Is Coin Speculation Running Rampant? Do Crackouts Still Occur? Yes!

TPG populations and survival estimates are meaningless. They exist entirely to justify demanding absurd premiums for "top pop" coins and hyper-inflated TPG price guide values that heavily overvalue coins in all grades. The very few exceptions are for historic rarities of which the population is so low that it can be accurately stated as to a survival rate, e.g. the 1804 dollar and 1913 V nickel.

There is one thing they ARE useful for, and that's determining the condition scarcity curve for a given coin. This has allowed numismatists to back up long-held "wisdom" with actual numbers and raised the importance of condition scarcities relative to mintage scarcities. Collectors have known for years, for instance, that certain Morgan dollars (1883-S, 1880-O, 1896-O, 1897-O) were very difficult to find in higher Uncirculated grades, but it wasn't until the advent of TPG pop tracking that the anecdotes of years of collectors were able to be supported by hard data.

Probably quite a few, but it's still reasonably accurate for guesstimating.