Serious question, what makes you think 25-50% is reasonable though?
You can’t compare changes in 9/10 ratio over time because you’re making a huge assumption about the availability and quality of mint supply ready to be graded across time.
A large proportion of the early pop for 1st ed base holos were from a handful of people openings boxes and specifically grading the 10 candidates because 9s werent worth the effort.
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All cards I put up should be slide shows with front and backs. Is it not working properly?
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They worked just fine for me 
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I’m actually not doing that though. I don’t care about the absolute values of the population numbers. I am simply comparing the quantity of newly graded PSA 9 and PSA 10 cards.
A large portion of the new pop for 1st ed base holos were from a handful of people opening boxes on stream and various other rip-and-ship style productions, which have become significantly more popular today than they were 20-25 years ago.
Do you have any actual numbers re: number of boxes opened in the past, number of cards intentionally passed over for grading and not submitted? I suspect not, because that type of data would be very unlikely to have been captured, and difficult to find now so much later even if it had been. On the other hand, we do know at least a floor for number of newly opened, pack fresh cards from this era that have been opened on stream and submitted from there.
I actually did used to believe your line of reasoning about early submissions = most minty cards, but recently having thought more about it and considered that equally mint boxes are literally opened on video and directly sleeved + graded… It seems rather indefensible to say that “PSA equally applies their grading standard to all cards.” Speaking to the risk adversity argument above, it isn’t logical even from a business sense to assume that PSA would do this. Grading rigor is directly proportional to that card’s value and potential risk to PSA (monetarily and in reputation) for overgrading a high valued card.
Mass produced products built by machines typically have very tight tolerances. Toyota (Japanese) are the inventors of six sigma manufacturing since 1987, over a decade before the debut of Pokemon TCG. Modern sets with poor print quality typically see ~40% gem rate at the lowest, so I was generous and allowed a slide down to 25% for these supposed ‘worse print quality’ of the past.
I agree with the point that they are harder to grade in general.
My point was more that PSA is applying higher standards when grading them.
Ah my bad I didn’t notice when on mobile but see it now on desktop! Yeah there must be an indent somewhere on those 2 jp base cards.
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All good 
Isn’t an ident an automatic 5? I have some cards with indents and they didn’t receive anything higher than 5s. Especially not a 7.
I could upload a lot more other no rarity cards with no indents that go similar grades.
That’s why I was so surprised and made this post.
I dig your well reasoned thesis but I don’t agree with the assumptions in this case. Baseball cards had been manufactured since the early 1900s and still didn’t have great quality control even in the 80s and 90s. Six sigma makes sense for Toyota, because the downside of a defect in a car is the chance of death. The downside of an off centered pokemon card with print lines is getting a PSA 8 thirty years in the future. It’s not apples to apples.
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It depends on the severity. I’ve had very subtle indents grade a 7. Most land in the 5-6 range. Of course dependent on other condition factors.
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I don’t even disagree with the premise that PSA is more thorough with 1st ed holos today. But i don’t think a comparison between 9/10 ratio is a reliable measure.
What percentage of submitted cards are regrades today vs in the past? Not just PSA2PSA, there’s an entire group of people that cross-grade between companies to maximize value that didn’t exist years ago.
There’s too many unaccounted for variables when looking at grading ratios over time
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It’s fair to recognize that there are many unaccounted for variables. I don’t want to argue endlessly online, so I’d rather ask you a follow up question: What useful data can you take from population reports, both as snapshots or over time? All these same arguments about unknown variables can be said for any aspect of the pop report. As soon as it’s a higher number than 1 card graded, there’s no guarantee that it’s even more than the same card submitted over and over.
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As being one of the few remaining people that was around when grading pokemon cards wasn’t a thing, @pfm is right that most non-10 cards were not graded. In fact most non-base cards were not graded. Hell they didn’t even designate Shadowless right away. Basically majority of cards were not viable to grade until maybe 10 years ago or so. Even when gold stars were new, there was no added value graded. I sold multiple torchics raw I pulled myself because a PSA 10 premium didn’t exist. Which highlights the other data point about most cards being pack fresh. Look at modern today; regardless of gem mint rates, naturally most cards are pack fresh because they are new. Same was true then, except grading wasn’t a thing, so naturally most cards were passed over and not submitted.
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I’m extremely good at pre-grading. The issue is graders aren’t consistent and usually overly cautious.
I keep a spreadsheet to track how “accurate” my grades are. Spoiler: it’s either 80-90% or 30-40% per sub lol. So averages out to 60%ish.
I made this when I still had light in my heart and spent hours pre-grading, now I just throw stuff in the mail and pray.
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I think the key is to pregrade like the bulk graders are grading: 5 seconds look at the front - no scratches and centered enough for eye? Good. Check the back, no whitening → PSA 10. Too off center, any whitening on the back you see right away, smack that with a 9 if it looks pack fresh or 7-8 otherwise. Any dents or obvious surface damge? Automatic 6, reduce as necessary for the previous components like centering, whitening, etc.
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I also never submit more than 50 cards per sub. Too many times have i had a submission with larger than that come back with odd amount of the same grade, like the grader is lazy and slaps everything with a 9. I did a 100+card sub before and cracked and regrade majority of cards you could tell they just gave the same grade as the one before, and got upgrades on all.
Point being its very subjective and depends on the grader you get. I limit the chances of having a “bad submission” by keeping them below 50 cards. Also 50 cards is exactly the size of their longer psa boxes, but that’s just me being ocd. And i notice my turnaround times have been quicker with smaller subs.
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I think you can compare within a set eg. Charizard vs raichu. Or compare psa 9/10 ratio across the entire population of cards coming out of psa.
It’s just a matter of building in the unknown variables into the analysis.
Frankly I think there’s overall a bit too much trying to figure out the “pattern” of what’s happening in the psa black box, like this thread for example. People lose sight of how variable individual orders can be from each other
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Thats an interesting point. Anyone having a similar experience?
I mean I still pre-grade I was being hyperbolic but it doesn’t really change how things end up once they’re out of my hands. I might as well not spend much time on it.
And on the point of sending less than 50 cards, its probably a good idea but at the same time you don’t want to send too small subs either because every new grader you get is a new dice roll. I thought “send the smallest subs possible so they give you higher percentage of 10s” but that’s not how it turned out.
The logic is sound. If you do a bunch of smaller submissions you get a wider range of graders and therefore your cards will tend towards the statistical “average experience”
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