Hi all, I am curious if you all think it’s worth grading a unlimited shadowless Zapdos from base set. Pic below. Now I know you all can’t tell from the pics what is what. If I had to guess as I’ve looked at some PSA versions from 2-6 I’d expect it to be somewhere in the 4-6 range. In fact I’ve seen some 6’s that look more banged up than this one.
I don’t expect it to get a high grade. I’m no where near a professional grader but looking at this card I’m seeing some scratches on the Zapdos himself, slivering on the boarders, light scratches on the non holo area, a small indentation and a little bit of white around the back of the card.
However at the wrong angle is when all this is visible. If you don’t look too closely it’s hard to spot the issues on the front. The back is a different story.
It being Shadowless and one of my favorite childhood cards has me on the fence. Now if it was first edition I wouldn’t be on the fence about it.
Your thoughts appreciated!
If it’s one of our favorite cards then grade for sure! In my opinion any shadowless or 1st base set holo card should be graded regardless of condition.
It’s also the only shadowless card I have. I’ve just finished organizing my old cards which aren’t really many. But that’s the only one I found that’s shadowless. I do have a few first editions but they aren’t holo and they aren’t base set.
Flip a coin. If heads grade it, if tails don’t. Pay attention to how you feel about the outcome, if you’re happy go through with it, if you’re not do the opposite.
So I went with cullers idea, I liked the flip a coin tactic to see how I felt with the outcome. But I did a best of 5 flips. Heads is send to PSA, Tails was put in in sleeve and binder. With a best of 5 I wanted to see if it was overwhelmingly one sided and it was.
4 flips got PSA and 1 flip got binder. I have to say that I am at peace with the outcome. I’m feeling like it will make me happier being displayed in a PSA slab as opposed to tucked away in a binder, in a closet, under 5 other binders.
I find that sort of technique to be really effective for breaking your mental gridlock when you can’t make a decision. If I’m stuck on something, usually I’ll just ask my wife to choose an option for me, and based on my initial reaction I can get a sense of what I actually want. She does the same.
Nice, I don’t have a wife, so I figured I’d post here, and then I got answers going both ways, so the coin flip seemed like the most logical and best option.
Just to get really nerdy here: the reason it works is it invokes your subconscious brain to react.
There was a study done by the university of Iowa where they had volunteers play a game with two decks of cards, one blue and one red. The blue deck had big cash rewards and big cash loses, the red had small cash rewards and small cash loses. The researchers found that at about 40 cards the participants started to notice the participants became more hesitant to take the blue cards, at 80 cards they were able to articulate that the blue deck had more cash loss cards while the red had more cash rewards. They were correct, and the scientist found that even though people are able to make that distinction much earlier it took time to test the theory to confirm their thoughts.
With that said the researchers also had sensors on the participants that measured their stress. What they found was that after about 15 cards in the individuals stress started to raise when they went for a blue card. This was the subconscious mind that process information much faster telling them what they were only able to figure out for themselves 80 cards in.
Nobody knows everything about the subconscious mind, but one interesting aspect about it is it’s directly correlated to everyone’s feelings. Essentially, when someone says I have a weird feeling, or something feels off this is actually the subconscious mind telling them something that they won’t be able to articulate much later in the experience. It’s why it’s a good reason to listen to your ‘gut’ feeling. There are exceptions, usually they involve preconceived notions about our personal biases.
So, by flipping the coin and paying attention to how you feel you’re pushing your own thoughts to the front of the line without fully understanding them.
PSA also grades Pokemon coins. I don’t know how to recommend coming to that decision on whether or not to grade it; all I know is having flipped the coin you’ve likely taken it down a few grades.
Kudos to @cullers for the coin flip idea! I’m a big time advocate for flipping coins. Here’s the quarter I keep on me at all times for when I get stuck decision making! Enjoy your zapdos OP!
that is an option. I guess the answer isn’t going to be lopsided.
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