PSA 10 and centering tolerances

General
1

I always assumed that the centering had to be pretty close to perfect to get a PSA 10. However, this is PSA’s official description for a PSA 10:

"A PSA Gem Mint 10 card is a virtually perfect card.

Attributes include four perfectly sharp corners, sharp focus, and full original gloss. A PSA Gem Mint 10 card must be free of staining of any kind, but an allowance may be made for a slight printing imperfection, if it doesn’t impair the overall appeal of the card. The image must be centered on the card with a tolerance not to exceed approximately 55/45 to 60/40 percent on the front, and 75/25 percent on the reverse."

Which is it, 55/45 or 60/40 for the front requirements? It seems odd to have the limit be a range like that.

Also, does anyone know if they’ve actually given a PSA 10 to a card with 70/30 or close to 75/25 on the reverse?

I have a bunch of cards I’m thinking about sending in soon. I’d like to send in cards that at least have a chance at a 10. If a card has 70/30 on the reverse but is otherwise flawless, would it really have a decent chance at a 10? Is this part of what people mean when they say that a PSA 10 isn’t the best? A BGS pristine I assume would require much closer centering on the reverse side.

Anyway, I’m mostly just curious if PSA’s description is consistent with people’s experiences. Or, maybe in practice they are stricter than their own description.

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2

They eye ball it and are stricter with Japanese. For example 57/43 old back gem mint besides centering is very unlikely to receive PSA 10.

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3

As their scale denotes, a PSA 10 card is a “virtually perfect card”. The word “virtually” is added because they know that every 10 quality card has a measurable imperfection to some degree. The outlined range of centering (55/45 and 60/40) is to allow for an imperfection in another area… So a card with a slight imperfection can still be a PSA 10 as long as the centering meets the minimum of the range (55/45). An otherwise (virtually) flawless card can have up to 60/40 centering if all other areas of the card are virtually perfect.

However, grading is not just mathematical, it’s also subjective. A 10-20% deviation from ideal centering is not terribly uncommon, but PSA is generally pretty consistent.

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