It is right now, and it might stay that way. 10 is king, but I do think that if 10´s become unobtainable for most that the 9 will become the standard for a mint, graded card. We will have to see though, and to be fair, if I can afford a 10 I will mostly go for that if we´re talking investing.
But I admit that I am talking from the japanese side of collecting, so it is way easier to be uncompromising. If I was collecting English my opinion may very well be different and I’d be shilling TAG 9s all day long 
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I’ll be sure to wipe my tears away with all PSA 9s I have that are only 10-20x what I paid for them 
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So you’re advising people to get a more expensive alternative?
Again, I look at opportunity. If a card is undervalued I would buy it vs something overvalued.
Same with labels.
But take money out of it, what do you orefer?
Plus grading nuance matters.
It’s good to have a knowledge of all companies and how they approach card grades for certain sets - eg. Neo 4 Shining PSA 9s aND PSA 10s would probably get a lower grade at BGS. 9.5s of them are often the cleanest copies.
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No, that´s not exactly what I said. Let´s just leave this haha. We clearly see things different and that´s allright.
100% I will say PSA 9s are kinda goated since there’s an abundance of choice, so you can find some really strong 9s compared to the average BGS or CGC 9. I think a big part of the reason the label matters more than the condition of the actual card is the fact that PSA (and CGC) financially guarantees their grades, so if the card goes up, you have that peace of mind that you can get a refund if the reholder goes sideways.
I hope Collectors buying BGS makes them back their grades with the revamp, since that’s the biggest red flag with BGS for me. I still buy them if the price is good and the card looks clean, but if you can’t back your grades, how can you expect ppl to trust you? I genuinely think that the reason TAG doesn’t is becuase their AI misses so much that they couldn’t afford it
This is the most interesting thing to me becuase, during this crazy bull run, that’s exactly what’s happening; instead of English PSA 9s catching a bid, it’s the Japanese version in a PSA 10. I’m the same as you, minus I’d rather get a gem from a different grader than the Japanese version.
Most 9’s have some visible flaw on why they weren’t a 10, that’s what I don’t get with the TAG chuds, like are you looking at your 9’s, almost always there’s 1-2 objective flaws with the card visible to the naked eye.
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So true, I’m convinced 99% of the PSA hate is just people wanting PSA 10’s not being able to afford them getting angry at themselves and then projecting that onto PSA because they are objectively the best grader in the market
8 vs 9 is way more noticeable difference than 9 vs 10, 9 vs 10 is essentially psa lottery there is no difference between the two alot of the time 
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I think this is a myth. most of the time, there is clearly a visible difference between a 9 and a 10, and sometimes the 9 look like a 10 and the 10 look like a 9. Let’s not get our proportions inverted here.
Also, our perceptions are skewed, because what we are accessing is the pool of 10s available on the market, and these are probably on average, more weak 10s, than the 10s in personnal collections.
If you had twice the same card in PSA10, you would keep the better copy for yourself and sell the weaker PSA10 right ? That’s exactly why we are under the impression that PSA10 are worse than they really are, because we have access to this biased pool of “rejects”. The weaker the 10, the more it will be traded and shift hands, exposing people to the idea that psa10 and 9s are interchangeable. The strong 10s are more likely to be kept in PCs.
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idk man theres been alot of psa 10 auctions over the last few years sometimes the entire pop of a card if it is low enough and they can be all over the place in terns of quality
and you can kinda make the same argument with psa 9s in the opposite direction ppl put lots of 9s on the market that would look like 10s if you don’t know the grade (i.e. no visible flaws not even white dots)
imo something like cgc pristine is way more consistent quality-wise than psa 10 (beckett 10s as well but those are obviously way more expensive)
the main advantage of psa 10 specifically is that it is very investor bro heavy
and lets not forget the fact that ppl are paying almost market price for trash sunfaded cards as long as they say psa 10 on them
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I’m closing in 1300 PSA10 slabs from all eras and inspect them each time through the case. I’ll give rough proportions :
85% of the time I’m satisfied and in agreement with the grade and condition
14% of the time it will be only one of these defects :
-small speck whitening on corner
-more than one speck
-centering a bit too off for my taste
-tilting a bit too pronounced for my taste
-dust in the slab
-printline(s) but these are not accounted for in grading
The last one % it will be some combination of these defects, but honestly can’t think of one example I had.
Also if I was a grader, I can understand how a 10 card will not get a 10 from my part and instead get a 9 because I see a small defect (but within tolerance and debatable)
But if I’m going to give 9 to a card, it’s because I see a defect.
I don’t know if that’s clear lol. I mean most 9s are 9s for real valid reasons.
i didnt see that you were mainly buying japanese, those i would agree the 10s are way more consistent (although japanese quality is way more consistent in general)
for english you are gonna get 10s whose card quality is all over the place esp the wotc era
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Yes again I’m very biased because I collect japanese only.
I can totally see the debate is wholly different if your collecting English
I wouldn’t touch English with a stick, the quality control makes me throw up. And those big yellow borders makes my eyes bleed.
But see it like this :
If the standard and tolerance for English was the same as for Japanese, there would be barely no 10s ever given to wotc cards, and therefore, there would be no market in the first place ! Too much low pop prevents a market from ever thriving to a large scale.
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@tidaldreams you made me realize if you are collecting English, then yes, grading really is a scam, and if your collecting japanese, then you don’t see the issue with grading lol.
I didn’t conceptualized it as clearly until now 
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I really think that’s cope that 9 buyers say, I buy 9’s, but that’s just bc I’m cheap. Vintage and mid era 9’s almost always have something visibly wrong with them. Modern 9’s is a different beast since all of those cards are pack fresh to PSA, so it’s mostly a small white dot or >55% centering. There are 10’s with those flaws too, but there are far fewer PSA 9’s that would cross 10 than 10’s that would 9 if cracked and resubbed.
idk why people pretend that PSA 9’s = PSA 10’s for modern when it’s just not the case if you use your eyes. I say that as someone who exclusively has CGC and BGS gems for older cards, since I can’t afford the PSA 10 premium on those. I’ll say for older cards a lot of new cert 9’s are cleaner than older cert 10’s but that’s just becuase PSA’s standards went up so much over the years.
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who is the “9 buyer” 
and who cares about modern slop they print that shit into oblivion and there are a bajillion psa 10s anyway
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idk, I just see a bunch of ppl say 9s and 10s are interchangeable, but I don’t find that to be the case when I compare them, for vintage and mid era you cam make a good case for newer cert 9’s being better than most older cert 10’s of the same card.
Lowkey some of these IRs can actually cook like they have horrible gem rates, and if you look at CGC 10’s, you can pick those up for NM raw + grading cost. For the less popular IRs its just grading cost, which is wild to see
since ultramoderns already have like 20k psa 10s 1 year after release you are likely right that the 9s are conditionally different…
but for vintage english new 9s arent discernable from 10s (because new 10s are basically nonexistant) and anyone buying vintage 10s should already know this
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Psa 10 or bust for value retention
Design & price wise, for personal collection i really like ARS.
Cgc is the ugliest, truly an abomination of a slab. The older labels especially look like a middle schooler designed them with a 5 minute deadline but the new ones are also horrible. It does not compute for me