“Top Pop”
Is it of value or just a misleading way to evaluate an item?
For those who may not be familiar with the reference, it stands for the Top or Best….Highest grade in the population. The population depends on what’s being discussed or offered for sale. The Top Pop could mean (to the person using the reference) that is the finest known—of all such medals/coins—or the finest known specifically linked to whichever company has graded the item in question, almost always either PCGS or NGC, both of which publish their population reports.
I was recently scanning Ebay under the search title of “World’s Columbian Expo”which I do on a regular basis, to take the pulse of what’s being offered by sellers. I was reminded yet again while looking at some very expensive (one might say “overpriced”) WCE medals how misleading the Top Pop reference can be….and in the case of Columbiana, it usually is!
If you were looking at an Indian Cent or a Morgan Dollar, categories where a given date has a long history of being graded, the designation means a great deal. If you don’t have access to population reports or don’t want to bother searching for information, a very easy way to get a feel for populations is to go to any coin auction at Heritage Auctions. I’ve written about the auction house in a variety of ways. I’ve done business with Heritage many times over the last 30+ years. I first met the president of the company, Greg Rohan, when I was in my twenties and he was even younger, selling at monthly Seattle coin shows. Greg was I believe just a teenager at the time. He worked the show floor buying and selling and probably did more business than any dealer who had a table at the show.
Naturally, I paid attention as Heritage emerged and quickly became a major player in the “hobby/collectibles” marketplace. Not to digress too far here, if you look at U.S. coin auctions, you will notice that Heritage provides not only great photos and descriptions, but background data as well. One such statistic is listing a key number expressed as 00/00 (the total number at this particular grade and the number graded higher) by either PCGS or NGC, the two major grading services. Those numbers for a commonly collected coin might be, as an example, 855/225 or 950/1500. The first number represents the number of coins the grading service has graded at that specific grade, and the second number represents how many that company has graded HIGHER.
There are nuances, such as the designation for copper coins regarding color. For the Indian cents I noted above, you might see such numbers for a Red, RedBrown, or Brown colored coin. Now we can examine that Top Pop designation: If it is an MS65 BN….or an MS67 Red you can imagine how different they might be; the higher the grade, the fewer coins will be found in that grade. If you see a particular coin noted as an MS65 and it’s the top grade in the population you can and should assume that there is an underlying specific reason that the finest graded coin is ONLY an MS65. You might assume that the finest would be MS67 or even MS68.
Without writing a complete primer on the importance and use of population reports, let’s switch to our subject: Columbiana. If the top graded example of an Indian cent is an MS65 it is very unusual and perhaps few coins were collected at the time or in the case of some silver coins, they may have not circulated widely and large numbers were melted, hence contributing to rarity of very high grades. In the vast majority of coin issues, you can be sure that the finest will likely be at least an MS67. There can be myriad reasons that the highest grade might be a 65….or a 69. There are myriad underlying facts and when one is dealing with a popular series of coins, the numbers graded will be very high; when dealing with Columbian medals, the number graded will be a very small percentage of the coins.
On the examples I used of Indian cents and Morgan dollars, any given year and/or mint mark designation will have thousands…or even tens of thousands of graded examples by both NGC and PCGS. If you’re looking at a very scarce to rare WCE medal, the population might be two or three! Even if it is a relatively common world’s fair medal, the number graded will be tiny compared to U.S. coins—perhaps 25 or 50 vs 5,000 or more.
Slabbing medals in general and Columbian medals specifically is only now becoming popular.
So, if a seller points out the “rarity” and designation of “finest known” based on a grading service population report it’s problematic because so few have ever been graded…and beyond the Top Pop reference if the seller also calls the medal the “finest known” it’s usually NOT true. The Top Pop medal may have a slabbed number of a couple dozen, while the universe of non-slabbed examples could easily be 100 times greater.
I am quite sure that the majority of you do not have your WCE medals slabbed. As I noted, the population that have been graded in any specific instance is going to be very small and the smaller the sample of ANY research or use of data, the less reliable or valuable it is.
The Top Pop of a Columbian medal may also be just an MS64 or might be much higher; but that seemingly unusual “low” grade is quite likely meaningless. In college statistics classes a common example of the importance of the sample size can be found in the frequently cited case of a startling announcement that “at the university, one third of all female undergraduates became pregnant while enrolled……” If that reference was from data collected at a major school it would indeed be beyond shocking. But the sample quoted, which was real, happened to be at a formerly all-male small college which had a total enrollment of THREE young women in the year under discussion….and one had become pregnant. A Top Pop among all Franklin half dollars might be very significant, but the Top Pop among five or ten medals is quite the opposite.
Use your knowledge of WCE medals to question ANY Top Pop designation, and if you don’t have the knowledge or data to evaluate the claim, ask fellow collectors and/or dealers (whom you can trust!). I have discussed the fact that studying prices realized for sales of Columbian medals usually is confusing. There can be a great disparity between the sales history of slabbed WCE medals versus the overall total number. The “average” selling price reported by either NGC or PCGS might be the average of five sales; the average selling price of a U.S. coin might draw from a universe of thousands.
I have always urged all of my clients and customers to study any data that is available. The finest graded medal is very likely a handsome medal….but that doesn’t address the fact that the number in graded inventories of medals is nearly always a very small number of the total universe of that medal versus a typical coin which might easily be in the tens of thousands not the dozens or even fewer.
The Top Pop of a Columbian medal vs. the Top Pop of a U.S. coin is not apples to oranges, but rather apples….to kangaroos. They’re just not even close, so the finest of the population is almost meaningless. As you look for these figures more often, you will likely be shocked that the Top Pop might just as easily be an MS63 or a 68. And how meaningful is the statistic noting that 33% of all undergraduate females at the school were pregnant?
