has shifted to CGC’s pop report. As someone with a master’s degree in computer science and has built large databases before, there is no excuse for CGC. You can look up a cert and pull information up on a card so we know the data is stored and available for querying. The hard work of building each setlist and all the cards in it is already done- you can see that data when you enter cards in a submission.
There no reinventing the wheel here, it’s not a sophisticated task to run a database query and show a table. It doesn’t have to even be polished. You could whip up a little search function for a single card - the same way you add a card to a submission - and just display a little 1-row table of the pop. This is a task that could literally be done in one day.
I don’t buy into the idea that this is a difficult engineering problem. I don’t buy into the idea that CGC is taking all this time to polish this functionality because frankly, nothing on their site is polished. I also don’t buy into the idea that they are purposely hiding a pop report for some reason.
I do think it’s a priority issue, that is they don’t seem to prioritize software engineering at all. The CGC web experience is almost identical to what it was when they opened. It’s such a stark contrast to PSA where they have invested resources into the set registry, apps, auction prices, etc, etc. I understand that the TCG side of CGC is relatively new but the company itself has been around for 21 years. It’s funny how they leaned into being an established company on the grading scene when it helped them in the early days and now to hear how shortcomings are happening because they are a “young company”.
Ultimately, they promised a pop report. Every day there is not a pop report is a choice they make either explicitly or as a consequence of the way they allocate resources. Consumers should be completely entitled to be critical of this if that’s how they feel.
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I haven’t read the whole thread but wanted to chime in on the technical challenges of creating a pop report for any grading company. For context I would say I have first hand knowledge on what’s involved in something like this as I’ve led, managed and consulted on front and back end projects for multiple major banks and financial entities that make any grading company look like a mom and pops corner store in comparison.
While there is a lot of (imo) pointless bureaucracy in corporate environments that make certain things take a long time to get done, in the case of pop reports it would literally be a lack of assigned resource because the company views the job as a low priority. Creating the report itself is the most basic of tasks - something so trivial I would get a fresh out of college junior developer to work on. The data, structure and data connections are all there, the style rules for the site are already in place, it’s literally creating a page to query that data and serve it.
As @pkmnflyingmaster said, the ability to serve pops could easily be completed in a day, if you want to add QA, managerial bureaucracy, code review, deployment scheduling etc lets be generous and say a week. For something like this not to be done it’s been thrown in the not important basket for whatever reason.
If you want to put on your tin foil hats sure, a pop report means people can do advanced analysis on everything that’s ever been graded including grading velocity and average grade allocation, some companies might feel uncomfortable at that level of scrutiny for whatever reason - also it’s not an invalid point because that type of thing is 100% talked about behind closed doors in corporate, because I’ve sat in those meetings, public perception is important why do you think massive PR divisions exist.
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100% agreed. I think the main anger here is that CGC told many of us that a pop report was imminent, a long time ago. I know personally I wouldn’t care if they hadn’t said that. WATA never said anything for 3 years until the Karl Jobst video and others made it very clear that it was a PR issue for them. Same for VGA who has been doing this for a decade+.
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Totally feel you.
I want to clarify that I’m not de facto disposing of 100% of criticism. I was pretty explicit in wanting a pop report, thinking there should be a pop report, etc. I just think that we generally benefit in understanding a more complicated reality by acknowledging all of the factors.
I think we have people commenting here that are incredibly talented at what they do. It’s amazing seeing the awesome work they accomplish in the world. They’re all-stars. And they’re younger than the systems they’re asking to have migrated. Haha.
Old companies have a different pace. And this level of tech and money and whatnot in this industry is extremely new. We have a shortage of tech in the industry that is just now getting the first scratch at the surface. BGS is still running on paper materials. The auction houses almost all have websites that are a decade or more behind the times. Obviously, I can’t talk specifics, but from public information alone you could extrapolate that maybe there is a lot more being built right now than is visible on the surface.
So again. I am not anti-criticism. I have my own peeves list with most of the big companies in the industry. I could name 10 things every single one of them can do better. I like discussion, which is why I’m still here. But I’ve got an opinion, too, and personally, I don’t think it’s as one-sided as people make it out to be.
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“WATA releases first pop report”
I am fairly curious what others think about this opinion. While the lack of a pop report obviously doesn’t completely destroy the value of a service, wouldn’t everyone benefit from having one? If card pop was just a “fun fact” then why would T17 and Neo Slowking be as highly valuable in a 10 as they are? Without a pop report it would just be everyone’s conjecture as to how many 10’s of a particular card there are in a 10 which we hear people saying about these old NES games with Wata until this report was released(still have to wonder about Mario 64 though). If everyone is hesitant as to how many of an item are truly out there in a high grade then that can lead to inflated or deflated value based on everyone having to “guess” quantities that might exist. I would think until CGC has their own pop report, their card values will always be tied to PSA values(probably an obvious statement). If CGC were to have their own pop report I would imagine there is an argument to be made for 9.5 and 10 grade cards to confidently have higher values on average than a PSA 10 and maybe people would lead to more people attempting to cross “strong” PSA 10’s to CGC the way this goes with BGS right now.
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Doesn’t benefit the company in any way, only the consumer, if anything it has the potential to damage the companys public image. Probably part of the reason why there are a lot of unpublished pop reports across companies given how easy they are to create.
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Its not even an opinion that the pop report is a value for the customer, and a potential risk for the company. The company already has access to the data. Its a potential risk releasing it publicly. Customers could calculate the volume submitted compared to competitors. Or the average card types submitted, average value per item submitted, etc. Its only upside for the customer, and potential downside for a company.
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If the pop report includes the ability to create set registries, then I think it will also benefit CGC. It seems to be less of a thing in Pokemon, but MTG collectors are zealous about building the top-rated sets (it’s not uncommon to see people offering humungous premiums for 9.5 quads over basics – upwards of 5000% in the most extreme cases). I think that interest in collecting CGC slabs is hampered by the lack of a registry system (or at least it certainly is in MTG – perhaps it’ll be less of a big deal for Pokemon collectors).
Man I envy people who work in tech companies. “This can be done in a day” is a basically meaningless sentence in bureaucratic organizations.
I will give an example from the organization I work for, which is a relatively large nonprofit, because it’s become something of a running joke to me and my coworkers.
November 1 2019:
Consulting agency recommends we implement “Facebook Birthday Fundraisers”. This would be a social media campaign where people who follow us on Facebook receive a message or notification a few weeks before their birthday, prompting them to create a Birthday Fundraiser on behalf of our nonprofit. The benefits are clear: low cost commitment, can generate revenue, increase Member engagement, bring in new donors, play a cultivation role (acknowledging their birthday). There are a few downsides, mainly that Facebook stores the Fundraiser data instead of us, so we can’t track donations as precisely as we’d like.
November 7 2019:
Internal meeting to further discuss the fundraiser idea.
November 13 2019:
Bring in social media team to discuss.
November 15 2019:
I started drafting potential posts we could use on Facebook.
November 21 2019:
I submit draft copy upstream.
November 25 2019:
I update copy based on internal suggestions and submit to social media team.
DECEMBER 2019: This is the busiest month of the year. All non-urgent priorities get pushed back.
January 15 2020:
Revisit birthday fundraisers in internal meeting.
January 28 2020:
Finalize strategy.
January 29 2020:
Discuss strategy with consultants.
January 31 2020:
Meet with social media team to go over strategy.
February 3 2020:
Official sign-off to launch birthday fundraiser campaign.
February 6 2020:
Part of our strategy involved rewarding people who reached $200 in Facebook donations with a special premium item (think typical nonprofit freebies like a tote bag, mug, hat etc). Begin looking into potential items.
February 10 2020:
Receive sign-off to use tote bags.
February 13 2020:
Internal issues change tote bags to beverage tumbler/portable mug with lid.
February 21 2020:
Finalize design for the beverage tumbler.
February 24 2020:
Design approved.
MARCH 2020:
Too busy to work on this.
March 31 2020:
Begin setting up web landing page FAQ for fundraisers.
Summer 2020:
Deal with readjusting priorities from Covid-19.
September 22 2020:
Update strategy now that storing premium items in office is out of the question since office building is closed.
September 24 2020:
Publish blog post on website about Facebook fundraisers.
September 29 2020:
Reach out to our premium item fullfilment center (the people who will make the tumblers) to request samples.
November 10 2020:
Approve physical samples, launch public landing FAQ page.
November 12 2020:
Issue comes up with legal department.
November 16 2020:
Design team requests we re-code landing page to meet new accesibility guidelines.
DECEMBER 2020:
This is the busiest month of the year. All non-urgent priorities get pushed back.
January 2021:
Issues with privacy and legal complications combined with low revenue expectations stall the project indefinitely.
December 7 2021:
I write this post while drinking water out of my “Happy Birthday from Nonprofit” beverage tumbler, sample edition, 1-of-1, unreleased, ultra rare.
The total time I spent on coding the landing page(s), drafting the posts, theorizing strategy, designing the tumbler, aka “the work” was maybe 16 hours.
The total time I spent in meetings was probably around 20 hours.
Those 16 hours are irrelevant if every little step needs approval from multiple people in multiple departments who have different priorities, none of which are launching Facebook birthday fundraisers, and this isn’t even my own priority to begin with, just a feature I thought we should implement.
I do think CGC should re-prioritize the pop report because I am getting frustrated and because their word carries less weight when they keep pushing this back.
I also think “an engineer could do this in a day” means “I, myself, with no outside restrictions, could code this in a day” and not “I, as part of a large buraucratic company, could do this in a day”.
Yes, a pop report is very simple. You know what else is simple? Sending a post on Facebook to encourage people to create a birthday fundraiser. Yet it took ONE YEAR from “concept” to “having the physical item to reward donors”.
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some of these posts feel sponsored by cgc. if it’s so hard to make a pop report then don’t promise it. saying a business is too big and corporate to do something they promised is a lame excuse
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Oh dang I just realized a pop report would enable me to see all the holo shifts graded. I need it!
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Pat featured in the Karl Jobst videos and here he is reacting to the WATA pop report on his latest podcast.
Him being aghast that there are 237 WATA-graded sealed SMB 3 as if that means it’s worthless… 237. I think there is probably demand for more than 237 sealed and graded SMB3s, guys. He takes issue with “157 Mario Bros sealed” as if that’s obscenely high. A Charizard CD promo has a 5000+ PSA 10 pop and it’s an $800 card. If there are more people who want one of these than there are copies available the price will go up. There are more than 157 people who would like a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros
So you can put this pop report info out but you can’t trust anyone to reach sensible conclusions with it
Are there that many more people than 157 willing to pay high 5 to 6 figures for one though? (The answer could of course be yes)
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Worth noting that of the 157, few will command that kind of price as naturally it depends on condition. They’re much cheaper in lower grades
Fair enough. But even a low grade like 8.5 is still 20k+ at this time. That’s not the casual collector. I’m with you that I don’t believe 157 is a wildly high number for a game that sold 10m copies or whatever and it will be very interesting to see the demand in a few years but I also don’t think it’s a particularly low number either. Should be interesting
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Yeah, agreed. I’m not trying to justify any sale price or rationalise any specific value, just to be clear. I’m certainly not the one buying these things. Just pointing out, as you say, 157 sealed graded copies of probably the most iconic home console game of all time (which is also 36 years old, and is easily damaged) is not going to stretch for demand, so no price surprises me in the upper grades, either.
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I can entertain many arguments against video games as a collectible. But there are two common arguments I often see repeated and just cannot understand.
The first is how the nature of playing video games make them invalid to be a collectible. For the majority of collectible hobbies that exist - including pokemon - people ignore the intended purpose of an object and instead just value the piece as an artifact. “Video games are meant to be opened and played, not put in a plastic container” is the exact same logic as going to a museum and telling them that “dinosaur bones are meant to be inside tissue and support large animals, not to be put on display”. Pokemon cards are made to play the TCG, stamps are made for sending mail, baseballs are made for throwing, etc, etc. It just comes off as purposeful ignorance to be unable grasp the concept that you can tie the experience of playing the game to the physical copy of the box in the exact same way you can tie the experience of listening to music to a vinyl album. And if you don’t see a physical copy of a video game in that way, that’s fine. But why try and stop other people who do, or pretend like they can’t??
The second thing is the criticism that small details such as shrink wrap make things way more valuable. How can you participate in a forum where a significant portion of all discussion is the difference between 0.5 of a subgrade or a 0.25mm corner whitening and how that changes value? Is it really that hard to grasp that the more pristine the item is, the more desirable it is to collectors? I think it’s fine to be critical of whether there is a meaningful difference between certain grades. Regardless, the pseudo-objectivity of grading creates a common scale to say one copy is better than another. And naturally, the people with the most money compete for the best copies.
On a side note it’s also great when people who don’t collect video games say the market is inflated and without failure point to one Super Mario 64 sale. It’s the equivalent of pointing to a PSA 10 1st ed charizord selling for $X00,00 and saying the entire Pokemon market is inflated and a scam. 99.99% of graded games that sell are not million dollar mario games; to interpolate the single largest outlier sale to an entire market just shows how little you know what you’re talking about.