I am also in the camp that perceives a 9 OC as “PSA 9, but bad”.
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Im a little late on this topic however I just recieved a 9(OC) grade on a certain sports card “NFL” Trevor Lawerence Silver Prism Rookie and I was curious what other peoples opinions where on the matter…in my opinion it should be 10, 9(OC), 9, 8, 8(OC) so on and so forth this makes the most sense to me. [EXAMPLE] A card meets all criteria for a 10 grade however- unfortunately the centering is off “really off” so much so that said grader starts to panic. Wearing his panic like an ugly Christmas sweater he scans the room to see if anyone has noticed the peril he’s found himself in. While waiting for his training to kick in and takeover he suddenly comes realize that everyone has gone to lunch. Poorly trained and obviously unqualified to deal with a problem of this magnitude on his own he shuts down. Ultimately he’s forced into early retirement and replaced by computer the computer makes an easy decision and gives the card a 9(OC). I believe the qualifier is put in place as subtle way of saying if not for the centering on this specific card it would be the better grade. A card can look perfect to most people at first glance, but we has collectors know right off whether or not we even submit a card for grading… there are many contributing factors that determine the grade of a card- centering, print lines, soft corners, dents, dings, dimples, blurring, blemishes. Centering in my opinion “at least in the sports card world” is paramount in determining if the card is even going to PSA. Many of my cards that I know are mint 10 worthy have no chance at slablife strictly due to centering… yeah sooo where I’m going with this is that not all cards that get a grade of 10 are perfectly centered. Some of them sit just outside of centerville. At this point its up to grader… he has to make a decision, an important decision a decision he can live with!!! Is it a 10 Is it a 9 10,9,10,9 nope 9(OC) what do you all think give me some feedback
A 9 OC implies the card would be a 10 if not for centering. It also implies that if the centering was included in the grade, it would be less than a PSA 9.
This thread is 3 years old but today in Pokemon, I would say a 9 OC falls outside of the standard grading scale and ultimately will be bought by an error collector. So comparison to a regular PSA 9 or PSA 10 is not really productive.
In sports, my understanding is that the qualifiers are just totally undesirable so I don’t think the same logic can apply though.
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