Itâs all RNG. If you like gambling, go Black Label hunting with modern chase cards.
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Right, thatâs why I need a friend. Not gonna make any money with those <=1% chances.
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I wanted to share my opinion on this matter. I like to compare Vintage PSA 9s and PSA 10âs to modern PSA 10âs and BGS Black Labels. Why? Because in each comparison, the differences between the 9 and 10 or the 10 and Black label are marginal, yet the price jump is huge!
@bill I think you mentioned how there are 20,000 modern PSA 10âs of each card or something along that line and thats where I think the comparison is very important.
In general, WOTC cards are not rare. Yes, there are rare cards of course, but the vast majority have thousands of cards printed. So what is the distinguishing factor then? Conditional Rarity
Look at the pop reports for PSA 9âs and 10âs of vintage and you will see an absurd population difference, just like with modern PSA 10âs versus BGS Black labels.
In the WOTC era, a pack fresh card is generally a PSA 9. In the modern era, pack fresh cards are generally a PSA 10. But in vintage/modern eras, only *exceptional cards get PSA 10/BGS BL.
What I am saying is modern PSA 10âs are essentially participation trophies for modern at this point. Since print quality has gotten so good, there are really only minimal things to distinguish conditional rarity at this point. So, black labels achieve a much greater sales price.
I have graded many black labels (approaching 100 at this point) so I am quite experienced with them. Let me tell you this: Black labels make modern fun for me! Itâs that simple. PSA 10âs are too easy.
People always complain when Black labels say high for a couple reasons:
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The person complaining has never graded a black label
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The person complaining primarily has a PSA collection
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The person complaining canât sell there WOTC PSA 9âs for a fraction of what the Black label modern card goes for. I get it. Definitely frustrating.
I am just sharing my perspective but the bottom line is this - in a world where most modern chase cards have 5-figure PSA 10 pop reports, how do you create value? Well, the market seems to believe that a âstrong 10â provides a lot more value.
And after having graded quite a few black labels, particularly smaller ones, sometimes the value jump doesnât even make sense. I donât want to hear from people who have never graded a black label on this specific point, but how much harder is it grade a black label than a PSA 10 on modern? Is it 2x harder? 5x? 10x? I would argue its somewhere between 10x and 20x times harder, but sometimes value is only 3x a PSA 10.
I grade at all three companies, but we all know if the goal is investment and flipping, PSA has always been the answer. Even with black labels having âquite a stirâ in the market, the easy and least risky move will always be grading with PSA. People forget that when you see a Black label of a card, that same collector likely spent hundreds of dollars finding the perfect copy and they have quite a few BGS 9.5âs lying around that are worth less than raw price.
Happy to answer questions, just wanted to share perspective 
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Iâm glad that you enjoy black labels.
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Nothing else about my post resonated? haha Its totally okay if you disagree!
As far as Iâm concerned, I hope people keep spending $32k on Black Label cards; more opportunity for me to buy PSA 10s with less competitors 
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I guess I will weigh on this since I am the original poster for all this.
So for me, the marginal differences between a BGS 10 vs BGS 10 Black label are so small that I would bet if a card that was a âBlack Labelâ was cracked and resubmitted, if it would get the BGS 10 Black label again.
There is a reason why people draw the connection between BGS and the Lottery. That is just it, if you hit that Black label you get 3x or even more the price of a PSA 10 and you are well into the money.
There is very little consistency where if I cracked a PSA 10 and resubmitted it again and again, I would say depending on the card, I would get 80% of the time to come back as a PSA 10. The same goes for PSA 9 being a set in stone type of condition where everything is Mint except for a slight off centering or ding.
Most people here on this forum and I would say in general would rather collect a unique artwork of a card in a PSA 8 rather than a unique label, especially for the prices they go for.
Shilled or not, a Black label Poncho Mega X Charizard went for about 35K. For that type of price, you could get 70% of all the different styles of ponchos ever made in all PSA 10. ( I should know, I am collecting all of them and the total value is around 50K)
I guess in a short summary, the people collecting Black labels arenât the majority in this forum and especially of the more experienced crowd in this hobby.
Black labels are very much a newer contrived source of value. Also a byproduct of modern printing being so good with everything being slabs immediately once it comes out of the booster pack.
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As a resident black label skeptic, I can offer a reply.
I donât think anyone is confused about the concept of conditional rarity. Your analogy between vintage 9 and 10 is good but it fails on one important point. The difference being that there is an actual physical, real, predictable difference between a PSA 9 and PSA 10.
I can predict with a decent degree of accuracy what cards I submit will get a PSA 6,7,8,9,10.
By your own admission here, people are sending in more cards that donât qualify as black label than ones that are. If there was a meaningful conditional difference between a nonBL and a BL, then why do people have a hard time discriminating the difference?
If you gave me 100 mint copies of a card and asked me to separate out the black labels, I would not be able to with any meaningful degree of accuracy or confidence. If you asked me to do the same between PSA 9 or PSA 10 I could.
If youâre ok with the randomness of it all and find the hunt fun then I donât want to take that away from you. But as someone who works in science, Iâm only interested in results that are significant and repeatable.
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every single time Ive resubbed a bgs card, the subgrades changed (usually the overall grade changed too). They have never ever remained the same on all 4, very rarely on 3
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Black Labels are the epitome of âBuy the grade, not the cardâ.
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There are too many scales for grading. There are cards in PSA 10 cases and CGC 10 cases that would be a black label. If I crack a black label and resubmit 3 different times, it is not repeatable
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I have had a few cards get graded the exact same, but I would agree it changes more often than not. Human graders 
@pfm Excellent response here and thank you for your feedback.
I agree that there is usually a key difference between WOTC 9 and 10âs. Usually being the key word of course. More often than not IMO I see too many 10âs that would likely be 9âs more often than not on any given day. But I agreee that we would hope that all black labels would still be black labels no matter the day.
In terms of figuring out if cards are black label worthy or not, I think that requires a bit more grace. It takes time to learn what actually deems a card perfect. If you are used to PSA standards, such as 60/40 centering, then making the switch to looking for 50/50 centered cards is quite a big leap. Similarly, lots of edge marks or corner marks that fly at PSA would immediately prevent a black label at BGS. Just a matter of learning. Currently, I have quite a high BGS 10 rate - just took lots of submissions to learn And in regards to being able to pick out the black label candidates⊠I can do that. Recent trip to Japan I hand picked over 10 black labels. Time and Practice. Of course no one is perfect and thats most true of graders haha I am sure all of us have cracked PSA 8âs that came back as 10âs. Similarly, if I disagree with a beckett grade that I know is a black label, I will gladly crack it and send it back. Obviously we would like not to have to do that⊠but human graders.
@Slade I think your comparison for Cracking PSA 10âs and them coming back as 10âs would work well for most modern 10âs and hopefully a good amount of WOTC era 10âs but PSA standards can be a little wide and over inclusive, so weak 10âs not so much.
I do however fully agree with the sentiment of collecting cards that are primarily a unique artwork. If I had 35k to spend, I would not buy a black label poncho. I donât think most collectors that grade them even would. As someone who has sold some high value black labels, we often underestimate the deep pockets of the overseas buyers. Their buying habits remain a mystery to me haha
I do think we are in a junk era of slabs. Like I said, with such high rates of PSA 10âs on modern cards, it can be fun if you really like the artwork to be able to distinguish it as âthe strongest 10â. Not everyones cup of tea of course.
@Poochyena Donât even get me started. On instagram we see Lowpoppings PSA 10 Japanese GS rayquaza that is literally a 5 or 6 in my book, but it has traded hands many times. For the most part I only collect black labels that I grade since I know their quality. Its pretty rare for me to buy one and I usually only do so if it matches my collection goals (which are very random). And as someone who enjoys modern artwork, it makes modern have a challenge of sorts
@aladdinisking From a zoomed out perspective I think you are correct. But you have to stay zoomed out and tunnel visioned to maintain that perspective. The second you compare actual rare items, question the reality of a black label grade, or consider the cost of capital, there is reasonable doubt.
Overall I think the black label market today is big hat no cattle; people who have more money than knowledge. This isnât unique to pokemon at all. I just watched a watch expert explain how celebrities getting into watches buy the most expensive retail options, because they donât have the necessary knowledge to enter vintage. Watches have more barriers than pokemon, but the point is very relevant. Most black labels collectors think the game ends at the safari zone, and just want the âbestâ version of a Exeggcute, because thatâs the furthest they travelled in the game.
Ultimately people can buy what they want, but there is a reason black labels are predominately if not exclusively purchased by mostly newcomers.
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The collectors that are spending 32k on a black label probably already have the PSA 10âs of any card they want 
Couldnt be me haha
This is an excellent take. As I just mentioned above, many of the high value black label sales have come from overseas buyers. They are certainly the minority.
Of course, I am happy to buy a modern Art rare for $200 but would not touch any 5-figure cards.
I am not a newcomer and I know you arenât looping me in as one per se but I am probably beating a dead horse when I say that I have found that modern is fun when I am trying to get black labels.
If, and this is a big if, but IF modern will hold value 10 or 20 years from now, it wonât be PSA 10âs since they are so common - a stronger 10 will hold value
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If we agree that PSA can sometimes fail at discriminating between a 9 and a 10, why should we have any confidence that BGS graders can consistently distinguish between a 9.5 and a 10 on four different subgrades? Are BGS graders superhuman?
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The BGS graders are certainly not superhuman. When you get down the subgrade level, the difference between a 9.5 and 10 on a specific subgrade is usually very small. Whether or not you choose to believe BGS or PSA, I think the same statement sung from the rooftops for years still rings true - buy the card, not the grade
As I have mentioned, it is pretty rare for me to buy a black label. I think we can all agree that we usually know the quality of the cards we submit better than the grader. Anyone who has been in the grading space for years is not surprised when a PSA 6 upgrades to a PSA 10. We know that grading is subjective and human error exists. But of course when we have a grade that is deemed seemingly perfect, it will be scrutinized a whole lot more.
This is really an exaggeration. Many modern cards have PSA pop reports suggesting closer to 30% gem rate, meaning âgenerally NOT a PSA 10.â
Do you really believe this? You think modern PSA 10s will lose their value because the population size is large? Demand is just as important as supply, and there is currently much more demand for PSA 10 sets than Black Labels.