Pokemon specific specials were definitely amazing to see in a general sense and as mentioned above it is great to see PSA supporting the hobby.
I am just talking more about the timing of those specials. It was not the time to do them in the middle of what I believe to be historic backlogs for the company. Monthly specials are awesome for PSA in that they are the lever they can pull to increase demand when they have an excess supply of graders and are getting orders out “too quickly”. They shouldn’t pull that lever when they’ve had to increase turnaround times across the board and are struggling to find enough graders to process what they have on site, especially around the time of the major move they were doing other specials as well.
Why would a company so swamped with work EVER lower prices? My uncle is a contractor with a decent demand for his work. He schedules out months to a year in advance on bigger projects and fills smaller ones in where he can. Lately he has had a harder time finding time to do smaller projects so he actually has bid higher on jobs across the board a bit, especially for new customers less so for established long term ones. You know what he doesn’t do though?.. take on MORE work for FURTHER months out at an even LOWER price. It is just nonsensical especially considering PSA is probably paying MORE for their labor in that they are training new graders and likely paying others overtime.
If you are unhappy with the 9, why not resubmit to get the grade you think it deserves? I think you may even be able to get PSA to pay out the difference for the wrong grade!
That surface scratching is brutal–I can’t believe that got a 9. I’ll echo Gary on PSA (annoyingly) not really giving a crap about silvering, though. I have 9s with silvering down an entire edge and 10s with notable silvering as well, and I think that’s pretty routine with early WotC.
My practice when selling is to disclose what I think are significant issues despite the grade. I’m sure it knocks down the final sale price a little, but to me it’s worth it because as a buyer I would be really irritated to end up in a situation similar to yours. When buying, I’ll typically ask a broad question about damage that isn’t visible in the photos–I’m sure even this level of inquiry turns off some sellers–but it is worth it to me to get what I’m really looking for. Additionally, while I’ve never had a situation (on eBay at least) in which a seller was not honest in responding, I hope that the message exchange could provide grounds for disputing an item as not being as described if necessary.