In other words, if you want to do a population report search for that set, you are forced to click on each of the options for the different back ads. That was a problem with the last population report page and, unfortunately, it’s still here.įor example, search for the T207 tobacco card set (Here’s a pretty Buck Weaver rookie card from it, by the way) and you are greeted with not one entry, but several, for the various back advertisements. One of the great annoyances I have with the system is for certain sets with cards that have different back advertisements. But the new SGC method is, if nothing else, still far better than what it was. Autofill would not only make searches faster but would also allow you to see in advance if a particular set is even in the database (at least in the way you’ve typed it in). One thing I would have loved to see is what PSA’s population report does - you start searching for a set and autofill takes care of the rest. SGC keeps all of the sports separate in most of those multi-sport issues and, while they are still separate (blah), they at least all show up on the same search page now as opposed to needing to conduct searches for each sport in a set. It’s also worth pointing out that this really makes searching for multi-sport sets much easier. searching 1980 Topps would bring up for the Topps sets across the different sports). Really, it’s a bigger problem for modern sets (i.e. That won’t be much of an issue for pre-war collectors. Plus, if you want to filter so that you only see results for a particular sport, you can do that. Now, you simply search for a set and all of the sets/sports come up. That was not only a little more time consuming but also downright confusing in the case of earlier multi-sport pre-war sets. To me, that is a big improvement and will save me all sorts of time when accessing the data.īefore, you were required to take an extra step and enter a sport for a set. My favorite part of the new pop reports is that the old quirky search box has been replaced with an easier to use one. That was hardly a major issue for me and I thought the look of the site was fine. But a quick SHIFT+- shortcut quickly shrunk things down to fit on my monitor. Visually, I do wish the columns for particular grades were a wee bit smaller because, as it was, I had to actually scroll horizontally just a bit to see all of the grades for a particular card/set. Most people using the pop report should have minimal issues in terms of figuring out what to do. Things generally went pretty smoothly for me and I thought the user experience was fine. I was able to do what I needed to do with minimal issues and did not even need to view the tutorial videos on the pop report’s page. LayoutĪdditionally, overall it’s just a pretty clean look. I took a spin around it and, well, it’s sort of a mixed bag from my vantage point. That finally happened as the new SGC population report is out. SGC, one of the three main third party grading companies, has had a population report on its site but was set for some time to come out with an updated one. I routinely am in and out of pop reports, practically on a daily basis. And that’s really good information to have. Even if they cannot provide us with true populations of most cards, they can help us with determining the rarity of particular cards in a set compared to other cards in a set. Population reports aren’t perfect but they can be critical in giving collectors an idea of the rarity of particular cards. Third party grader SGC has unveiled its new population report database - here are my thoughts