I doubt theyd increase the grade
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https://www.psacard.com/cert/131628729/psa - looks like it has a print line on back
It’s possible the 7s/8s have scratches or minor surface warping of some kind that you can’t see on scans
psa doesnt give 10s on wotc cards anymore esp base set 
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the cgc “10” (aka non-pristine) is not even worth anything anymore there are some cards where it will go for 20x less than a psa 10
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IMHO PSA grading is pretty broken right now. I sent 5x subs of 132 total cards at the same time and got wildly different results.
I’ve definitely lost a lot of faith in PSA.
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ive watched this video before and its honestly the best explanation. I’ve dumped PSA just because it feels like they’re putting the numbers 1-10 on a wheel, spinning it, and then slapping whatever it lands on onto a slab.
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Full disclosure this is my video haha. Just wanted to share instead of typing out a massive essay to say what I already put in the video. But I agree I don’t currently trust PSA the way I used to and I agree there is way too much randomness and inconsistency being applied right now.
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I can’t go too much into details because they let you sign a pretty strict NDA.
You’re not getting your card back once it’s there, you have to accept their offer and new case/grade or you get the card back raw.
It’s a cutthroat system I wouldn’t know how else to describe it. It’s gotten to a point, I even hate saying it, where I’ve had to include a clause in a few high end deals that had the successful reholder as a prerequisite for finalising the deal.
Here is a few more examples of reholders for cards that I wouldn’t have been able to move unless in a new case, either because of actual card condition or case/cert being too old. It’s a wildly different game than what it used to be when I started many years ago.
Thankfully these were successful but given the swings in price these cards specifically have had this year, it’s easy to imagine the massive headache it would have been if PSA arbitrarily decided they were no longer 9s and 10s.
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Glad you mentioned TAG. For this very reason I’m considering switching over my future cards to TAG. I’m at least going to try it out and see if I like the results… I really like being able to see why a card got the grade that it did, and the other grading companies feel like such a black box of RNG. Time will tell, but I’m really hoping they can change the game for the better!
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Is this the start of TAG in E4?
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I’ll be honest I’m taking a hard look at TAG and I’ve always collected PSA slabs. In fact I don’t own a single non psa slab currently. But from what I’ve personally experienced and what I’ve seen in this thread and from others’ experiences: I just don’t value PSA the way I used to. Their inconsistency is off the charts. And some of their recent business practices are full of morale hazards.
The reholder service being able to change the grade is the wildest thing I’ve ever heard of. Absolutely insane! I’m glad someone posted that I have cards I considered reholdering. Guess not.
Also why are we even taking PSA’s pop report seriously? How many of those old cert 10’s would never ever get a 10 today.
Having a moving standard is really frustrating. I don’t like the idea of PSA continuously changing its standards over the years. I don’t know if they’ve ever officially changed it other than the recent centering update. But they clearly were more lenient with older certs than newer. I can see the softness in earlier grades.
I’m also not convinced PSA is catching all this card altering going on these days so I struggle to trust new certs. Where are all these super crispy psa 8-9 vintage cards coming from popping up in 10X-13X certs? Seems suspect to me
I honestly think now that this hobby WAY overvalues that PSA 10 label. Too much variance for it to be authoritative.
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This is probably why Logan’s illustrator is still in the old cert, beat up case. It’s too risky to send it in to get reholdered. Anyone who has gone through a PSA reimbursement knows they do everything possible to pay you the absolute least possible. So when the illustrator inevitably gets downgraded during reholder, there wouldn’t be any sales data to base the compensation on. After this auction there would be. Should be interesting!
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Interesting point on old case/cert impact on it potentially impact negative in the market. Wondering if that’s the current consensus view? asking because I also have an 2xx cert that I wanted to sell so I consider to reholder it first.
On a side note, wondering what will happen if the PSA 10 Illustrator get reslabbed? not only it appears to have worse whitening than majority of OP’s scans, it might also have centering worse than the “new” 10 centering standard.
Sincerely appreciate what information you were able to provide on the matter.
One thing I have noticed is that every instance (that I’ve seen so far) of a card getting regraded when submitted for reholdering is that they’re all very high-end stuff.
So one wonders if PSA is picking and choosing their battles here. Maybe that’s the metric for whether or not a card gets heavily scrutinized when submitted for reholdering; financial value. In which case most reholders would go through no problem, regardless of condition, cert age, whatever. Who knows, at this point.
This, this is the gross part.
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This is a general statement but I think the PSA financial guarantee causes more headache than it saves.
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The three times I’ve had a card downgraded, the reimbursement amount was significantly higher than the difference of value between the grades lost.
As above @evaner had the same with his experience.
It’s frustrating, but in my experience you definitely aren’t left out financially.
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Isn’t that a bit short-sighted?
Yes the offers were strong in my cases but admittedly they all had fairly strong data to go off.
The Mewtwo and Charizards however had an almost 6 figures price swing in the timespan I’ve had them reholdered.
I don’t even wanna think what their offer would have been on these and quite frankly it’s impossible to deny that the thick stamp Charizard in particular is weaker than most 7s an 8s from OP.
These label/cert premiums are immensely overrated in my opinion, they are taking the spotlight away from the card in most cases.
The quality of the card is objective whereas the grade has proven to be subjective and heavily influenced by who and when the card is being graded.
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Their reimbursement caps out at $250k no matter the card or grade, so re-holdering any card more valuable than that with a soft grade isn’t worth the risk.
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To play devils advocate, they can (and have) updated their algorithm in a way that changes grades retroactively. Basically the same “forced regrade after-the-fact” that is being talked about here except they don’t even need your card back to regrade it.
All companies have problems. The answer is that we should collectively value the opinions of these grading companies far less than we do. But practically we can only make that decision for ourselves as individuals
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