As an update, I’ve been following these cards with older flip labels and newer certs for a while now. They ONLY appear to surface from PWCC auctions when they first hit the market. The newest example is this Skyridge Charizard that was sold in the July 29 auctions.
Other examples I have noted are 1st Base Zapdos/Hitmonchan, and 1st Jungle Kang that I have personally purchased from PWCC. As well as a 1st Base Alakazam that a forum member (Muddy Buckets) purchased. I’m beginning to wonder if PWCC has their own stock of cards that they are grading and selling.
I find it unlikely if they were from personal collections that they would only surface in PWCC auctions exclusively. Also difficult to believe the newer flip label paper was in shortage of only one specific block of submission, and sales are being channelled through PWCC only.
@tetraninja very odd indeed. I don’t look at enough unique PSA listings to be able to verify myself that they are only channeling through PWCC. All my subs have come back with the most up to date label styles afaik.
The simple answer for how an older cert number can be in the newer style label is very simple. Re-encapsulation causes that to occur.
But this. an older style label with newer cert number?.. I just don’t know what would explain it. I mean even if you wanted to tin foil hat it and assume PWCC was being given special treatment and being allowed to choose older style labels why little plebes like us couldn’t the question would be… Y tho? As far as if PWCC is grading their own cards I have seen them sell raw cards so maybe just they offer a service where they can grade and then sell your card if you don’t want to grade yourself? No idea.
I’ve put on my tinfoil hat as hard as I can but I just can’t see how this is anything but benign. Is someone, be it PWCC or otherwise, requesting older labels and actually getting them? Is that something we should be concerned about? [EDIT: looks like I just echoed what gottaketchumall said here, hah] A cause for concern would be if someone managed to fake the label. If you could find the same card with a different label, that’d be pretty worrying. But as far as I know, these cards owned by you and the alakazam from muddy buckets look like both real cards and real 10s, no?
I’ll definitely keep my eyes peeled for more cards like these. Pretty interesting you’ve only discovered in on higher-end cards, but to be fair those are the type of cards you tend to watch. Without a hypothesis to go on, it’s probably most reasonable to think that PSA just ran out of new labels/accidentally used an older label/wants to clear off their remaining supply of older labels slowly over time. The reason they only appear on PWCC may be because they post 1500 cards a month, so statically that’s where they will tend to appear?
It’s definitely odd. I’ll be calling up PSA customer service this week so if I remember, I will ask them about it. Might be valuable to email them a picture too.
