Can PSA ID be used to date a card?

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Hey everyone!

Weird question. Can I estimate the date that a card was graded by its PSA cert ID?

If so, can anyone give me some anecdotal PSA metadata to help me pinpoint relative dates for card IDs? Specifically, something like, “I sent a batch in that was graded in Summer of 2012 - the ID of one card from that set is XXX9010.”

At the very least, getting it to a decade level would be sufficient. More granular is always appreciated! Admittedly, I’m not sure when PSA started grading Pokemon cards…

I’m trying to practice eyeballing card grading, and I had the idea of trying to test if grading has become more strict over time. By definition, this analysis would obviously be super subjective and flawed (esp. because early grading definitely would be skewed towards 9s and 10s based on profit margins at the time) - it’s more of a way to keep myself entertained while I comb through a lot of PSA slabs online.

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www.elitefourum.com/t/the-great-grading-results-thread-specials-are-you-joking/13793/1

Use this thread and you can pinpoint rough times from 2016 onwards at least

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Date. Cert #.
February 2012 - 19,000,000+
July 2012 - 20,000,000+
February 2013 - 21,000,000+
November 2013 - 22,000,000+
September 2014 - 23,000,000+
May 2015 - 24,000,000+
April 2016 - 25,000,000+
September 2016 - 26,000,000+
March 2017 - 27,000,000+
October 2017 - 28,000,000+
May 2018 - 29,000,000+
May 2018 - 40,500,000+
August 2018 - 41,000,000+
November 2018 - 42,000,000+
April 2019 - 43,000,000
December 2019 - 44,000,000+
February 2020 - 45,000,000+
June 2020 - 46,000,000+
August 2020 - 47,000,000+
September 2020 - 49,000,000
October 2020 - 50,000,000
December 2020 - 51,000,000

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This is incredible - thank you!! I’m intrigued by that jump in 2018 - definitely worth further research.

This is a great idea. I might see if I can look into some sports card forums for similar threads in the late 90’s/early 2000s. I had been focusing more on searching for similar questions that were asked rather than “showcase your recent PSA returns” type threads.

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You’re welcome :blush: Earlier certs could be estimated, but I don’t have data that far back. 14,900,000-ish is 2008 for example as Gary had posted. 1998 is 01,000,000+, because that was their 1 millionth cert. milestone.

The discrepancy between 29-40mil is because the 30-40mil certs had been used previously in the 2000s.

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Why is there nothing in the 30 millions?

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Update: looking through baseball card forums yielded an interesting guide on identifying era based on the PSA label itself (you’ll have to scroll down a bit to the images).

I’d love to make a guide in the future that goes into est. dates and other grading meta if I get the time and a large enough sample of slab grades for reference. The hope is to actually do some statistical testing for various beliefs on how the grades are assigned.

www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=184419

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I’ve asked this interesting question before in this thread if you want to give it a read: www.elitefourum.com/t/why-are-there-so-few-3xxxxxxx-certs/27399/1

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Incredibly helpful, thanks! Any chance you have the 2022 data of this?