Do you overpay for strong cards within a grade? For example, a PSA 9 Mint card that looks indistinguishable from a PSA 10 Gem Mint card.
Yes
No
0voters
I tend to pay a premium for very clean cards that are strong for their grade. This might be an extra 10%-20% on average, but has been as much as 50%+ over recent sales. For clarity, I overpay for strongly graded cards that will stay within my collection; this question is not necessarily about buying undergraded cards to cross-grade for profit.
If you do overpay for cards that exceed your expectations, how much do you overpay? Feel free to include examples. If you donāt, why not?
I voted yes initially although, I may have miss interpreted the question. Iāve changed it to no now.
As an example, a couple of weeks ago I found some cards that were PSA 10 on auction that I was interested in. The backs of them were laughable unfortunately therefore, I was no longer going to bid.
Would I have paid over market if this was a clean copy? No, Iād liked to have paid market give or take. If itās not a clean copy however, Iāll pass on it completely and wait for a cleaner copy. The cards werenāt that rare so thereās no fomo about not finding another.
I donāt like overpaying, but if for example there are 3 cards listed and the price difference isnāt huge (I agree with 10-20% maximum), Iāll probably take the strongest.
Iām less less likely to intentionally give a premium if itās the only one I see, and I have no comparison. Probably some psychological effects playing a role for me.
My process for finding a candidate is something like this:
Search name of card with āPSA 8ā in the description.
Scroll through the results and favorite every card that looks like a possible candidate.
Go through the favorites and remove anything that is poorly centered or has a conspicuous flaw I missed.
Evaluate which card to buy based on price and distance.
During stage 4, I will often look at the more expensive ones first under the presumption they will either be the best possible candidate or they will be easy to rule out by not offering anything to justify the premium.
I typically end up buying a card at roughly the median price but I definitely will buy the more expensive one if itās the one that offers me the most compared to the other options.
In the end of the day to me a PSA 9 is a 9 and not a 10. And so I donāt really see a point in paying extra for a 9 that I would feel is subjectively āstrongā because the market will stay pay the PSA 9 price if I ever decided to sell it. Another thing is what is āstrongā to one person could be āweakā to another depending on ones preferences. Thereās pretty much always good reasons why PSA grades what they do and in my experience 9s that should probably be a 10 are the outliers and exceptions and not the norm.
When it comes to lower grades though, I do like going for what seems to be āstrongā. For example, there can be lots of PSA 6s that really look a lot better than what weād envision a 6/10 condition to be. Same with PSA 5, there can be at times a pretty large range in the conditional attributes at times. The great thing about these low grades as well is most people donāt value them as highly to begin with, so you donāt even have to worry about paying extra even if you do find a subjectively āstrongā example in the lower grade range. This is why I tend to target them for my binder sets.
I do this with PSA 6. If you look at the card without looking at the label, does it look mint? If so, I would pay the PSA 6 market price or slightly above
When buying online itās very hard to make a full assessment of a card from scans. Yes, you can see centering and any edgewear, but other flaws like edge silvering, holo scratches, print lines, etc. may not show up very well or at all. So while I always make sure a card Iām buying has acceptable centering and no obvious edgewear, I can never really be sure, especially on the lower grades where there should be something wrong with the card. Because of this, I wonāt overpay just based on scans. I wonāt ask for more pictures because Iād need to see it in person to make a full assessment.
With most of the cards Iām looking for, I have no trouble finding a high-quality copy (e.g. good centering, minimal-no edgewear/obvious flaws) at market value. Granted, my wants are almost exclusively set cards.
As others have mentioned, itās not so much that Iāll overpay for a high-quality card, but that I simply wonāt pay at all for a copy that doesnāt appear to meet my standards.
All this being said, if someone came to me in-person and offered me an exceptionally strong card for a reasonable amount above market value, Iād probably take it. So while Iām not opposed to paying more for a strong copy, in the current market I find it unnecessary/impractical to do so.
I try to look for the best card I can get in the grade Iām targeting. Sometimes sellers want a premium but honestly Iāve only run into that issue once. When it comes down to it Iād rather buy a nice card once instead of a card that had a noticeable defect and then have to sell that card and get a new one. So if I have to pay more I will but that has only happened once
I buy PSA 10ās and many times the population is really low, so I donāt have time to pick and choose. Not going to wait for the next copy to come up. Got frustrated with the hobby until I started buying only my top chase cards, which donāt come up too often. So when your fixated on the certain cards, you canāt really wait for next opportunity.
Even though I would prefer stronger copies (recent certs for example) - but then you are essentially make a pop 100 card into a pop 15 or so.
Ultimately a PSA 10 is a PSA 10. Although some 9ās may look better, it will never be better than a 10 slab. And no vintage card (WOTC) is a 100 percent clean.
I will pay premium for very strong PSA 9 so that I can regrade it to PSA 10. Anything PSA 8 or below, I tend to sell or regrade to Authentic. I like the grades of slabs in my personal collection to be consistent.
I never thought about this when buying a card but it turned out, that I bought some extremely strong 9s in the past from which I already cross graded a handful to 10s. Anyway, I was never the guy looking for āstrongā 9s and āstrongā 10s and I also skip those listings every time when there is āstrongā in the title
I recently had the chance to buy a shadowless blastoise psa 9 for 700usd with multiple printlines but ended up paying 900usd for one of the cleanest 9ās i have ever seen.
I value my own opinion more than psaās opinion and happily pay over market for flawless psa 9ās.
