Everyone can deny it or call it a conspiracy if you want but its 100% not. ZandGemporium made a video on it to explain it. I also cracked 25 cards that were not super high end (non holo and holos) just to test it out so I could know. ALL BUT 1, YES 24/25 ALL GOT A LOWER GRADE. FROM 10 TO 9 and 9 TO 8.
You don’t believe me or that it has changed. Please try with your own cards. This 100% does change the PSA 10s of the past compared to now and the 4 certs are going to demand a premium and they should because im sure a huge % of the old 10s would get 9s now with the new PSA grading.
Hi Mike - I think if you read back through the comments some of your questions will be answered! The short of it is - according to those who grade the most cards - there is no discernible change in grading strictness.
Collecting strong 9s is a great shout, but you’re probably just as likely to find strong 9s with older certs too, so just shop around and make sure to get plenty of photos from sellers!
Another thought is perhaps the higher through-put at PSA (as more people join the hobby) is highlighting their historical inconsistencies more, especially with more social media exposure too.
@mysterydungeongaming you cracked 25 10’s and 24 of them downgraded? Can you show the data for that? It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s partially that I’d love for it to be true and documented, but I just have doubts to that story as any reasonable person would.
People haven’t been around long enough to understand this discussion has already happened. The statement about “flippers come and go” is in relation to just that; they are patterns that manifest themselves in a constant rotation of individuals who come and go.
So lets entertain this idea that PSA is significantly harsher, so what is the outcome? The conspiracies are “Pop control”, “PSA is more aware of prices”. So PSA is more harsh because cards are more valuable = less objective. If so, then the 0xxx-2xxx are the TrUuU Psa 10’s because Pokemon wasn’t as popular, ie more objective. The logic is so contradictory and tangled.
Ultimately you will always get differing opinions, because there is a range of experience. But if you look at the patterns, the people who have been around only a few years are primarily regurgitating this narrative. Because they simply haven’t existed long enough to realize this discussion has already occurred, and will again, whether they are here or not.
No not 25 PSA 10s. I did 5 PSA 10 Holos, 5 PSA 10 non holos, and then 15 PSA 9 holos. Only 1 of the PSA 10 non holos did not get downgraded lol. I literally don’t know what to think about the future of older PSA certs. And as far as proof I don’t know if I really have any that could be seen as 100% fact unfortunantly…I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I already thought about it after the fact. I mean I can show the cards but no way to show those exact cards used to be 10s and 9s… Just wanted to try it out to see and did not think it would be that bad by any means. I thought maybe a few could down grade but it was across the board EVEN ON NON HOLOS… Pretty crazy.
One big issue from a statistical perspective is batch effect. If you submit x cards to test or experiment with in a single order, presumably you have the same one grader evaluating the cards all on the same day. Not only is 25 cards a very small sample, the results are going to be highly correlated because of the replication issue. This is like running a drug trial and measuring the results from a single person 25 times and trying to extrapolate to a whole population rather than running it with 25 people and sampling them each once. In essence, resubmitting 25 cards together only really gives you one datapoint and only applies to that one particular grader on that one particular day.
Note I’m not saying anything at all regarding a change in strictness, I’m just saying be careful what data you extrapolate from. This also applies to that ZandG video where I presume most or all of those cards were submitted in the same order.
OK so ill retract my statement that this is a recent ‘change’.
We all seem to agree the grading is hit an miss, some things slip through because we are all human seems to be the point here.
Do any of the more experienced among you have a feel for numbers on this? Do any of you have an idea what % of cards may be incorrectly graded?
I do accept the argument of human error. But for a business who’s model is to provide objective scales on condition I would want the human error to be very, very low!
On one side you have people saying that things are the same as they’ve always been, standards haven’t changed
Bulk submissions are being sent in with the same 8/9/10 ratio as always
On the other side you have people who believe that most 2x cert 10s would only pass as 9s if not lower today
People cracking low value/mid value 2x certs (Z&G cracked a Kangaskhan jungle holo 10 lol dumbass) and resubmitting them to see what they will get and according to their word, consistently getting lower grades than the original grades
At least both camps can agree that PSA needs to fix a few issues. Recently on youtube/instagram, I’ve seen more mistakes on PSA’s end than ever with handling cards. Just going through a few of the Lootboxtv PSA return videos, PSA has straight up damaged multiple cards in multiple submissions of his, and ZERO times have they taken ownership for it. It is completely unprofessional to bend/crease a customer’s cards or put stains/nail marks, etc., but to not even put a note on the slab acknowledging their mistake and also not offer immediate compensation? It’s fucked up. Mistakes happen but PSA conveniently ignores them. I guess you could say that the process of acknowledging these mistakes and providing compensation immediately would take too much time, but honestly it would be much faster than having to go back and forth with PSA after you receive the damaged, slabbed card, and then having to prove that the card was not damaged before they handled it, and having to fight for your rightful compensation
Then you have schwifty in the other thread saying he was on the phone with PSA’s head grader and that the grader confirmed that PSA has raised the grading standard overall without making a PSA about it(hah)
This whole thing is a massive headache. I just wish there was some transparency
This would make sense assuming that the 25 resubmitted cards were all given 10s by the same one grader in the past(who would have a different standard compared to this new grader who gave the 9s)
The problem arises if these 25 old gem mints were plucked from different submissions, assuming there was different graders for most of the submissions
It’s a problem on both ends. If you want the best representative data, you should take 25 cards all from different submissions in the past and regrade them in 25 different orders today. Of course this is a lot of work but this is how you should set up an experiment if you want to honestly assess their grading over time
Also you can’t say much from n=25. If you really want to say anything about statistical significance you’d ideally want numbers closer to n=250
But if they are having record growth/profits…why would they? Is the only thing we can do is cancel memberships and stop submitting? I did just that, but I’m only 1 very small fish.
I agree. They had more qualified applicants that walked because their pay is abysmal.
From their end the market continues to grow so on paper they don’t see an issue. But they need more internal knowledge. I’ve pitched to them in the past, and Joe O’s direct quote back then was, “we can’t afford you”. I told them there are plenty of willing qualified people, but its a tough pitch because its intangible, and gets lost in the overall monetary growth.
What I love/loved about gemmintpokemon’s PSA returns specifically is that he would go through the cards and be psyched to get whatever it was. He was more accepting of the grades and more about the enjoyment of hitting those big ones. Sure there was a little grade bickering but over all the tone was exciting and enjoyable to watch. The people putting out content where all they do is complain about the grades or question the grades immediately and only focus on that not only turns me off, it’s also creating this mob mentality which in the end will hurt the hobby. I completely understand the frustration, I’ve been there many times, but people need to relax a little bit and enjoy the cards. If you aren’t having fun why would anyone join in on collecting graded cards? Sound like a big headache. I’m not saying lie to yourselves and put out false emotion but enjoy yourself people. We are collecting cardboard and living lavish. I certainly don’t look back at 1999 and think, “Yeah, my PSA 10 Charizord was the strongest grade on the playground.” LOL
