As a BGS fan I may just keep in the BGS slab but of course the value bump is too large to ignore at this point.
Shadowless Blastoise BGS 9.5 that I graded myself. It is very, very clean (ignore the pube in the slab on the left side lol).
It is just a bit OC. Would this count as PSA 10 centering or just out of the limit?
The surface is pristine, no print lines or scratches. Some extremely minimal fluff on the back edge but not whitening (just the cut).
Cheers
I would be wary of the whitening on the back left edge. You have a nice bgs trio as is.
Wouldn’t bother due the little whitening & centering. Psa is way more strict nowadays
It’s not really whitening though, as it doesn’t go into the blue edge - it sort of sticks out. The high res scans make it stand out more but you can’t really see it in hand even under a phone light.
I’m confident this would PSA 10 from the surface , edges and corners - I’m just not sure how strict they are on centering.
CGC for example say that for pristine 10 it has to be 50/50 but actually on their website it says it doesn’t need to be so long as everything else is 10
I’ve always wondered whether the white/light coloured cardstock fibres that stick out from the edges of some cards like this (which aren’t whitening but kind of look like whitening) are viewed by graders as whitening or not. So much so that I’ve held of on sending at least a dozen cards from grading cos of this
Neither.
It’s the cardboard after being cut with mostly dull blades from factory. Most psa 10 shadowless have it. It’s not whitening.
Here is an example of the 9 cert PSA 10 shadowless Charizard.
Depending on the scan they can be shown to a more or less extent.
And this is a new cert PSA 10 shadowless blasty- you can see the fuzziness along the same edge but the PSA scan settings don’t show the granularity.
Both the PSA 10 Zard and Blasty have been hailed to be some of the cleanest examples. No shadowless 10s are perfect cards.
Here is a better example of mine in hand - you can see it’s a slightly fluffier edge but doesn’t comprise the blue paint. This is a classic shadowless dull cut edge.
that’s cool to know and much clearer from the in-hand picture. is there a way to differentiate a fluffy cut from whitening just from looking at scans online?
Going back to your question: depends on your cost:benefit ratio because the centering will be a coinflip.
Really depends on the scans! In some psa scans they are quite clear and in others not so much.
Mostly check front left border/back right (when you’re looking at the scans), it’s more evident on that side.
That’s a PSA 8
Well actually it was a 7 cert PSA 9 - and I guarantee you it is cleaner than 90% of PSA 10s (but rememeber most are older certs).
You’re a PSA 8
Any card can get a PSA 10 submitted enough times.
Maybe my opinion is pretty off topic, but I think given your history with the cards (self graded, your opinion of shadowless etc.) and also how much you value what the BGS grade means, I would just have you keep it in the BGS slab. I have seen you rave about these cards for the longest time, so it is beyond value.
It is pretty stupid romanticizing these pieces of cardboard, considering that if you do hit that 10 in PSA it is a lot of money. But all things considered, and also the risk of cracking and submitting, my vote goes to keep as BGS.
Cheers!
No
Sometimes I like to do an expected value calculation to determine the odds you’d need to cross.
Let’s say PSA 10 is worth 40k, and the BGS 9.5 is worth 5k.
If you submit it and it crosses, you pay $2k grading cost upcharge, having 38k total.
If it fails, it could truly get a 7, 8, or 9 - honestly I can’t tell well enough from the pictures, and whether your grader docks points for a rough cut edge is unclear. This is PSA, expect getting docked badly. I’m just going to put it at an 8 for failure case, worth $1200, then subtract a $350 grading fee for $850 value remaining.
Let the chance that you’d get the 10 be p. Then for it to be worth it, you need
expected value from grading > current value
38000 × p + 850 × (1-p) > 5000
Solving for p, you need more than an 11% chance of a PSA 10 for this to be worth it - and actually you need higher than that, because you should also subtract $ corresponding to the time, stress, and lack of ability to sell even if you badly need to as a result of going through all of this.
In my opinion, you do not have substantially more than an 11% chance of getting a PSA 10 on this card. If anything, substantially less than that. Not worth it.
Interesting but assumes you crack to regrade.
In this case I would send in the slab, or even better, attempt at a show with in person grading.
Again, I have enough experience to know if this could PSA 10 based on surfaces, edges etc and I know it’s a coin flip if the grader even implements their own grading standards…my question was about centering as is seemingly slightly oc.
I was curious if psa are exceedingly strict about it being 45/55 or if they make allowances if borderline.
But I absolutely appreciate the math and will use it for any other future cracking/regrade calculations!
PSA has been pretty harsh on vintage recently. With the OC, I’d be surprised if this crossed to a PSA 10. It’s obviously a very clean copy, though.
That said, we’ve all seen PSA do some crazy things from time to time, so you never know.
If it were my card, I’d keep it in the BGS 9.5 slab.
I think everyone would be doing this sort of thing if PSA was willing to hand out 10s like they used to. It’s frustrating because all the ath sales are super chopped old certs so it gets you thinking “well shit, why not try”
But it’s the sirens call
Youd be a fool to block your ears to it. Think of the label and how cool it would be if it had a 10 on it…
