I like buying things when they are cheaper and not shilled to the tits.
Plus objectively Gem Mints (with a 9 subgrade) are 95% of the time similar to psa 10s. 9.5 or 9.5+ are objectively often consistently cleaner than PSA 10s ESPECIALLY for vintage.
What sucked for BGS was their management.
Thankfully now under collectors they will have some funding and/or balls to make bold decisions.
I like CGC too. I do believe they are also undervalued.
I also like PSA, I don’t grade with them though as I think upcharges are a scam. I buy a lot of psa slabs though.
Another day, another attempt at trying to rationalize the irrational significant difference in price for gem mint cards despite the non-significant difference in condition.
It’s basically this. Grades 1-8 are priced more or less associated with the conditional difference. Once you get past “mint” you are just paying for a brand name. If you disagree, try this game. It’s called “predict the graded price from the raw copy”. The more variability in the outcome, the more the price is detached from the card or its condition.
the rate of increase of lower grades is far lower than the rate of increase of psa 10s. the result is the psa 10 multiplier going from ~5-10x before the boom boom to 50-100x the psa 9 price now (and similar crazy multiplier compared to cgc “10”, bgs 9.5 etc)
and its why most ppl feel psa 10 is severely overvalued atm since “investors” typically buy them without even looking at the card itself and all those garbage sunfaded cards that are graded a “10” on fanatics, alt etc still basically go for market price coz the ppl buying them dont even know what the normal card looks like
a bgs 9.5 with the highest subs of 9.5/9.5/10/10 still has a very low chance of crossing to a psa 10 for vintage holos. the reality is psa simply doesnt give 10s on these types of cards anymore since they dont wanna pay out their guarentee on new subs. and its why the gambling bros are losing like hundreds of k on vintage box breaks coz even if they their low low chance of getting the top chase they are still gonna get wrecked when psa hits them an 8 on their “pack fresh” card
Really don´t agree with this. PSA 10 is the standard. BGS 9.5 might be cheaper, but there are so much less people that collect BGS slabs. It´s also just not true that a BGS 9.5 equals a PSA 10. Just because it is sometimes the case doesn´t make it the case.
How can a grade that is basically unachievable no matter the quality of the card be called “the gold standard”? We have so many people stating, that you can basically not achieve the 10 anymore, even if you send a Black Level worth card and at the same time people are spending 50x the PSA 9 value on an old cert 10 that is basically a PSA 8 or lower condition.
That ultimately leads to so many 9s having 10 quality and it’s quite obvious that people use this to cross grade them to other companies that simply still give out a 10. Shouldn’t a “gold standard” grading company disregard the Pop report and just evaluate the condition of the card based on standardized norms? That should basically be all they are doing. And currently lots of tests show that the current “gold standard” PSA sucks at that fundamental, as a 10 is unachievable and 10 quality cards can come back an 8 or 9 or in rare instances even a 7 (at least for older cards, to my knowledge they are fine with Modern, but I don’t really care about Modern personally),
CGC and also BGS just show a much better consistency for those older cards, while still keeping the Gem Mt Grade an option.
Of course a whole other debate is TAG, though it’s not the topic of this thread. But ultimately, the reason why they are gaining so much popularity is built exactly on those fundamentals. They are trying to evaluate the quality and condition of the card and be as objective and transparent about it as possible, which is and should be the exact purpose of a grading company in the first place.
If you’re buying 9s, idk why you’d care about minor whitening on the back of the card. Both of these 9s look fine, they have a few holo scratches, but that is typical of 9s. Especially for Expedition.
These are as good as most CGC 10s I’ve held.
and better than some CGC Pristine 10s.
PSA before and after COVID are 2 different things. I fully agree that PSA’s current grading scale is the gold standard; every other slab or grade is judged by how much it differs from the PSA 10 benchmark. The discount on CGC/BGS gems and PSA 9s have or the premium on pristines compared to PSA 10s, no matter how you cut it, PSA owns the finish line. With that said, the vast majority of vintage 10’s were graded when PSA had lower standards.
If every vintage 10 looked like a modern 10, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but the truth is, they don’t. CGC and BGS Gem are easier to get than a modern PSA 10, but they’re also far more strict than OG PSA, making a lot of their 10’s comparable or better than older cert PSA gems. Just compare any card graded by PSA before Covid to a modern gem graded by a different company, and it becomes clear why this has been a hot-button topic for so long.
I was more just showing that as an example of the variance in 9’s and how gems from other graders are usually stronger cards than even modern cert 9’s but not always. There are PSA 9’s that look better than 10’s too, the guys that revived the thread just mentioned that maybe gems from other graders are undervalued because of how a lot of modern gems from other graders for vintage are cleaner cards than 10’s despite 10’s selling at a crazy multiple.
There’s a million examples of stuff like this where you have 7-9’s from PSA that look like 10’s and 10’s that look like 7’s. Either way, the pop for mid era to vintage gems are miniscule compared to the demand for them, at least for now. I don’t think it’s that crazy to think that the ppl that if 1000 ppl want a PSA 10 1st ed Fossil Muk but there’s only 500 10’sin existence those people will buy either 10’s from a different grader or PSA 9 Muks.
At the end of the day the people that got the PSA 10 Muks can stack them with their other PSA slabs and the ppl that cope bought BGS 9.5 Muks have a comparably clean card to the PSA 10’s without being able to stack them.
The funniest example of old PSA certs vs. new PSA certs is Full Art Zekrom.
A few years ago they used to label it just “Full Art/Zekrom”, they later decided to differentiate between “Black Background” and “Gray Background”. The result is this beautiful overview of exactly how extremly the Gemrate differed before and after that change…
Whilst the Gemrate was 31% before the change it became 3.36% after the label change, so basically 1/10th of the Gems previously given out, or 10x harder to achieve PSA 10…
(While some of that can be explained to the earlier lables being closer to the release, I’m pretty sure we can all agree that doesn’t account for such an insane drop. So it clearly visulizes how strict they have really become – and that isn’t even Vintage but Mid era, Vintage is probably even crazier of a jump…)
Regardless of which company you prefer, I think we can all agree that the graded 10 card market would be very different if buyers actually looked at the condition of the cards that they buy.
I’m talking about 9.5s being a good opportunity to buy as they are cheaper and basically the same condition as most psa 10s. I’m looking for value.
Grading is different.
Psa is not the gold standard because of its card grading abilities . The only reason why PSA is leader currently is it was basically the first mover in the Pokemon grading space. More long-term collectors had PSA slabs, therefore continue to grade with PSA. It’s like Bitcoin. It has a higher market cap than other cryptos.
Cards do go for more on a PSA 9 versus bgs9 or CGC 9, but it’s not because of the card condition as they are very similar. I’ve graded many clean PSA 9s to BGS 9++
People pay more for a red label which I always found a bit strange.
Anyway, there’s more opportunity in finding good condition cards in BGS or cgc or even God forbid tag. But indeed if you just want consistency and stability then yes a PSA 10 is your only option.
Some of very scarce vintage set cards I am looking at with very low pop’s, I have to say that many sellers are achieving PSA prices with their CGC or BGS label cards. Specifically, more 7 to 10 grade range cards as there honestly is not enough “good condition” cards to go around in some sets so they are snapped up quite quick as long as the card looks close to the grade then label is being overlooked.
I am talking very limited holo pop lanes like 1999 Base 4th print, 1996 Bandai Green, Rev Holo Legendary, Base Error cards etc etc…extremely thin supply of decent quality cards full stop in some of these sub sets so you have to buy what you can get pretty much regardless of label, as long as you are happy with the individual card condition you see in front of you for the price. If you need to wait for a PSA10 card in some of these lanes like Base 4th Print then they won’t probably arrive as some of them don’t even have a PSA10 in some holo characters and you need to settle for a 9, 8 or 7 from any label sometimes - which means needing to pay up to PSA level typically.
No one should be fully precious about labels these days as obviously there always quality control issues with any label including PSA - especially with the grading load they must be under.
i agree, but the thing is, this matters. I would not advice someone to go for BGS 9.5 because most people collect PSA. Also, most people want a 10. Now, if you want cheaper, I would go for PSA 9´s.
I would rather change language or grading company than go for a 9.
I mean a 9 is hardly distinguishable from a 10, I get it.
But an 8 is hardly distinguishable from a 9.
So on and so forth. Why not settle for 7 or 8, they are already better condition than 95% of the binder copies you can find irl.
If you are to buy a graded slab in the first place, instead of the single, just accept that you are paying for the label and not the card.
It’s not that hard. I started with collecting slabs. I thought I was missing some enjoyment of the cards so started buying singles and doing binders. And now I’ve realized, that I actually enjoy looking at slabs more !. My binders are gathering dust. Displaying slabs is much more enjoyable. There is nothing wrong with paying a premium for a label, a reputation, an arbitrary conditionnal rarity.
The thing is that people want the highest grades. This is why 10´s are so sought after (also lower POP´s, but still). This effect reaches 9´s as well, because it is the next best thing and still (when talking vintage) has low POP´s.
I feel like if you are in the graded part of the hobby you need to accept that you are in it not just as a collector but also as an investor to an extent.
I feel like all those people complaining about the delta between 10 grade and below and between grading companies are for the most part frustrated by the market not following the decisions they made about their collection and seeing their in the wrong ROI lane. Otherwise you would be happy about all these almost mint 9s you can get for 1/50th of the price, and wouldn’t rent on forums.
From an investment perspective, you should just have sticked with “psa10 or bust”, that’s the lesson at least until now. Deal with it. The market doesn’t care about your so called fundamentals.
Maybe in the future it will be different but I doubt it.
Enter the graded slab market then accept the rules, otherwise collect singles, two perfectly viable choices. I admit it can be a hard truth.
There’s also so much to collect. Why not just accept that you’re outpriced of some things, and others are available and just as cool. Be flexible, be water.
and all those garbage sunfaded cards that are graded a “10” on fanatics, alt etc still basically go for market price coz the ppl buying them dont even know what the normal card looks like
