Census Bench Marks 1 1

[Xenosmilus]

I’m collecting mostly Bronze Age and always ask myself, “how many more of these are out there?” as I’m sure most of you do. Especially 9.8’s. Most of the issues I’m looking for are low on the census count and one thing that always worries me is that if the book takes off (for better or worse) and the census numbers go up in the end the value may go down. Some of these issues I spend a pretty penny for so the rarity question does go through my head often. The best thing I can think of is using AMS 129 (142 9.8’s out of 11285) and Hulk 181 (126 9.8’s out of 10941 graded) as a census bench mark. I figure there can’t be too many 9.8’s of those ungraded can there (?) and the percentage of both are pretty similar (1.26% and 1.15%). Any better ideas?

Edited February 1, 2021 by Xenosmilus

[MatterEaterLad]

Would love to know what some of the major dealers think as far as sheer numbers they estimate are out there ungraded.

Also, I do think that in reality those percentages would shrink because of all the phantom books in the census--books that have been cracked, pressed, resubbed, and are now duplicated in the total. 

[valiantman]

29 minutes ago, MatterEaterLad said:

Also, I do think that in reality those percentages would shrink because of all the phantom books in the census--books that have been cracked, pressed, resubbed, and are now duplicated in the total. 

Based on your statement, those percentages would grow.  

Let's say that there are 100 CGC 9.8s and 9,900 lower grades.  That looks like 1.0% CGC 9.8.  But, there are books that have been cracked, pressed, resubbed, and are now duplicated in the 10,000 total.  They aren't duplicated in the CGC 9.8 counts, because that was the goal... to reach 9.8.  But, they could be duplicated in the 9.6 counts, if the resubmission to 9.8 was successful.  They could be duplicated in the 6.0 counts if they were resubbed for 7.0, etc.

All of the 100 CGC 9.8s should be expected to be counted, but the actual number of books in the 9,900 lower grades might be 9,000 instead.

100 CGC 9.8s out of 9,100 total would be 1.1%, which is growth from 1.0%.

[MatterEaterLad]

Ah, you are correct. I should finish my coffee before I try to calculate percentages.