Collectors ToolsHow To Search The PSA Ticket Pop Report In Seconds
The PSA ticket pop report holds the most useful fact in graded tickets: how many of a ticket exist at each grade. That is the supply behind every price. The number is public, but PSA's own report makes it slow to reach. Here is what the report measures, where it gets hard to use, and how to search the same data by the date printed on your ticket.
If you only ever check one number before buying a graded ticket, make it the population. The PSA ticket pop report is the census of the hobby: for every graded item it records how many PSA has slabbed and how those copies break down by grade. That is the supply side of value, and price without it is half the picture. The catch is that the number is easy to state and slow to find.
The figures above are what we compile from PSA's ticket population report and connect to real graded examples, read as of September 9, 2026 (populations grow as more tickets are graded, so treat every count as a snapshot). Two tickets can look identical in a listing photo and be completely different assets once you know the pop. "12 graded, 1 at PSA 10" and "600 graded, 90 at PSA 10" are not the same thing, and only the pop report tells them apart.
One thing has changed since this piece first ran, and it is the whole reason it is worth re-reading. You no longer have to describe your ticket in PSA's vocabulary to find it. You start from the date printed on the front.
Search the PSA ticket pop report by date
Pick the date printed on your ticket. A dot means we hold graded tickets from that day. You will land on every event PSA has graded a ticket from on that date, then on the population at each grade and every example we can show you.
A dot means we hold graded tickets from that day.
Opens on October 26, 1984, Michael Jordan's NBA debut. See that day, or open the full population report.
Why the date, and not a search box
Every other way into a population report asks you to describe the ticket the way the cataloguer did: a set name, a heading, a player spelled PSA's way, a matchup written as "Bulls-109,Bullets-93". The date does not ask you for anything. It is printed on the object in your hand, it is the same in every language, and it cuts 90,596 catalogue rows down to a handful in one step. 72,706 of those rows carry a printed date, spread across 23,567 separate days from an 1827 gallery viewing to tickets graded this year.
There is one rule the date picker will not bend on, and it matters more than it looks: the month is always a word, never a number in a position. "10/03/1984" is 10 March to half of the hobby and 3 October to the other half, and guessing wrong is invisible, because we would show you a real date with real tickets on it, just not yours. So there is no free-text date box. Day, month by name, year, in one row, with the calendar underneath as a view of it rather than a second control that could disagree.
What the PSA ticket pop report actually measures
The report counts, for each ticket and each grade, how many examples PSA has certified. Read one line and you learn the total graded and how thin the top of the ladder is: a game might have 300 graded copies but only three PSA 10s. Two phrases carry most of the meaning. Population is the count at a given grade. Pop higher is how many exist above it, so a pop higher of 0 means that copy is the finest known, the single most important fact for a high-grade buyer.
A real example makes it concrete, and it is the date the picker above opens on. On October 26, 1984, Michael Jordan played his first NBA game, Bulls 109, Bullets 93. Ask for that date and the debut comes back as one moment in two forms. PSA's census records 78 graded stubs and exactly one graded full ticket. Not one of the 79 is a PSA 10. That single full ticket sold for $468,000; the stubs run to 54 examples on file, 31 of which have a recorded sale, the best of them at $341,600 and the lowest, an Authentic copy, at $121.50. That spread is what the population number is for, and none of it is visible in a listing photo. It is also exactly the full-versus-stub distinction we set out in what a full ticket really is.
Where the PSA ticket pop report gets hard to use
None of this is a knock on the data. PSA's report is authoritative and it is the source we build on. The problem is purely navigation. There is no search box: you browse, you do not query. The tickets category opens as a list of roughly 321 year entries, so finding Jordan's debut means first knowing it was 1984, then scanning that year's sets by eye. A single event can appear as many near-identical rows, and the group name is usually the matchup or venue text, not the player or the plain-English thing you searched. The full, the stub and the pass of one event are separate groups with separate IDs and no link between them, and the complete per-grade grid sits behind a login. Every one of those is a small tax, and together they turn a one-fact question into a ten-click hunt.
| On PSA's own report | On Collectors Tools |
|---|---|
| No search box; you navigate, not query | Start from the date printed on the ticket |
| Open a year, then scan that year's sets | One day, then the events on it, then the grades |
| Hundreds of near-identical group titles | One event is one moment, however it was catalogued |
| Group title is the matchup or venue, not the player | Search by player, game or event stays available too |
| Full, stub and pass are separate, unlinked groups | Forms of one event shown side by side, drawn as the objects |
| Full per-grade grid is behind a login | The per-grade ladder is on the page, free |
| No indication of what any of it is worth | Every graded example carries what it sold for |
The faster path: the PSA ticket pop report in three steps
The funnel is deliberately three steps and no more. Pick the date. You get every event PSA has graded a ticket from on that day, with a photograph and a population beside each. Pick the moment. If the event exists as more than one form you choose between them, drawn as the physical objects rather than named in a dropdown, because a stub and a full ticket are recognisable on sight and "Form: STUB" is not. Read the population. The counts come first, then the per-grade ladder, then every graded example we hold with its sale price and a link out to the auction.
Behind that sit 90,596 catalogued ticket rows across 39,666 PSA sets, collapsed into 71,205 distinct events once the different forms of the same moment are united. 7,006 of those events span more than one form, so a search shows the full, the stub and the pass of a game together instead of as three unconnected rows. The population figures themselves are PSA's own, taken from a dated census of 282,765 graded tickets across 71,457 items, of which 21,577 are PSA 10s.
Two things the pages will not do, because both would mean publishing a number we cannot stand behind. Population is always quoted from the latest complete census, never a half-written one. And "not yet censused" is never reported as "0 graded": about a fifth of the catalogue has never been censused, and on those pages we say plainly that we are showing the examples we hold, which is a floor rather than a total.
Search by player or event when there is no date
17,890 catalogue rows carry no written date at all, and plenty of tickets are half-remembered rather than in hand. The original search is unchanged and still the answer to all of that: type a player, an event, a year or a cert number and the matching groups appear at once, ranked, with fuzzy matching for the times PSA spells it differently from you. It lives on the legacy search tab, and it is the second half of the same tool.
Or search the PSA ticket pop report by name
Type a name and results appear instantly. Groups with a View examples button open the real graded slabs at each grade, in place.
The part PSA's report cannot do: show you the tickets
A population is a number until you can look at the slabs behind it. Every moment here links to the individual graded copies in our ticket scan database, so you do not just read that 78 stubs exist, you open them, at every grade, with the front and back scans PSA holds. We now track 111,221 individual graded examples and 110,047 of them (99%) are tied to their exact catalogue row, up from 24% when this post first ran. 34,558 catalogue rows have real examples attached to them today.
And because a population without a price is only half an answer, 21,953 of those certs carry a recorded sale, drawn from Heritage, Goldin, Fanatics Collect, Lelands and eBay, with 9,609 events now showing a real sold range rather than an asking price. There is no incumbent price reference for graded tickets: PSA's own Auction Prices Realized is comprehensive for cards and effectively empty for tickets, which is why we compile the sales house by house. Population, grade ladder and sold prices sit on one page, which is the whole point.
Your cert is missing? Add it in one line
The census is not finished and it never will be, because PSA slabs new tickets every week. If you own a graded ticket that is not in here, you can put it in yourself: type the cert number on the Add Your PSA Cert page and we read the data straight from PSA, the grade, the event, the population path and the slab scans, and add it to the reference for everyone. A small range works too, which is useful if your submission came back as a run of consecutive numbers.
It is worth doing for a reason beyond generosity. Adding a cert also tells us which PSA set it belongs to, and if that item is one our catalogue has never held, the ticket and its population record get created from it. One cert number fills a gap the pop report itself would not have shown us. If you would rather keep it to yourself, the same cert entry works on your own collection and fills in the rest automatically.
PSA ticket pop report, common questions
- What is the PSA ticket pop report?
- It is PSA's population report for the tickets category: a census of how many ticket stubs, full tickets and passes PSA has certified, broken down by grade. For each item it tells you the total graded and how many sit at each grade from Authentic up to PSA 10. It is the supply side of a graded ticket's value.
- How do I look up the population of my ticket?
- Start from the date printed on the front. Enter the day, month and year on the population report and you will get every event PSA has graded a ticket from on that date, then the population at each grade for the form you hold. If there is no date on the ticket, search by player, game or event instead on the legacy search tab.
- What does "pop higher" mean on a PSA cert?
- Pop higher is how many examples of the same item PSA has graded above your grade. A pop higher of 0 means nothing better has been certified, so that copy is the finest known. It is the number that separates a common grade from a genuinely top-of-the-ladder one.
- Is the PSA ticket pop report free to search?
- PSA publishes the counts, but the complete per-grade grid sits behind a PSA login and the report has no search box. The same data is free to search here, by date or by name, with the per-grade ladder on the page and no account required.
- Why do the full ticket and the stub have different populations?
- PSA catalogues each form of an event as a separate item with its own heading, so a game's full ticket, stub and pass each carry their own population and they are usually nothing alike. Michael Jordan's NBA debut is the clearest case: PSA's census records 78 graded stubs and exactly one graded full ticket. We unite the forms of one event into a single moment so you can see both counts side by side.
- How often is the population data updated?
- Populations are captured as dated snapshots roughly twice a year, so a count can be compared with the same count six months earlier rather than silently overwritten. Every page names the census reading it is quoting. New certs are added continuously as they are compiled from PSA or contributed.
Where to find the full PSA ticket pop report
The pickers above are slices of the complete tool. The full population report covers all 90,596 catalogued rows, by date or by name. The ticket scan database holds the individual examples, searchable by player, event, cert number or grade. If you want a feel for what tops the census, the most-graded tickets breaks down which events collectors knew to keep, and how many PSA-graded tickets exist puts a figure on the category as a whole.
Explore the data behind this report
Search every graded ticket sale, browse PSA population data, and track sold prices on Collectors Tools.