I was initially convinced it was damaged after PSA encapsulated it due to the location of the crease and the fact that I’ve had a similarly damaged card in my hands before (was lodged between the long ridges along the edge of the holder). I wanted to bring it up because of PSA’s most recent action where they lowered the grade of an encapsulated card submitted for reholder without even contacting the owner and did not provide compensation. I wanted to see whether this new development changed people’s opinions at all about it being on the buyer to seek compensation from PSA.
The secondary goal was getting the cert number of this card out in public so potential buyers in the future know what they’re getting if they happen to see this post. And I don’t know if it’s because I took the pictures poorly but it is a crease, not a scratch.
My response to your last comment would be that the seller obviously knew about this damage due to the value of the card. You don’t just own a five figure card without spending a few seconds inspecting the back. That’s why people may be deeming it relevant. It shows that in this case, the seller must have known about the damage and chose not to disclose it.
I can‘t believe some people on here try to put the whole responsibility of selling a card onto PSA. PSA doesn‘t own the card and isn‘t selling it. Thinking that because a card is PSA graded it removes your responsibility as a seller to clearly advertise the condition is absolutely ridiculous. Seller wrote that the card is mint, card is not mint and there are no clear pics of the damage.
If the seller had correctly advertised what he was selling by posting pictures that accurately represent the item (as stated by eBay policies) this wouldn’t have happened as well. Not all PSA 9s are made equal and it’s the seller’s responsibility to show the card correctly.
This scenario is very different from someone complaining about whitening or centering (I had that as well) on a card bought from a listing made with proper scans/pictures.
I will never put notes about a graded cards condition. Luckily, I dont really sell. You see a ton of people that say the following under “description” just to avoid this headache: “please see photos of the card for condition, the card in the photos is the card you will receive. If you would like more photos please ask.”
I agree with that, I don’t like to make any statement regarding conditions in the description either, especially if the card has been professionally graded. It’s not my duty to decide if a card is a “strong” or “weak” 9, or whatever grade it took. However, I feel like it is my duty to provide pictures good enough so that the buyer can decide for himself if he’s comfortable with that grade or not.
In this instance the seller should have shown better the condition of the card IMHO. Since the crease wasn’t really visible, I don’t think it’s “unethical” for ShadowLugia to return it.
I might have more sympathy with the seller if they didn’t explicitly say “the the card is in amazing condition, the edges are in amazing condition”. Probably could analyse the wording of that more as well.
I’d return it. The seller likely knew about the flaw, and that’s something you need to disclose. Especially for an expensive card like this. If it was a raw card and the pictures hid this flaw, you would be a bit upset right? So why would that change just because it’s slabbed.
I get both sides of the argument, but we all know those who sell a lot of cards and get on the receiving end of ebays money back guarentee will be those saying: Is PSA issue! do not hassle the seller. Those on the receiving end (buyers) will be like why should I now have to deal with this hassle and chasing psa.
If the item was clearly listed with a defect then yes you can deal with psa, if not well why should you. Yes the seller is selling a third party graded item, but you know they are most likely fully aware of the crease or whatever it is, just say about it!
It is internet purchasing, you don’t get to see it in person, If you could, you would have turned it down.
Looks like you are looking for opinions so mine is: No we should not return things relating to or giving our opinion on weak/strong grades, but a defect/damage should be described, A zoomed in/ close up would be enough to notify a buyer.
“MINT 9 (Mint): A PSA MINT 9 is a superb condition card that exhibits only one of the following minor flaws: a very slight wax stain on the reverse, a minor printing imperfection or slightly off-white borders. Centering must be approximately 60/40 to 65/35 or better on the front and 90/10 or better on the reverse.”
Doesn’t PSA have this policy in place for a reason? If a card was mistakenly graded higher than it deserved, then the idea that PSA should pay out compensation would be based on the idea that the owner now “deserves” the higher value for their card. If someone submits a card with a crease and it gets misgraded, then the “honest” thing to do would be to inform PSA so they can correct their mistake. I don’t expect people to actually take this step, but as anything in the real world, people and companies can make mistakes.
The notion that “sellers should not be responsible for errors by PSA” makes sense when you’re talking about the headache it causes for lower end cards where sellers genuinely did not notice and buyers open return cases, or when PSA makes a judgement call between two grades and the buyer is arguing a speck of whitening, but I feel it doesn’t apply when the seller does notice the damage. If anything, PSA’s mistake made money for the seller. A misgraded PSA 9 is still worth more than a PSA 6.
Yes, it somewhat makes sense in that PSA shouldn’t have to pay out to the submitter if they submit a card in PSA 6 condition and it mistakenly achieves a 9. The submitter never lost any money and shouldn’t be paid up to the higher value, the grade should just be fixed as you say.
The reason I say buyers should (generally) not be able to return graded cards because of disagreeing with the grade is because the financial guarantee is specifically designed to compensate buyers like you who truly receive a card that is misgraded. It can also act as a filter for those who think their PSA 9 isn’t a “tru 9” or 10 isn’t a “tru 10” and so on. “Take it up with PSA” is just a blanket response for all of these “I bought a misgrade” posts that we see fairly frequently. However, this only works if the damage was pre-encapsulation and PSA actually acts in good faith with the financial guarantee. The seller concealing the damage wouldn’t even be an issue because you’d get paid up and made whole and the card would be corrected.
Wtf is the point of PSA’s financial guarantee or upcharges if they’re more likely than not to ignore these types of misgrades and offer no compensation. I understand that PSA makes all of us a good amount of money with their grading but at times it feels like they’re just waxing the consumer with these types of business practices
When you ship this back to Europe chances are the seller will have to pay custom fees on your declared value. Not sure what that is in UK but in my country that would be 5 figures (33%).
Might be worth having a talk with the seller before sending it back, just saying.
I also agree the price you paid reflects condition, hate to say it but quite frankly it was pretty obvious even from the two eBay scans it had several flaws.
Is PSA’s financial guarantee highly unreliable? I would like to hear stories of people who have had success with it. I would accept the return as a seller and also think it’s important to disclose damage like this in the listing. This is just my personal way of doing business on eBay. I have never returned a weakly graded card. I can very much understand wanting to return in this case though. On a lighter note I love the Trop wind 99! A hard one to catch!
The struggle in quantifying PSA’s financial guarantee rate is that not all examples are equal. Its impossible to know how many actual misgrades vs TrU GRaDeS make up the success rate data.
Ahh I hadn’t realized that. Is there no way to mark something like “returned goods” on the customs form to avoid this? Thanks for calling this out and that would really suck if it’s unavoidable. However, it could have been avoided if the seller simply disclosed the issue. I am in conversation with the seller and he is not giving me any other option other than letting eBay decide the case.
To your second point, if you truly saw the card before the auction ended and noticed the crease, then my hats off to you. I personally think it’s unfair to expect potential buyers to have spotted it without knowing what to be looking for. There have already been multiple bidders/potential bidders on this auction admit that they did not spot the damage. Then you add on the seller’s wording in his description and IMO it’s a pretty clear cut case. On eBay, the onus is on the seller to accurately describe the item. This also makes sense because the seller is the one with the item in their possession and therefore is in the best position to do so.