Hey guys I was doing some digging on some of the better ways to invest my money when it comes to card collecting and I came across a link to a discussion on this board, can seem to find it now but I’ll try and find it and post it for reference sake . It’s from 2015 and speaks about the recent flood of cards being sent into psa for grading and how it’s affecting the market. The basic vibe of the conversation to me felt like if it wasn’t psa 10 it was nothing, and since I’m looking to get more graded stuff into my collection for me it would be ALOT easier just to buy the cards already graded instead of putting in the time and effort into sending them in but is that a wise idea do you guys think psa 9 cards will eventually recover and garner more value down the road or should I just stick with being ultra picky and sending only cards I think may be worthy of a 10?
From what I’ve heard psa 9 cards actually sell quite well depending on the era it is from, 9s are considerably cheaper and a lot of people want to collect the card and not the grade so if it’s 9 or 10 it doesn’t matter. I personally don’t mind sending cards I know won’t get 10s if I need them for my collection to act as placeholders for if I ever decide I want to upgrade them to a higher grade.
Ok yea see that puts me at ease a bit more because that’s exactly it, I saw it as an advantage since psa 9s are considerably cheaper it’s not exactly the grade I’m after but more a less a way to finish off sets I have and to add more of a premium feel to my collection and bolster it’s future worth, and since I don’t have a psa subscription yet it would cost me something like 30 dollars to grade just a single card and since my collection consists of mainly newer sets it just doesn’t make sense for me to grade them myself, for right now atleast, I just wanted to make sure my thought process wasn’t wrong and that I would be spending my money smartly. Nothing worse that getting stung like that!
If you ever do decide to dabble in grading some cards yourself, be sure to check out the forum grading service. It can be a worthwhile experience and sometimes you can make out well getting PSA 9/10’s for less than buying a graded 9 if you can scour eBay and dig up gem cards here and there.
You can get it done for quite a bit cheaper than submitting in very small batches on your own.
Whoa awesome! I didn’t about that! That’s not bad! That may be a route for me to take! Thanks for the link!
For me, PSA 9, especially 1st editions are my highest turnover of graded cards, then followed by PSA 10,
A lot of collectors out there are taking advantage of the lower grade and lower prices by collecting a lot of WOTC sets, 1st edition in PSA 9 grades for relatively good prices,
A lot more collectors have entered the scene in just the last 12 months and personally I would say spread collecting lets say Five PSA 9 1st edition Fossil cards might be a better future value than buying One PSA 10 1st edition Fossil card,
PSA 10 prices also have more fluctuations in price depending on the population, PSA 9 prices are relatively more stable,
So just as a current opinion PSA 9s, dependant on set, are definitely worth collecting/ investing in! 
Hope that is on topic…!
Perfectly on topic I didn’t even think look into some of the older cards I just automatically assumed at this point they would still be out of my price range. I’ll have to look into them. mine could use some updating lol I’ve still got all my holos from when I was a kid but they’re all in rough shape my best one is probably around a 7 the rest are well played lol thanks for the input!
If you are going to go for 9s I would honestly avoid newer cards and just buy them ungraded and do the grading yourself, most of the time the cards will get 9s so unless the price of a 9 is less than the price of the ungraded plus say $10 then you can get them cheaper getting them yourself.
Well now that I’ve been turned onto the grading service that the forum provides I’ll definitely be sure to keep that in mind, why pay the seller of a newer card the premium of it being graded when I can pull it out of the pack and only pay 15 to have it graded, like you said quite a bit cheaper! And thats what i was saying it just wouldnt be worth it in my earlier post! Thanks !
For XY cards onwards it’s definitely the way forward if you collect 9s. With things before it becomes more and more difficult and take more of your time up as you go further back for you to find mint ungraded cards for sale so then buying already graded cards becomes the much easier option.