UD Young Guns, BGS & You

[RiceBondsMntna2Young]

Upper Deck for all its foibles still occupies a special place in the hearts of many hockey card collectors. It's no wonder. After all, when it arrived on the scene some 23 years ago, today's 30 and 40-year olds were 7 and 17 respectively. That means most collectors between the ages of 30 and 40 remember the fanfare surrounding UD's debut as kids in the midst of their most enthusiastic years of collecting. And every kid since could expect an Upper Deck set each year.

So it's no big surprise that Upper Deck has been a matter of (hobby) life in the same way that O-Pee-Chee and Topps were for previous generations. That may be why in 2013, with all the super premium products being released annually, UD Series 1 and 2 remains one of the (if not THE) most popularly collected sets across the industry. And it's probably why Young Guns rookie cards are considered by so many to be the purest rookie cards made, so heavily sought-after even though there are by some calculations at least 5,000 and as many as 10,000 copies available of every player.

Sure UD, ITG, Topps, OPC, you name it, have all lent the strength of their brands to more expensive releases. Many high-end sets consistently draw great interest but many more have gone the way of the Dodo bird. As a core brand Upper Deck somehow survived its contemporaries including Donruss, Fleer, Pacific, Score, and Bowman just to name a few. And Young Guns continue to populate the flagship set on an annual basis.

Anyways, for the first time I recently sent in some Young Guns to be graded by Beckett Grading Services (BGS). My Crosby earned a 9, my Ovechkin a 9.5, and my Tavares a 10 (pictures to come when they are in hand). I got to thinking about the scarcity of mint-condition YGs and having looked at the BGS population reports, I began to wonder what the numbers say about our hobby.

Let's have a look some of the most coveted RCs since the 2005-06 season (plus an underrated star/prospect or two for comparison's sake). These figures are as of August 22, 2013 (taken from http://www.beckett.com/grading/pop_report), and they're rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent:

Some random thoughts and questions...

1) Do you think BGS manipulates grades to artificially create scarcity? What about to appease customers? In other words, are collectors that good at screening or does BGS want to make you happy by returning a very high percentage of 9.5s?

2) Are these percentages representative of all raw YGs with a little skew or a LOT of skew? Basically, do you believe nearly 4% of all Crosby YGs would earn a 10 or do you think the sifting process means that if you grade the other 8000 copies, you'd get a way way lower percentage?

3) Which years are most condition sensitive?

My opinion: 07-08, 05-06, 06-07, 09-10, 08-09, 10-11, 11-12. Card condition has markedly improved every year since 09/10 based on every metric and 07-08 is clearly the most dinged-up year. But depending on how you measure condition sensitivity, 06-07, 08-09, 09-10, and even 05-06 are interchangeable depending on whether you think 9.5+s or 10s is a more accurate indicator.

4) Has BGS recently been more and more generous in order to one-up the previous year and create buzz...or has quality control actually improved over the last few years?

5) How much does a BGS 10 boost value against higher BV cards? Like, would you trade a Toews BGS10 (#d to/16…and counting) for a Crosby BGS9.5 (#d to/1269…and counting) or vice versa?

6) Random fact: there are more "Pristine" RNHs (110) than all the Pristine Malkin, Toews, Kane, Price, Stamkos, Giroux, Tavares, Duchene, Doughty, Pietrangelo, Karlsson, and Subbans combined (107, by my count). I'm not a numbers/statistic guy so I'll await more rigorous analyses but is there more trivia to be found in these numbers?

DISCUSS!

 

[Rorschach]

Upper Deck, for all its foibles, still holds a special place in the hearts of many hockey card collectors. It's no wonder. After all, when it arrived on the scene some 23 years ago, today's 30 and 40-year olds were 7 and 17 respectively. That means most collectors between the ages of 30 and 40 remember the fanfare surrounding Upper Deck's debut as kids in the midst of their most enthusiastic years of collecting. And every kid since could expect an Upper Deck to release a set bearing its brand name every year.

So it's no big surprise that Upper Deck has been a matter of (hobby) life in the same way that O-Pee-Chee and Topps was for previous generations. That may be why in 2013, with all the super premium products being released annually, UD Series 1 and 2 remains one of the (if not THE) most popularly collected sets across the industry. And it's probably why Young Guns rookie cards are considered by so many to be the purest rookie card released every year, so heavily sought-after even though there are by some calculations at least 5,000 and as many as 10,000 copies available of every player.

Sure UD, Topps, OPC, you name it, have all lent their their name and brand to more expensive products. Many of those expensive sets have strong followings but many more have gone the way of the Dodo bird. But as a core brand Upper Deck somehow survived its contemporaries including Donruss, Fleer, Pacific, Score, Bowman just to name a few. And YGs come from that flagship set bearing the name of the anchor company.

Anyways, for the first time I recently sent in some cards to be graded by Beckett Grading Services (BGS). My Crosby earned a 9, my Ovechkin a 9.5, and my Tavares a 10 (pictures to come when they are in hand). I got to thinking about the scarcity of mint-condition YGs and having looked at the BGS population reports, I began to wonder what the numbers say about our hobby.

Let's have a look some of the most coveted RCs since the 2005-06 season (plus an underrated star/prospect or two for comparison's sake). These numbers are as of August 22, 2013 (taken from http://www.beckett.com/grading/pop_report), and they're rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent:

Some random thoughts and questions...

1) Do you think BGS manipulate grades to artificially create scarcity? What about to appease customers? In other words, are collectors that good at screening or does BGS want to make you happy by returning a very high percentage of 9.5s?

2) Are these percentages representative of all raw YGs with a little skew or a LOT of skew? Basically, do you believe nearly 4% of all Crosby YGs would earn a 10 or do you think the sifting process means that if you grade the other 8000 copies, you'd get a way way lower percentage?

3) Which years are most condition sensitive?

My opinion: 07/08, 05/06, 06/07, 09/10, 08/09, 10/11, 11/12. Quality has clearly improved every year since 09/10 based on every metric and 07-08 is clearly the most condition sensitive. But depending on how you measure condition sensitivity, 06/07, 08/09, 09/10, and even 05/06 can be swapped depending on whether you think 9.5+ or 10s are a more accurate indicator.

4) Has BGS been more and more generous recently to one-up the previous year and drive buzz or has condition sensitivity actually improved drastically the last few years?

5) How much does BGS 10 boost value against higher BV cards? Like, would you trade a Toews BGS10 (#d to/16…and counting) for a Crosby BGS9.5 (#d to/1269…and counting) or vice versa?

6) Random fact: there are more "Pristine" RNHs (110) than Malkin, Toews, Kane, Price, Stamkos, Giroux, Tavares, Duchene, Doughty, Pietrangelo, Karlsson, and Subbans combined (107, by my count). I'm not a numbers or a statistic guy so I'll await a more rigorous analysis but other trivia exists in these numbers?

DISCUSS!

Nice post for discussion. Young Guns as a sub brand is bigger in hockey than any of Panini's BRANDS in hockey. The enormous amount of base brand that is sold, especially retail product, is crazy.

First of all, if I have a new card that is graded 9.0, I believe that makes the card less valuable on the market. I'd break it out of the slab.

1) I have a feeling that cards that are borderline 9.0 or 9.5, if a dealer is sending in the batch, they'll more likely to get 9.5. A small one-time customer will get a 9.0. This is because dealers are steady customers...if they get high grades. They get high grades, they sell those cards, they can justify buying more cards and more importantly more grading service. They can do this without looking bad by simply measuring which of their graders is just a bit more liberal and having that grader handle dealers' submissions.

That is TOTALLY just MY theory, I have no evidence.


2) The 4% is absurdly high. It's skewed because these pops are not a random sample of cards. They are a sample of pre-screened cards that I would say 90% of submitted cards were already pre-graded by submitters as looking pretty good. Those pre-screeners, some of them could be pro graders themselves, will try to save money by not sending in cards that would get 8.5s and wasting not only grading time but grip strength breaking the card out of a holder. An ungraded new card is worth more than a 8.5 BGS.


3) I wouldn't look at condition sensitivity. What classes of YGs, both talent and the teams they play for/what country they are from, is more influential on who gets sent in for grading and influences pops. But, if you twisted my arm, I would say whatever sets are black-bordered are most condition sensitive.

4) I think the culture of people pre-screening cards is a lot better. And people are getting better at opening packs with scissors and other ways that don't ding corners. I'm not saying everyone is doing either, I'm saying more and more are, especially if they have grading in mind.

5) I'd rather have the 10 Toews than the 9.5 Crosby. 9.5 makes your card go for full high Beckett and maybe a 25% to 100% boost. A full 10 gains I guess around 1000%. Like in a MMORPG game, that last .5 is more difficult to get than the first 9.5. I have two 9.5 Crosbys that I opened myself and got graded. I may never open a 10...of any card.

6) The RNH is a unique situation. He was worth a ton of money right away, more than JT and SS. So a lot more of his were sent in.

One last comment. I think if all your cards come out as 9s and 9.5, you have no quality control issues. 10s are supposed to be rare and sometimes a card never gets a high grade because on the sheet, it's just a micron off center because the cutters don't 100% line up with the sheet. RNH might be exactly centered on the sheet.

Also, there is a heavy influence by how easy the wrapper is to open on a pack of cards on the super-high end condition on the cards inside and also where the card is inserted in to the pack. For example, because of the way the card is inserted and the stickiness about the pack, 05-06 UD S1, the Victory Update inserts are very difficult to find in mint...there are a lot of dinged copies because the corners are jacked up when you open the packs. That includes the Crosby and Ovechkin.

 

[Taxi]

Just opened up 2 cases of 2007/08 blasters.

My observations.

A big issue was that the Young Guns were located at the back of the pack, as opposed to in the middle. This meant many corners were dinged up.

Another issue is that of the 80 Young Guns I pulled, 12 had major tears in them (A Krecj, Lucic, Bernier, and Nielsen all with a tear at the top on the front...and all worthless). All in the same place. The cards also were not inserted at random. Each case had 2 doubles in it.

Quality control has just gotten much better. Maybe 2007 was an anomaly.

 

[djsports]

1) I have a feeling that cards that are borderline 9.0 or 9.5, if a dealer is sending in the batch, they'll more likely to get 9.5. A small one-time customer will get a 9.0. This is because dealers are steady customers...if they get high grades. They get high grades, they sell those cards, they can justify buying more cards and more importantly more grading service. They can do this without looking bad by simply measuring which of their graders is just a bit more liberal and having that grader handle dealers' submissions.

That is TOTALLY just MY theory, I have no evidence.

I have evidence for you from personal experience.

Back in 2000 I had a 1993 SP Derek Jeter Rookie Card. I opened this card from a pack in 1993 and had it in my personal collection since. I figured I might as well send it into BGS to at least preserve the condition of the card. I sent it in with a bunch of hockey submissions to get to the qty discount level and waited.

The card came back BGS 6.5. Not the grade I was looking. I was hoping for an 8 since there were some surface blemishes but the edges/centering/corners were nice. I would of settled for a 7, but since it didn't get that I broke it out and put it in my display case at the next show with the graded slip behind it. (This is the irrational mind of a collector. "I am going to keep it no matter what grade it comes back. Oh wait it came back worse than I thought, ugh I don't want it anymore")

The first person who showed interest in it bought it. He was a graded card dealer that submitted 100's of cards a month and he said it was going in with his next submission to BGS.

The next show he came by and showed me the Jeter graded 7.5. I knew it was the one I sold him because of the surface blemish by the SP logo.

This is the reason why I have never sent anything into Beckett since.

 

[drkicker]

1- My first 2 subs where disastrous, didnt know really what to look out for.So i broke out a few slabs to know what to look out for.My intent for grading is profit, if i send to much modern cards that come back 8.5 and 9.0 its eating up my profit.I asked pro`s some tips, Bertscard was really helpfull on how to clean up surface.I think most people who submit often are very good at screening.

2- I think the % would drop considerally, i busted a few case and a large % dont come out `mint out of pack`. 08/09 come to mind, they had 9.99$ tins at walmart, most YG where badly centered.This year alot of cards have little hole in the surface, like they didnt dry up correctly.

3- 07-08 was tough, with the glossy front and beige back, making them easy to spot `whit spots`.09/10 was tough also, black front plus rollermark.Didnt bust 06/07 and 11/12 but 10/11 was a great quality card.

4- I like to believe that people who submit really got better, people who break for grading are more carefull and quality control did improve.

5- I once bought a Sid Black Diamond BGS 10 for 1600$, pop was low, 4 i think.Now they can be add for half that so i guess the pop went up.Unless i could sell the Toews for 1k i would take the Sid.Cant really put a multiplicator on a BGS 10, it really depends on population and what the people interested in it are willing to pay.

6- My guess would be the colors, printing,cutting, packaging where aligned and created a `perfect card`


I broke roughly 30 boxes of 13/14 series 1, traded and bought a few YG`s here and there.Just submitted 236 cards to beckett, about 200 are YG.More then 1/3 of the one i pack pulled where not in grading worthy condition.

 

[cburt]

Great topic OP! Most of the time when I see a post that long I usually skip it. But yours kept me interested. Intriguing facts.

Population reports cannot be taken to be 100% accurate either. How many times have you heard someone say they busted such and such a card out of the slab? Too many times. And I don't believe people who bust cards out of graded slabs report doing that to the third party grader who graded their card. For BGS, I would say that 9.5's and 10's would rarely be busted out of their slabs, but still, I know that certain collectors do this, especially collectors who don't like graded cards. 8.5's and lower would be suspect in the population reports too, as has also been said. A lot of 9's might be also, but it would depend on the card. IMO, a Crosby YG graded at a BGS 9 would still be more desirable than an ungraded one, but once you got to the 8.5 grade, a nice raw copy would command more value.

As far as condition sensitive sets, I think what people have said is true. One particular card that always comes to mind is the Pavel Datsyuk UD Young Guns rookie from the 2001-2002 set. This should rank at the top of the list for one of the most condition sensitive cards out there (especially in the higher end list).

 

[Junior Griffey]

One thing that BGS offers that I love is the min grade. You can have them not slab anything if it's going to be under a certain grade. With newer cards, anything under a 9.5 is typically worth less than a raw copy. I won't have them slab anything that isn't gem if it's modern stuff, and I know many other collectors who think the same way. This could easily skew numbers in charts like the one above.