Sportscaster Cards and PSA

I was reading on a forum that it could cost about $18 to get a Sportscaster card graded.  With that in mind I can only imagine that one would great the three expensive cards (Bird, Magic, Gretzky) or maybe some of the last series because they are in such short supply.

I'm making no effort to verify the cost or to see how much more it would cost to get the autograph certified.  How would they even certify some of the thousands of athletes on those cards?

I was quite surprised to see on PSA's site that they have graded 5,166 Sportscaster cards.  Maybe it would be useful to grade cards from some of the harder to find foreign sets.  

Is it like the 1989 Donruss Craig Biggio where PSA must have given someone a good price to get lots of them graded and advertise the product?  

Here are some surprising numbers:

# graded   name  (pack/deck)

110           Bobby Orr (001)         ---  set one is the most plentiful set, right?

  80           Muhammad Ali (001)

  57           Larry Bird (074)

119           Wayne Gretzky (077)

  53           Magic Johnson (078)

Lots of cards have none that have been sent to PSA.  Imagine the cost of getting all 2,184 cards graded.  Would that person also go for variations?