Yup i agree.
Lol, really man? Did you even read what I initially wrote in this thread? I actually complained that a Hyper Rare Charizard was a questionable 10 and wondered how it got that grade…and you’re saying I should be PR for PSA? Smh.
You’re right, the discussion isn’t singularly about YOUR card but it is YOUR card that you are basing you evidence on, as well as the PERCEPTION of others…that is all ANECDOTAL. I’m also not saying your opinion doesn’t matter on this forum, I meant it doesn’t matter in accordance to what grade your card actually got when PSA assigned it. You can opine all you want here.
At the end of the day, you are holding dearly to the idea that “grading of Pokemon cards have changed over the last little bit (with an implication that standards are lower)” when in reality, no, it has not changed and providing anecdotal evidence to argue against that fact is utterly meaningless.
Like all of us, I can only speak from my own PSA grading experience. Fortunately for all of you, my experience exceeds ALL of yours combined.
I’ve been grading cards since 1994/95. I’ve graded more non sports cards than anybody in the world every year, including this past one, since 1998. I’ve certainly submitted and reviewed the most Pokemon cards.
One of the guys from here on efour visited me for several hours the other night and was blown away by the vast amount of PSA cards I had here in my living room that were my “to be listed” and “to be graded” cards. And that didn’t include my best back stock or treasured collection which you can imagine the size of.
This member is free to come forward if he’d like.
So much for my qualifications. Now let me give my opinion on the above posts.
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Besides slight changes made in grading procedures in 2003, both PSA and BGS haven’t noticeably changed their grading methods or parameters since the 1990s.
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Mistakes happen like a back may be forgotten or research may sneeze on a card.
This is understandable considering a million cards a year get graded by PSA alone. -
Scott mentioned the prohibitive cost of laser or scanner grading. I love technology as an observer and would love to see this but I know little about their costs so he’s probably right. That may be impractical.
I have to attribute the “too hard” or “too easy” etc comments to a general lack of knowledge or experience. Again, I’m speaking generally or overall because one can always find anomalies in gigantic samples.
In a nutshell: Nothing procedurally has changed. The results are in line with those of 20 years ago.
Only the customer base has changed, which you are all a part of, and we can help each other learn and understand this important part of our great hobby.
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I have to say guys. Plasma storm… Charizard authority sent in 100 copies of blastoide and Charizard. Guess what? Not a single 10 
That is something I just don’t understand. And probably never will.
Now here is the possibility right…
What if alll the shit ones were graded first and now all there’s left is good ones. 
The thing I will say is… The amount of copies even though it is very large from one person … Charizard authority. Smpratticans… whoever. The thing is, there is so much more people now looking for gem mint worthy copies to go to PSA. That what we are seeing is alot more successful attempts. Because there is in fact a much larger number of attempts.
Perhaps…
Now take the no rarities. The upsurge in people trying to find these mint and people trying to grade Pokemon cards between when the first PSA 10 appeared and now is out of this world… Yet guys. Look at that pop report… It ain’t going anywhere. This is the strength to focus on when it comes to PSA.
It’s the strength I focus on when it comes to bgs 
yeeeaaa #bgsisthebestandbeatsPSAthosewhodenyitwillsufferforeveratthehandsofsynd
But look guys if your feeling down I know what will cheer you up… Everytime you see a plasma storm zard or Blastoise graded in 10, screenshot those results over to Charizard authority and add a drop of lavender to your bath, leave town with an orange and pretend your lauphing at it.
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I watched a video of someone submitting 51 copies of 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie(the most graded sports card of all time across PSA and Beckett. That one card has more graded copies in PSA than the Pokemon Game category all combined) and only one got a 10, most got 5s and 6s, even though these cards were all pack fresh to sleeve as the guy cracked 6 cases. The thing is if you submit a lot of the same card and one of them has a flaw, the grader(s), assuming the same, will pay special attention to the same spot of the card. The Plasma Storm secret rares are mostly off centered and when the grader(s) saw it, they most probably look at that part first for the next cards to come. Graders are human too.
Would it be different if Rusty had sent them in different submissions? I don’t know, maybe there will be.
Grading cards is like sitting for an external exam where you don’t know who will mark your paper. Your essay may seem better to a marker than some others even though they follow the guidelines handed out by the Education Department. PSA is like that too, except you get to get your physical tests back and review them yourselves.
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I don’t think we can ignore the fact that it actually is an issue. As much as I’d love to be happy with the grades I receive when PSA has graded them, which quite frankly I am happy with, there is a problem.
The problem is that other, perhaps newer, people that are interested in grading cards do not believe that PSA grades correctly, and the resulting problem is that mostly trades are going wrong, and it does happen more often at a “weak grade”. We can tell as much as we want to buy the card and not buy the grade, but those people refuse to do that and as a result you get returns, etc.
It is a problem in my opinion, and I’m not suggesting that the grading standards of PSA have changed, but maybe there is more disparity between the cards and the grades they have received? And to reiterate again, this disparity goes both ways. As you mention there are different graders and PSA is giving us a subjective service, as it is never going to be 100% objective, and we pay for that. So differences are bound to happen.
This is the point I was making. A lot of people have been saying that things are hearsay and whatnot, however if someone looks at a 100 submission like that with not one 10 then someone gets three 10s of that Plasma Zard back in one submission (I do not know how many were attempted but safe to say it wasn’t close to 100) does that not count as data? Combine that with the fact that the Blastoise went from pop 4 to pop 9 within 3 months. Has anything changed formally with PSA grading system? No. It could be a variety of reasons why all of sudden the pop exploded on an already heavily graded card.
Each person just has an anecdote. Too small of a sample size to pull any real conclusions. Given that, each card is WAYY too small of a sample size. You can never get around that. When I felt that I was getting more 10’s than I had in the past, I let the numbers speak for themselves. The “7-18-17 stats” tab shows the history of grades given from origin to 5-23-16 and compares it to those given from then until recently. Two large sample sizes (the ENTIRE sample) of all 8/9/10 grades in a few WOTC sets. The ratios were quite consistent as you can see below. Under the assumption that the same quality of cards was submitted in the two time periods (IMO not unreasonable given the size) we can say grading is resulting in similar grades.
I think in my first year or two here I had been overly critical of PSA. I definitely had poor luck of having some genuine issues regarding PSA in my first few large submissions, but they professionally fully resolved them through their financial guarantee of grade and authenticity. I still will see occasional things that I think are 9’s go 10, and occasional things that I think are 10 go 9. It rarely is more than one grade off. I submitted a few hundred cards in each of my first two years, but I am on pace to be well over 1,000 this year and have seen very consistent service throughout overall.
The problem is 100% a problem of social media scrutiny and sheer volume. For any given defect rate it is obvious that a larger submission rate will result in a larger number of defects. We are seeing that since my work above shows that these early WOTC sets were graded as much in the past year as they were in the first 17 years. Every time there is a defect it gets blown up here/IG/FB etc. We see and hear about just about case where it happens so it feels like it happens a lot. Same thing goes with plane crashes and shootings in the media. Their rate is stable or if anything actually decreasing, but the way the media reports every single one and blows them up it feels like they’ve gone up substantially. Mass regrading is a contributing factor as well as people intentionally game the system and when a card meets a 10 case it will stay there forever. A number of cards in PSA 10 cases were once in PSA 9 cases that may have been more deserving.
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I need to figure out how to write code for a “love” button, so I can love this comment.
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I’ve brought this up before both here on e4 as well as on PSA.
Chok is absolutely right. If there is a similar problem on like cards, and you have a stack of them, stagger their submissions.
Now yes, there’s a chance that if the grader ups the borderline card they could up all of them. Seen it many times.
What you need to do is take this info and utilize it into your submission strategies.
Something I’ve found that works is randomizing the cards in the submission stack. For instance if you have an idea of what grade a card might get, order them in such as 8, 9, 10, 8, 9, 10, 9, 8, 9, 8, 7, 6, 10, 9, for example. This has worked perfectly for me and increases the grade accuracy. Japanese cards have different parameters and so tend to require attention to different nuances. The randomization I’ve found helps to keep the graders attention to detail going.
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I’ve thought about that as well.
For instance, imagine you submit a stack of 100 some-odd cards that you know are virtually flawless. You’re an experienced grader yourself. Now imagine that you sprinkle in a couple cards that are in near-mint/mint condition; cards you expect to receive a PSA 9. I’d hypothesize that PSA will be less strict in grading, thus erroneously assigning PSA 10s to some percentage of PSA 9-worthy cards.
Interesting idea about staggering/mixing up the submission - it does seem like that would help cleanse the grader’s palette so to speak for each card. I was so nervous and eager to send off my cards for my first submission that I listed them in a totally nonsensical, chaotic manner - good to know that might actually benefit me!psa im not joking if those charizards don’t get a 10…
Precisely. I may even add a PSA 5 or 6 1st ed shadowless in there right next to a 10. Even as a bogus submission it helps to restandardize the grades
lol I always put multiples of the same card in sequential order from worst to best condition for contrast, so after grading the worst looking one, the grader is forced to give the next card at least the same grade or higher for the sake of consistency. So if I have three mint cards, and the first two get 9’s and the third one looks a little better than the first two they may be more inclined to give it a 10. Conversely, if the grader saw the best card first and gave it a 9, they have no choice but to give the next two a 9 or worse.
I don’t think psychological stuff like this actually works (they shouldn’t if the grader is being objective) but I guess these little tricks helps people be more optimistic about submissions.
@peacock it’s less to do with psychology and more to do with the fact that they’re human beings. Humans like to put things into categories… after a time of doing things. If you put 1,000 mint CD promo Charizards in a row and had a grader sit down and spend 8 hours grading them, will the 499th one graded be as objective as the first one? With some graders maybe others maybe not. It takes a lot of work to be 100% consistantly objective.
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I wasn’t saying I expect graders to be perfectly objective, but the objectivity/subjectivity of human perception (i.e. how one perceives the “eye appeal” of an object/card/collectible) is absolutely influenced by psychology, hence the aforementioned submission grouping strategies we attempt for a desired psychological effect. However, my point was that in the scope of a common <100 card submission such as mine, the effect of card ordering should be negligible, and it is. Otherwise, PSA would deserve the recent flak its getting.
My point is it’s LESS about psychology than people think… exhaustion plays a role too. Some people seem to think that their job can be boiled down to behavioral science… I’m saying it can be explained a lot simpler that… it’s just good old fasioned hard work.
Just sharing my opinion, not trying to dissuade you from yours 
I know it works from my personal experience.
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Yeah thats the tricky thing with these paramters thing with psa. It can be the difference between a 9 and 10 or on the rare occasion an 8 and a 10. ive seen people regrade 8s as 10s a fair few times. Thats the difference with bgs and psa, bgs dont have parameterbz. The strictness on hitting those subgrades is more consistant in the sense that if you were to review or resubmit your card is going to stay a 9.5… I havent seen anyone cross over a pokemon card from a 9.5 to a PRISTINE 10 gold label. NOT a single person. YET with psa ive seen BGS MINT 9 cross over to psa 10, and a shit ton of PSA 9 review to a 10.
One group of graderbz could have got those 100 and been ultra strict on all of them as far as centering and appeal of aestetic on the front gos.
IF it was submitted in one sub and done on the same day… However Im not sure how that works.
I say its not a good idea to sub 100 of the same card lol unless your subbing like xy japanese cards.
But errrr,… Does anyone think of this situation similar to JAPANESE SHININGS.
Remeber japanese shinings were impossible to grade becaUSE of centering. People say it was that and the edge chipping you see on the front of the boarders and the centering which as can be seen on DP shinings. As milhousement said you just breath close to dp shinings and the corners fly off lol.
But erm, yeah the shinings went from being very low pop during the era of not many people grading cards, to suddenly pops over 10. This pop ascension was during this late 2015 - end of 2016 spike of everyone and there mother grading.
Now if noone noticed… The rate of PACK FRESH shining cards in yahoo japan spiked like crazy during this time. I SEE gem mint copies all the time and its nothing like it was back when the first ones were graded. IT was much more difficult back before this time from what i gather to get mint centered candidates of the japanese shinings.
I do see alot of people getting angry at people who score lots of 10s, or saying that there cards dont deserve 10s.
Lets also refer to the MEW gold star 1st ed and unlimited. It has the worst centering and appeal. Its impossible to hit a 10 on.
During this ascension… we still see the mew after all this time and everyone grading, the pop is still ultra ultra low. This is the kind of consistancy we needs psa to stay at… we could assume that possibly all graders start remembering how these sets work and they set a certain standard on cards from there memory. IM quite sure that they would all have a strict standard for 1st ed base.
I wonder if I can get the true pop 1 mew though… bgs gold labelston 
There is a possibilty in this world to get psa 10 and its how we build our collections… But if you want ultra challenge and near impossibilitinz then you can look no furtherb then bgs.
JUST a suggestion… THat people like us who have been grading and getting cards for a long time should be the professional graders for that hobby. Someone who has much more knowledge of pokemon should be the ones to grade the pokemon orders. It says each card goes through a group of graders and the final outcome is kinda decided between those few peoples average. They need 4 pokemon peeps like us to learn the ways of professional grading, and then those 4 people with there knowledge and new grading skill to do all the pokemon orders. The consistancy is obviously at a great spot according to this data that gottaketchemall collected, but imagine if could make it even better
I agree and disagree with so many statement here in this thread. As a grader of atleast 2000 cards I can say I’ve had some slightly more LENIENT grades and some much more harsh grades over my 4 years of card grading. I’ve disagreed with many grades of my cards that graded 9s and 10s as well as cards I’ve purchased from all across the cards certification numbers both very old to just back from psa. it all levels out and is based upon each graders opinion. I keep graders on there toes by tactical card placement as well. and been for 4 years and it works great.we are all human and make plenty of errors in life at home and work, especially once we get tired so expect some error! As Scott and a few others have said there is such a large amount of people sending to psa there is more apparent errors, mainly due to the fact that there’s so many more pokemon cards being graded than ever before!
So to answer your question psa isn’t getting more LENIENT. There’s just a much larger amount being graded than before. I can assure you all that I have atleast 90 percent of my 10s are 10s. I have owned well over 500 psa 10s
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