I’m pretty big into collecting low pop reverse holos from the EX, DPP, and HGSS eras. Looking across these sets, there are tons of low pop 10s, as well as low pop 9s on cards where 10s don’t even exist.
What I’ve noticed is that a lot of these 10s have older certs and were likely just outliers due to PSA grading variability back in the day. The quality on the 9s is practically indiscernible from these older 10s. Sure, you get the occasional weak 9 that looks like an 8, but the quality overlap between strong 9s and 10s is super obvious.
Outside of maybe a few true unicorn copies (which I honestly doubt even exist for most of these cards) a lot of these 10s are just grading quirks rather than actual higher-quality cards.
Everyone wants the 10 slab, but in these cases where the physical cards are identical, it feels like a solid argument for something like TAG being the better grading option long term. It’s less about a rigid grade and more of an exact score. If you have a high-scoring 9 that’s visually the best copy in existence, shouldn’t that command 10 money?
People care about the actual condition of the cards a lot less than those of us in the weeds do. Having the “best” on the label is the primary draw, not the card condition.
Black Label market is a good example, prices are astronomical because it is a SUPER 10. Both neurons firing. Not really condition related.
unfortunately, no..
I was looking at 2015 XY Roaring Skies Rayquaza 105 Full Art. so not even vintage but lets call it tail end mid era. Well, the print quality is truly horrid. with a psa10 pop of 116, they are averaging $25k+ in sale price. But looking at all the recent sales none of them are newer certs the newest one i found is a 7 cert (which actually got the highest premium at 32k and was the cleanest copy ive seen) but essentially they are all 2xx-5xx certs with a few outliers. If you know the print quality you can understand why its so hard to grade and how with psa not having any whitening tolerance these days why it would be a unicorn to get a 10 now. If all of them had to be regraded today I doubt more than 10-15% would actually get a 10. Still, it doesnt seem to matter. A brand new cert psa9, which honestly looks as good or better than most of the tens I’ve seen, has been just sitting on Ebay for 2,300 with no sale
People want a 10 on the label and you really have to ask who are the people buying the majority of these 5 figure and 6 figure cards. It’s not normal Pokemon card collectors…
It reminds me of a recent interview with Gary when he was talking about the controversial psa10 charizard that Logan bought and turned into a BGS10
Well, he was pointing out the fact that LOGAN WASNT EVEN LOOKING AT THE BACKS OF ANY OF THE CARDS when he was choosing which zard he wanted. Gary basically admitted that the card Logan picked was actually one of the worst PSA10s that he had and that it was a borderline 10 and could of easy got a 9.
Thats the kind of people that are buying these cards for over $100k… they dont know how to evaluate the cards in the first place. People just default to psa and the grade on the label.
There is a point when the psa10 price is too much and it forces the 9 price to move up, but it’s still always a fraction of the 10 price. For 9s to truly blur the lines and have great value the card needs to be truly rare, otherwise the default will be conditional rarity.
no, pokeman cards arent rare by themselves so u need the 10 grade to achieve the conditional rarity
and the ones that are technically “rare” like trophies u cant get in a 10 almost always so they actually have had way worse roi and some are prolly still around 2023/2021 pricing
and for reverse holos specifically they are “low pop” because no one graded them back in the day when psa 10s were way easier to get because they were bulk cards
As others have said, this should be the case (very clean 9´s going in the direction of 10´s), but a lot of people simply want the grade. This has good and bad sides. The good; you can buy very clean 9´s for (somewhat) cheap. The bad; it makes little sense, other than people just wanting the validation of an institution.
Edit; I do think that at some point the 9 will become the ´cheaper version of the best´ if the 10´s keep going.
