Hello all, I just received my pre-screening grades from Ludkins for my first attempt at grading. I was surprised that the majority of my cards came back as 5’s with the highest one as a 7. I expected higher grades and I’m just wondering whether Ludkins tends to be spot on or whether they tend to estimate low or high? Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Most of all I’m just glad that I didn’t send directly to PSA only to find that all of my cards were PSA 5’s!
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They are usually pretty spot on based on my submission. The pregrades the sent me were pretty much on what I thought myself also. I would say that can be a bit on the harsher side, but that is a good thing.
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I did two submission with ludkins. Their grading pre-screen pretty much spot on after I received my psa return. There’s a chance that you might get higher grade.
Sometimes, I pre-grade myself before sending to ludkins to compare their pre-screen. So I could improve my grading skills.
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Could be ±1 grade but very accurate most of the time. Don’t panic with this being your first submission, maybe you just missed some things, Ludkins are professionals.
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If something is 5-6 or 6-7 unexpectedly then likely they have spotted a micro indent or bend on the card that you didn’t notice. Bare in mind these are just predicted grades, the people at PSA will spend a lot more time looking at the cards I’d imagine! 
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My pre-grades were lower than actual grades. This is conjecture, but I assume they grade harshly. Because from a business standpoint it’d make sense to underestimate and have customers pleasantly surprised by the actual PSA grades. Rather than grade generously and have everything come back lower from PSA and be disappointed, especially when their pre-grading is provided to allow customer the chance to have the card sent back to them ungraded before submission.
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If you mainly received 5-7s, I’m guessing they spotted real damage on your cards. In my experience (sample size ~200), Ludkins averages between 0.5-1 grades below PSA’s actual score.
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@funmonkey54 I wonder if it is data that ludkins keeps and tracks? If it is, I wonder if it could be shared but understand if it couldn’t.
It would be very interesting to see. If I was pre grading for someone I would definitely tend to the low side as I’d imagine customers getting higher than the pre grades are much more happy than those getting lower.
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Not something we keep and track at scale. But if we did, you’re right that it would not be a good idea to share it.
We only track while we are training people and double servicing every card with the new guy and a pro.
I’ll say that we do work hard to note trends in grading and make sure that this service is always valuable to the people who want it.
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From my experience I find Ludkins tends to grade more harsher in the pre-grades compared to what I get back from PSA. I submitted a full no symbol jungle lot that I expected 8’s and 9’s and Ludkins pre-grades were 6’s and 7’s. They all came back as 8’s and 9’s. I even had stuff where they pre-graded as like 8’s and came back as 10’s a few times. In the end, Ludkins doesn’t want to over estimate your card and would rather have you surprised than disappointed if the cards came back lower than the pre-grade.
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It normally tells you why in the pregrades
Ex - 5 - dent
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My experience with ludkins is that they grade conservatively.
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The pre-screening scores I recently received have me tremendously eager for my 31 cards to eventually… some day… hopefully… make it through PSA.
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@buggy,They are great, but conservative. On average, mine were about 1 grade lower than my expectation. This a is not a bad thing, but if you got 5’s then there may be more wear than you thought. Grading is tough if you are new to it. Best of luck
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It would really be interesting to see you all post the pregrades along with what the actual grades were.
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I absolutely plan to do that when my final grades are in.
Normally, but recently they haven’t added notes, at least not to my submissions (UK based). Might be because of the increasing amount of submissions they are receiving.
This would be exclusively a UK thing. The US company hasn’t changed anything about how we do prechecks.
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FWIW and certainly not the norm I would imagine, but my first Ludkins submit back in April, the pregrades were in my opinion pretty low/conservative when I received them initially but I was still fine submitting all of my 250 + card order. I think 85% of them came back better grades. And I had 17 or so 10’s, of which most were predicted like 7-8s. So you could absolutely be pleasantly surprised after grading
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Yeah my August submission never had any notes attached as to why they received their pregrade (UK branch also).
Fingers crossed they score higher, mine are predicted 8’s so 9’s would be fantastic.