Low Pop Finds

How we pick the cards

Value investors compare a price with what stands behind it. Low Pop Finds applies that idea to graded cards: it weighs each slab’s price against how many graded copies exist, and lists the ones that cost about the same as far more common cards. Scarcity is one input, not a promise: rare cards can fall in price too, and nothing here is investment advice.

What the list is

Today’s lists are the cards that meet every requirement below, in three value tiers by fair value: $100 to $1,000, $1,000 to $10,000 and $10,000 to $100,000, each from its lower bound up to just under its upper one. Every other requirement is the same in every tier: English vintage PSA 9s and 10s, a pop at grade of at most 250 for a PSA 9 or 100 for a PSA 10, and at most half the copies at their grade of the middle card they are compared with (a Scarcity Multiple of 2x or more), after the demand floor below. None is loosened for a pricier tier, so a tier with few cards shows how few and why. Each list is ordered by the Low Pop Score. Free shows the order; Pro shows the score.

The Low Pop Score

One number from 0 to 100 for how scarce a card is for its price, by our estimate. Within each grade, every card we screen today (every card that clears the demand floor and our data checks, not only today’s list) gets a percentile on each part: the Scarcity Multiple (higher ranks higher), the gem rate against its set group (lower ranks higher, PSA 10s only) and sales a year at its grade (higher ranks higher). The parts are weighted 60, 25 and 15 for a PSA 10, and 80 and 20 for a PSA 9. A PSA 10 with no set group comparison is weighted 80 and 20 and marked partial, with the reason. The score is the weighted average’s percentile within the grade, rounded: a Low Pop Score of 74 ranks above 74% of today’s PSA 10s (or PSA 9s). A percentile is the share of the grade’s other cards below it, ties counting half.

How comparables are chosen

For each card we take every other English vintage card (sets released 1996 to 2003) at the same PSA grade with a fair value within 25% either side of its own, a pop at that grade and at least 3 sales at that grade in the last year. A card needs at least 15 of them. Its Scarcity Multiple is the middle pop at grade of those cards (the lower median, so it is a real card’s pop) over its own pop at grade. Pro lists the five closest to its fair value.

The set group

A PSA 10’s gem rate is set against the cards most like it: the same set, the same edition (1st Edition, Shadowless or Unlimited where the set has them), the same rarity and the same finish (holo, non-holo or reverse holo). A group needs at least 5 cards, each with a gem rate from a complete population read; otherwise the card says “not enough cards in its set group”. The comparison is for PSA 10s only, because a low gem rate is why a card’s 10s are scarce. On a PSA 9 it means more copies stop at 9, so a PSA 9 shows its gem rate without the comparison.

The pills

Top 10% scarcity: a Scarcity Multiple in the top 10% of its grade across every card we screen today. Hard to gem for its set: a PSA 10 whose gem rate sits in the bottom quarter of its set group. New since: on today’s list but not on the previous one, shown only when there is a previous list. Live listing on eBay: see Listings below. Pills state facts about the data; none of them is a recommendation.

The demand floor

Cards nobody trades have tiny pops and unreliable fair values, so a card needs at least 5 sales a year at its grade and 50 PSA-graded copies across all grades to be screened at all. It also needs a fair-value confidence of at least 30 out of 100 and at least 90 days of complete population reads.

Where pops and fair values come from

Pops, PSA 10 counts and gem rates are PSA’s population reports, which we read every week. Fair values and market caps are TCGBerg estimates from recorded sales; cards with few graded copies are valued with our rare-card method. A market cap is the fair value times the pop at that grade. The 30-day change sets our fair value now against our fair value for the same card at the same grade 30 days earlier; a card we did not value then shows none. A card’s details show the card page’s own fair value history and population by grade.

Why the last pop change and gem rates need complete reads

We use a weekly read of a set’s population report only when it covers at least 95% of the cards we have ever seen for that set, so a half-finished read never counts. The last pop change is the newest complete read at which a card’s pop at its grade grew against the complete read before it. Where it never grew in the complete reads we hold, the column says “Unchanged since” the first of them, and where its set has no complete read, “n/a: no complete read”. The gem rate is PSA 10s over every graded copy on one complete read.

Listings

The Live listing on eBay tag marks the cheapest live eBay listing our affiliate link reaches at no more than 1.5 times our fair value, item plus shipping, leaving out auctions ending within 12 hours; it opens the listing on eBay through our affiliate link. When our newest listing check is more than 36 hours old, no card carries the tag until the next check. Cards whose cheapest fixed-price listing sits far above our estimate, three times it or more, are left out until we check them again.

As-of dates

Fair values, pops and listings each carry their own date at the top of the list. Pops are the newest complete read for each set.