This was so well said. I just watched a video about why people grade and the guy said its because it makes selling a lot easier because people can just look at the grade and tell right away what the condition of the card is, which isnt entirely true since grading is very hit or miss especially in this hobby. To me grading is one big joke. I like how TCGPlayer has it set up. Near Mint, Lightly Played, Heavily Played, Damaged. There’s a much bigger window with that scale. When numbers start getting involved thats when it gets very subjective.
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I’ve always happily collected Japanese PSA 8/9s, at least for anything before modern. Paying often 3-5x the price for a few specks of difference just never felt worth it to me, especially since I can buy more cards with the money I saved. To each their own, but I’ll happily gobble up the 9s and 8s u dont take
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Grading is by no means perfect but the opposite is true. Larger windows = more room for subjectivity.
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I’m saying that the expertise level is a really low bar. You can do it yourself and better. There is no secret sauce. Should have also mentioned that they look at your card for seconds.
I don’t totally disagree with your points, but I’ll mention two significant merits of collecting graded cards that aren’t profit-driven:
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Actually finding mint cards. When I came back to Pokemon in late 2019, I started with collecting mint raw EX Series sets. Wasn’t undoable at that point, but it quickly became undoable–to the point where in mid-2020 one couldn’t even find raw NM/M raw copies of many cards. Or it would take buying 20 copies of a card before getting a sufficiently clean copy. Since then, this problem has become 10x worse bc so much more of the mint raw supply has been graded. So for those really picky about condition, buying graded cards is actually often a more cost- and time-efficient way to collect.
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Competition. The idea that a third party has certified your cards as “better” than other peoples’ is attractive to me. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but it is. Nothing to do with profit. Collecting graded cards, for me, is a way of gamifying collecting into a competition of sorts.
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I disagree. If you ask someone “Is this card in good or bad condition?” and the card has multiple creases and a bunch of whitening, most people will give a simple yes, but if you instead ask “On a scale of 1 to 10 what would you grade this card?” that’s when it starts getting really subjective. Its easier to just say a card is in near mint condition than saying its a 8.5 or a 9 is basically what im saying in short.
Agreed
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This feels like you’re throwing too much of the baby out with the bathwater. All of the name brand grading companies, PSA, BGS, TAG, CGC, SGC, whatever - they all do a pretty good job. Mistakes happen, but generally speaking if you buy a “mint” card from these companies, it will generally align with a “pack fresh”. Experienced collectors know what to expect from different numerical grades.
In other words, grading is a really effective way at communicating condition.
My universal and everlasting issue with grading is not with the companies, but with the expectations placed on them. Or maybe better put, the value placed on the service. Consider a PSA 9 card that costs $100 and the PSA 10 version costs $1000. That’s the market putting a $900 valuation on PSA’s ability to distinguish a 9 and a 10. $900 on whether the little ding on one back corner should be overlooked or whether it’s too dingy. The problem is that no grading company today can live up to that $900 valuation in making a consistent satisfactory determination that justifies that price difference.
The problem is that the variation and range of what a “10” is isn’t baked into the price. And so grading is perceived to be a scam for many because the service doesn’t live up to the expectation established by the price. The rational solution is to simply not value specific grades so highly - which I do for building my own collection but it’s not something that will ever happen at the widely in the market. Instead, the market doubles down. As the grade-price gap grows, people question the methods instead of the price. That’s why the 2025 wet dream is AI grading: a total objective authority of whether a ding is too dingy or not. All of this is rooted in how condition has been optimized to the point of absurdity - not because people value these small conditional differences but simply it’s a proxy to say “this card is better than that card”
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Yeah grading is subjective. But its important to consider that for a lot of people, a perfect correlation between the grade and condition does not matter.
I don’t think there are very many PSA 10 collectors out there who carry any expectation that a PSA 9 must be lesser quality than a PSA 10 (talking about lower pop, harder to grade cards). I think most PSA 10 collectors know deep down that what they’re spending a 5-10x premium on is not a “gem mint” card but the label + a (generally) pack fresh card.
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Yeah I understand what you’re saying. I personally think there’s too much greed when it comes to Gem Mint cards. Its just the way it is.
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Personally I wouldn’t use the word greed to describe it. Maybe more “vanity”. But I agree with the essence of your point.
This was the conclusion I came to as well; I used to scour the internet for ages looking for a great deal on a card that seemed good, only to continuously get disappointed by things that my then untrained eyes missed. So I inevitably gravitated towards graded cards; it’s not just the certainty of knowing I’m getting a card that’s in the condition I want, it’s the sheer convenience…
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Even when you know what to look for its still dissapointing 9/10 times nowadays. For english vintage at least. People like to hide the flaws and want to squeeze every penny out of their cards disregarding any morals
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This was my number 1 reason for moving to graded cards.
Bought a bunch of NM raw vintage cards, inspected every aspect of them carefully and sent to PSA. Every single one came back a PSA 8. Felt like gambling to me so just figured I’ll pay more for a PSA 9.
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The general dishonesty is almost amusing, like do they not know eBay has one of the best buyer protection programs around?
I think my final straw with raw vintage was when I ordered a pristine looking card years and years ago, only to get an absolutely ratty copy in the mail. The most poorly attempted bait & switch I’ve ever seen. Bro really tried to trick his HP card onto me for 300 bucks…
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Its so demotivating though, especially here in NL where on most online marketplaces you have zero buyer protection. I dont think i’ve bought more then 10 raw cards in the past year 
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This is why I like to take photos of cards I sell on ebay with a blue light to show the details better. The whitening on cards shows up a lot better this way especially on the front compared to regular lighting. I’m the only seller that I know of that does this. I wish more people did it.
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I’ve never seen this! Could you share an example of whitening under blue light?
Notice on the first photo with regular lighting you cant see the whitening at first glance but with the blue lighting you instantly see it? Even people selling graded cards should take photos like this in my personal opinion.
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Yeah it does stand out a bit more, especially the bottom left corner. Blue light seems like a good way to clarify a spot of glare vs edge whitening too. Thank you for the example!
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