Hey all. First time poster.
Have a BGS 9 1st edition holo Dark Charizard and wanted to try the PSA crossgrade service. The rest of my Rocket collection are PSA 9’s, so this one sticks out. BGS subgrades are:
Centering: 9
Edges: 9.5
Corners: 9
Surface: 9
What do y’all reckon? Good shot or don’t bother? I’ve never done it before. Pics below:
Thanks.
The general rule of thumb is crack and send in but I can see why you rather not do that. It’s an expensive card. It could be a nine, but psa will look for any little reason to not break it from the case. I wish you the best of luck.
I wouldnt with it being so offcenter. I dont see anything to specifically make it lower than a 9 but i only spent 7 seconds looking at it.
Surface/holo condition is near impossible to tell from the photos, but I wouldn’t. Centering and minor edge/corner wear makes this look like an easy 8 to me, and maybe a 7 if you have a particularly harsh grader (on the flipside I guess it has a tiny shot at 9 if you have a more lenient grader). If anything I’d recommend selling it and putting the funds towards a PSA 9.
Just like PSA
Where do i send my invoice? $25/card and digital insurance costs in case the current amount of pixels arent enough.
Maybe one day in the far off future, psa will offer some kind of guaranteed cross grading service between partner companies. That is probably a major pipe dream of course.
I watched this video where the guy tried to crossgrade 14 cards, and he failed almost all of them, even a BGS 9.5 where he only asked for a PSA 9. Only one card crossed, and a CGC 8.5 actually dropped to a PSA 7!
He said he’s going to crack some of those 14 cards and regrade them raw to see what happens. It seems like you’ll probably just waste your money trying to crossgrade.
If these cross overs actually worked, there wouldn’t be such a difference in price between all other grading companies and PSA.
You would have some CA bros ONLY taking in other grading companies slabs and mass shipping then to PSA for crossover.
There is that price discrepancy due to the risk involved with cracking and regrading raw to PSA. It still works sometimes, but the mass majority of people don’t want to deal with that risk.
The market can tell you a lot of what’s worth doing and what is not worth doing based upon market prices 
I’ve seen a lot of BGS 9s come back a PSA 7 or 8, and a lot of times a BGS 9 will sell in a PSA 7-8 price range with few exceptions. To me there’s not much incentive compared to other cards that might potentially cross or upgrade in grade and would be worth taking a risk on with re-grading.
when you say “good shot” i think your implying good shot at a psa10? there is no universe that psa will gem mint a card that has 3 visible sub grades of 9 from a competitor. If your goal is to cross a psa9 then you have a good shot.
Now the scans of the card actually look good. I agree with the 9.5 edge score and if you cracked it, psa may view the edges as fine as this is not really whitening but moreso a bad cut (dull blade) which is typical for the set.
The centering is also off but should be fine for psa as well but not a guarantee. Slightly bottom heavy which is standard for this card and completely fine but it depends on your grader how they view the left to right. If they actually measure it should fall withing 55/45 spec but visually it’s off.
I think the biggest issue is the corners. PSA is notoriously brutal (now) with corners and the top right (rear) corner in particular will likely prevent a psa10
this is assuming you crack and sub, not cross.
edit: i also notice a 9 surface score and not a 9.5. It’s difficult to tell from a scan but if that is a white slash on the red pokeball lid I think there is starting to be too much risk even for a psa9. You might see the rare 8.5 score if you crack and sub. Maybe just enjoy your bgs 9
Thanks. I was actually aiming to crossgrade to a PSA 9, this is definitely not a potential 10 or even close. It’s for my PC so I don’t necessarily care about the valuation increase, but I have the rest of set in PSA 9 so it just bugs me that it’s different more than anything else. And I’m definitely not willing to take the risk of breaking open the slab and sending the raw card. Wanted to get an extra set of opinions before wasting $100 and a lot of time sending this to PSA. Appreciate the response, the BGS slab is also pretty filthy to the pokeball lid line is actually a slab scratch not a card defect.
Thanks. Market price for this seems between a PSA 8 and 9, very few comparables out there though. Guess that is reflective of the gamble that it could go either way
Thanks. Definitely not looking to break open slab, wanted an opinion before sending it in with a min 9 grade to see if PSA would crossgrade. It seems based on the comments here and everything I read, PSA rarely crossgrades so probably a waste of time and money to try.
Thanks, super helpful. PSA seems so scammy with this service.
I’d leave it as is.
