Stop Ignoring Pop Reports

If you aren’t looking at the pop report regularly, you’re at a disadvantage.

The pop report tells us how many copies of a card have been graded as each grade offered by a respective grading company. In card lingo, “pop X” means there are X number of a card in whichever grade is being referred to.

– Pop 47 means there are 47 of that grade for that card.

– Pop 19,000 means there are 19,000 of that grade for that card.

– Pop 1 means there’s only 1 instance of that grade for that card.

Be aware that the pop report will change over time as more copies of the card are graded, so a pop 1 won’t always stay pop 1.

But referencing the pop report will give us another data point to use when we estimate how much to pay for a card or how much to ask when we sell it.

We often pay more for cards with serial numbers because the numbering tells us how rare they are.

Grading creates another form of rarity, and using the pop report to understand this rarity is an easy [and necessary] way to improve the accuracy of our buying and selling decisions.

As an example, the Nolan Arenado 2013 Topps Update Target Red Border RC PSA 10 pictured is not serial numbered, so it may not seem particularly rare on the surface.

But when you look at the pop report and see that PSA 10s are only pop 28 out of 110 graded, it suddenly becomes clear why PSA 10 Red Borders are often viewed as one of the better cards to chase from the ’13 Update set.