🪙 PCGS Population Report Scraper — Coin Pops, Grades & Totals

Turn the PCGS Population Report into clean, structured data: one row per coin line with the PCGS number, full coin description, designation (MS/PR), the population at every grade — including plus-grade sub-counts — and the certified total. Point it at a series, a whole category (US, Chinese, Canadian, British coins…), the entire Pop Report, or just search a series by name ("morgan dollar", "buffalo nickel").

No login, no API key, no browser automation — every field comes straight from PCGS's server-rendered pop-report pages. Optional BYOK lane: add your own free PCGS Public API token and each row is enriched with official CoinFacts data.

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What does PCGS Population Report Scraper do?

It scrapes the PCGS Pop Report — the census of how many coins PCGS has certified at each grade — into rows you can export to JSON, CSV, Excel, or pull via API. Population data is the supply side of coin pricing: a coin with pop 7 in MS67 trades very differently from one with pop 7,000.

• 🔗 By series URL — https://www.pcgs.com/pop/detail/buffalo-nickel-1913-1938/83 → every coin line in the series.
• 🗂️ By category — https://www.pcgs.com/pop/uscoins (or canadiancoins, chinesecoins, greatbritaincoins…) → every series inside.
• 🌍 The whole report — pass https://www.pcgs.com/pop to walk every category and world country.
• 🔎 Or search by name — searchTerm: "morgan dollar" finds and scrapes every matching series, no URL needed.
• 🎚️ Pick the grade band — MS/PR 60–70 (default), circulated bands, the compact Summary, or the full Comprehensive table.
• ➕ Plus-grade pops included — the small sub-counts (MS65+, MS66+…) other tools drop.
• 🧾 BYOK CoinFacts enrichment (optional) — supply your own free PCGS Public API token and get the official GetCoinFactsByGrade payload on every row.

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What data does it extract?

For every coin line in the report:

• 🆔 pcgs_no, spec_no — the PCGS catalog numbers
• 🏷️ description — e.g. 1913-S 5C Type 1
• 🎖️ designation (MS/PR) and has_plus_grades
• 📊 populations — object mapping each grade to its pop, e.g. { "60": 7, "61": 22, "62": 236, … }
• ➕ plus_populations — the plus-grade sub-counts, e.g. { "65": 12, "66": 38 }
• 🧮 total — total certified population for the line
• 📚 section_title — the subseries header, e.g. Type 1, "FIVE CENTS" On Raised Ground, MS
• 🗂️ series_name, series_slug, series_id, category, grade_tab, page
• 🔗 pop_url, coinfacts_url
• 🧾 coin_facts (only with your own PCGS API token), 🕒 scraped_at

Example record

{
  "pcgs_no": "3917",
  "spec_no": "3917",
  "description": "1913-S 5C Type 1",
  "designation": "MS",
  "has_plus_grades": true,
  "section_title": "Type 1, \"FIVE CENTS\" On Raised Ground, MS",
  "grade_tab": "Grades 60-70 (MS/PR)",
  "populations": { "60": 7, "61": 22, "62": 236, "63": 661, "64": 1048, "65": 466, "66": 235, "67": 45, "68": 7, "69": 0, "70": 0 },
  "plus_populations": { "63": 2, "64": 7, "65": 12, "66": 38, "67": 12 },
  "total": 3775,
  "series_name": "Buffalo Nickel 1913-1938",
  "series_slug": "buffalo-nickel-1913-1938",
  "series_id": "83",
  "pop_url": "https://www.pcgs.com/pop/detail/buffalo-nickel-1913-1938/83/0?t=3&pn=1",
  "coinfacts_url": "https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/detail/3917"
}

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Who is it for?

• 🪙 Coin dealers & auction houses pricing inventory against real certified supply.
• 📈 Collectors & registry-set builders hunting condition rarities (low-pop grades) before the market does.
• 🤖 Numismatic app & ML builders who need the census as structured data, not screenshots.
• 📰 Market analysts & newsletter writers tracking pop changes across series over time.

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How to use it (step by step)

1. Click Try for free.
2. Paste one or more Pop Report URLs — a series detail page, a category, or https://www.pcgs.com/pop — or type a Series search like morgan dollar.
3. (Optional) pick a Grade band: MS/PR 60–70 (default), Summary, or Comprehensive.
4. (Optional) set Max coin rows (prefilled to 100; 0 = unlimited).
5. Click Start, then open the Dataset tab to view/export.

Quick start

{ "popUrls": ["https://www.pcgs.com/pop/detail/buffalo-nickel-1913-1938/83"], "maxRecords": 100 }

Whole-category run (Summary view)

{ "popUrls": ["https://www.pcgs.com/pop/uscoins"], "gradeTab": "4", "maxRecords": 0 }

Search + BYOK CoinFacts enrichment

{
  "searchTerm": "morgan dollar",
  "gradeTab": "3",
  "pcgsApiToken": "YOUR_FREE_TOKEN_FROM_pcgs.com/publicapi",
  "apiGradeNo": 65
}

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Input

Field	What it does
popUrls	series detail URLs, category URLs, or https://www.pcgs.com/pop for everything
searchTerm	free-text series-name search across all categories ("morgan dollar")
gradeTab	1 PO–VF · 2 VF–AU · 3 MS/PR 60–70 (default) · 4 Summary · 5 Comprehensive
maxRecords	hard cap on coin rows per run (0 = unlimited; prefilled 100)
pcgsApiToken	(optional, BYOK) your free PCGS Public API token → adds coin_facts per row
apiGradeNo, apiPlusGrade	which grade the CoinFacts enrichment asks for
proxyConfiguration	proxy settings (auto datacenter; switch to RESIDENTIAL if challenged)
requestDelayMs	polite spacing between page fetches (default 800 ms)

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Output

Each coin line is one dataset record (fields above). Export to JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS, or fetch via the Apify API. populations / plus_populations are objects keyed by grade label ("60"–"70", or "P/AG"…"MS/PR" on the Summary tab).

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How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event — you pay for what you pull, no subscription.

Event	What it covers	Price
lot-scraped	each coin row returned	$0.004 / row — $4 per 1,000 coins
lot-detail-enriched	each CoinFacts BYOK enrichment	$0.004 / row

A premium per-lookup tier (~$0.015/lookup with bundled enrichment) is planned and will be configured on the actor's pricing page.

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Scheduling & monitoring pop changes

The Pop Report changes as PCGS grades new submissions. To track it, attach an Apify Schedule (e.g. weekly), keep the same input, and diff the exported datasets downstream (the pcgs_no + grade_tab pair is a stable key). Each run is a fresh, complete snapshot of the series you target — ideal for building a pop-history time series.

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Is it legal to scrape PCGS?

This actor reads public, login-free census statistics (aggregate counts of certified coins) — no accounts, no personal data. Scraping publicly available data is generally legal, but you are responsible for your use: review the current PCGS Terms of Service before commercial use or redistribution of the data. The optional CoinFacts enrichment uses your own PCGS Public API token under your API agreement.

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FAQ

What is the PCGS Population Report? PCGS's public census of every coin it has ever graded: for each catalog number, how many examples exist at each grade. It's the standard supply-side reference for rare-coin pricing.

Do I need a login or an API key? No. The Pop Report pages are public. The PCGS API token is an optional extra for CoinFacts enrichment — bring your own free token from pcgs.com/publicapi.

What's a "plus" population? PCGS awards + grades (e.g. MS65+) for high-end examples. The report shows them as sub-counts under each grade; this scraper returns them in plus_populations.

Which grade tab should I use? 3 (MS/PR 60–70) for mint-state/proof pops, 4 (Summary) for one compact row per coin incl. circulated grades and the total, 5 (Comprehensive) for every grade column at once.

Can it scrape world coins? Yes — categories like chinesecoins, canadiancoins, greatbritaincoins, plus every world country listed on the /pop landing page.

How do I scrape an entire category? Pass the category URL (e.g. https://www.pcgs.com/pop/uscoins) and set maxRecords: 0. Every series inside is walked page by page.

How does the series search work? The actor crawls the Pop Report index and scrapes every series whose name contains your term — "morgan dollar" matches the Morgan Dollar series without you hunting for the URL.

Does it handle pagination? Yes — series tables paginate (~25 rows/page); the actor walks every page and stops cleanly at the end.

What about Cloudflare? The site sits behind Cloudflare Bot Management. The actor keeps a cookie jar, uses a browser-grade fingerprint, paces requests, and retries challenges automatically. For very large runs, switch the proxy to RESIDENTIAL.

How do I export the data? JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML, or RSS from the Dataset tab, or via the Apify API.

Can I get CoinFacts values (prices, rarity) too? Yes — set pcgsApiToken to your own free PCGS Public API token and each row gains a coin_facts object from the official GetCoinFactsByGrade endpoint.

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Feedback

Found a missing field or want a new feature (pop-change diffing, CAC data, specific registry views)? Open an issue on the actor — fast fixes and feature requests welcome.