Thats why i was so upset
I feel like i found the magic card and i still got this
When a card is so hard to grade and you pull a gem you feel like it should be recognized
As a side note, i pulled a pretty bomb Clefable from the same box
Im NOT sending this to PSA. It will probably come back a 7 after the clefairy 8
I will be putting this in a binder
Exactly why 8.5 is a made up fake grade. People send thousands of cards in over years and never get a 8.5 then suddently one submission gets a ton of them. If it was a real grade, it would show up as part of the normal distribution of grades. But there are 1000s of 8s and 9s for every 8.5. Makes zero sense
Yikes, that seems really odd. Any pictures to share?
I feel like I have a decent grasp on the PSA grading scale but if you asked me what constitutes an 8.5 I’d be lost. Or any half grade for that matter
It’s funny cause some of the 8.5’s are either the only graded 8.5 to exist or are apart of like sub 10 8.5’s of the card to exist. Just shows they don’t throw the 8.5 out hardly ever.
All 8.5s are given when Ms. Wheeler is too sick to come to school, so substitute grader Mr. Robins takes over for the day
Anecdotally, I’ll say that in my last few submissions, my grades received have become noticeably lower when compared to submissions sent in 2023 and early-2024.
I pregrade every card I send off, and track it so I can compare how accurate I am vs the actual grade received. Note that almost 100% of the cards in these submissions are vintage, with only a few modern sprinkled in here and there. Here is how I did:
| Date of Submission | % Correct Pre-grade | % Overgraded Pre-grade | % Undergraded Pre-grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 2023 | 37% | 19% | 44% |
| Late 2023 (1) | 19% | 19% | 62% |
| Late 2023 (2) | 38% | 23% | 38% |
| March 2024 | 45% | 25% | 30% |
| May 2024 | 53% | 29% | 18% |
| June 2024 | 41% | 26% | 33% |
| August 2024 | 45% | 24% | 30% |
| September 2024 | 39% | 45% | 15% |
| October 2024 | 48% | 19% | 32% |
| November 2024 | 41% | 44% | 15% |
| January 2025 | 45% | 50% | 5% |
As the numbers show, I have fared significantly worse the past few submissions, and I can promise that my pre-grading eye has not changed.
Huge disclaimer though that I am aware I have a very small sample size and I could be just getting very unlucky. To be able to get more accurate results on answering the question on if PSA is becoming more strict, we would need a much much much larger sample size.
Damn I fell for you. I’m still lost as to why those are 8.5.
I took a quick peak at the pop report when I was looking at your cards and noticed that 8.5 seems to be heavily overrepresented (relative to other half grades) in base set.
This could’ve always been the case. I honestly have no idea.
Would be interesting to see if the 8.5 pop skews toward recent certs
Did you crack a Base Set 2 booster box to grade the holos? You must be thousands of dollars in the hole. 
Best of luck with the next submission!
if they use “machine learning” will the old grades be invalid when they inevitably get more data to update the algorithm 
This thread makin me nervous 
Mine was pack to sleeve to PSA. To be fair I haven’t seen a 10 on vintage in many subs, they must be seeing something we don’t see.
Yes Base set 2 getting some love!
I opened 4 heavies last year…
Sadly had two poliwraths, a scyther and alakazam…
All not grade worthy🤐
Still, a fun experience!
the cosmos foil looks pretty dope tbh but i can see why ppl dont like them it is essentially a reprint of base… i will go after any 10s i see at auction ofc 
Better holo pattern for sure but that “2” looks so ugly to me lol
while my collection is roughly 98% psa, i recently tried TAG for the first time, at least they have coherent standards and tell you what is going on.
my last few psa subs were in the 8XXX range and i felt they overgraded the cards, now they might be in the untergrading phase again. I cracked a few of them to resubmit them again, let´s see what happened in a few months 
The problem from my perspective with TAG is that what they do is not really “AI” grading. It’s all done by human beings, just using cameras and computers. It isn’t something that can be patented and with relative ease over the next 1 - 3 years companies like PSA and BGS can and likely will incorporate the same tools into their process and probably to better effect.
Additionally as someone that has been working in the embedded systems field for the past decade - TAG’s plans for “self-grading” pods at stores is so absurd and likely to be hindered by a lot of ridiculous issues.
Combine that with their astroturfed marketing strategy, investors promoting the company as if they’re just simple customers without disclosing their investment and they just come off as a bad choice. Not to mention the brittle slabs…
not trying to derail this thread with tag propaganda, i just tried them to see what all the fuzz is about. it is enough for me personally to actually see a detailed report on why it gets a certain grade, i don´t need ai grading.
On topic, PSA always varied over time within a reasonable margin, at least since i started grading with them around 10 years ago. In the end we collect cards, not cases so lets focus on that again 
And that exactly why theres such a price difference, its an extremely hard card to get in a psa 10. Just like base set chansey for example. Him expecting a 10 isnt a healthy attitude towards grading cards like this x) Even back in the day they were hard to grade, hence the very low pop
Sorry but your off here
Its hard to grade because the QC of this set sucks… which is why this is so upsetting… because the card doesnt have issues and it’s damn near impossible to find cards like this in base set 2
Especially clefairy, clefable, wigglytuff
Just because PSA is busy and are pushing out cards as fast as they can isnt an excuse to not correctly and thoroughly grade. I just hope they are not cutting corners to get through the backlog
