For those unaware, as of the past few months PSA has been sending back 2015 Art Academy cards ungraded, including ones sent by the original winner. This is likely due to internal PSA dissatisfaction over the number of extra unawarded copies/not being able to differentiate, and winners complaining to PSA (For example, the Kyogre artist has never sold one, and has remained upset to see sales of the card from Collector’s Cache).
This extends to all languages as I have seen English, Japanese and Spanish returned ungraded.
If you have additional information or insights please share.
I spoke directly with a PSA employee around early August about this. They confirmed to me that PSA was no longer grading Art Academy cards. The reason is that the origin of the specific card (obtained via the winner or via extra copies) could not be determined.
The employee explained to me that PSA’s concept of “authenticity” is not just that the card was produced by Pokemon, but that it was distributed in the intended manner. I quote from their message: “If it wasn’t procured the way it was intended to because someone removed product not intended for distribution or distribution as intended, those cards aren’t authentic.”
This employee also mentioned the stolen Unseen Forces gold stars and no name old back trophies as cards that PSA was considering rejecting due to this concept of authenticity.
I raised my objections with this concept of authenticity with the employee, namely the fact that “intended distribution” is arbitrary and usually only means “announced distribution.” For all we know the Art Academy extras were given away as intended to an employee who then decided to sell. We know this is a near certainty with the Pkonno trophy copies, it is unlikely they were fraudulently obtained. Also, “proving” that a card was distributed in the intended manner is basically proving a negative (proving that the card was not fraudulently obtained). More generally, I believed the concept of authenticity reflected a lack of understanding of the Pokemon card distribution process and the fact that PSA had already authenticated and graded multiple “extra” copies of these cards.
I suggested the employee contact individuals more knowledgeable than myself before PSA made any policy changes. I am unsure of whether that occurred. Importantly, the employee did mention that if someone could prove that their Art Academy card came from a winner, it would be graded. However, whether this is true in practice remains to be seen.
The fact that the original Tangrowth art academy winner sent some of his copies in and was rejected is a little ridiculous, though PSA likely didn’t know it was him.
If he resubmitted and let PSA know he was the original winner though, it sounds like they would grade them
They also rejected a Pikachu sold to the submitter by the winner, and the winner included a nice note and signed sketch with the card. I wonder if that would qualify as proof.
So should PSA also not grade any english set card before release date, since most of them would not be legitimate either. Very thin line PSA is putting down here imo
It’s a logically absurd position for PSA to take as fourthstar alluded to. How do you authenticate the “intended distribution” of a card? The short answer is, unless there is some signifier on the card such as COLLECTOR charizord or the no-named trophy cards, you simply can’t. This move implies that PSA believes it’s authentication also includes an authentication of the distribution method. But the reality is, there’s no step in the grading process to ensure a card was obtained in the intended way. I really think they are overstepping the line of what level of authority they believe they have.
For instance, consider any card ever graded by CGC as “unintentional release” - which includes the shiny Charizord V. Should PSA never grade these cards because of the tiny possibility they circumvented the appropriate retail process? There’s no way to know which copies came directly from the factory floor, so if PSA wants to ensure all the cards it grades are authentically released, should they stop grading Charizord V? If I were to buy an “unintentional release” CGC slab and crack it to send to PSA, there’s a 0% chance they will reject it due to the nature of it’s release. So what authority can they really claim here?
We can maybe argue that it makes sense to not grade Art Academy because of the ratio of extra copies is higher. But all they are doing is admitting they can’t differentiate “real” copies from “fake” copies, so my question is why include this in a criteria for grading if it’s impossible to do? Not only that, but I guess now they should be refusing to grade old back japanese trophies because it’s impossible to know which ones came from pkonno? What does that mean for cards already slabbed? Is a Primal Kyogre EX now entitled to a financial guarantee because there’s zero chance it came from a legitimate source?
It’s all very silly. It’s not even hard to fix this problem. The current system apparently assumes “distribution authenticity” unless there’s some reason to question it - which for >99% of submitted cards, there’s no way to actually know. And then somehow they believe they can make a claim of positive “distribution authenticity” based on nothing. The REAL way of solving this is to be agnostic to a card’s distribution until there’s positive evidence of the origin. Ironically, they already do this through pedigrees. The “Logan Paul Break” cards are documented to have come from the box break stream. Why not use the same system to denote significant origins? Why not allow art academy winners to submit their own copies and receive the special pedigree, and all cards submitted from another source don’t? Why not put the Illustrator winner’s name on the label if that’s where it came from [instead of Aoki lol]? But no, I guess that would make too much sense. Instead we get this logically inverted system where PSA want’s to make a sweeping claim on distribution authenticity while doing nothing to actually test for it.
I do actually think this is their new stance. They deactivated the certification number of a Celebrations Venusaur that was graded prior to official release.
But in all seriousness what replay do you want from that question? Like most rare cards this will do very little. Remember we have two other big gradingcompanies that will grade these. I belive 110% that this will do nothing to the prices, and if it did im sure im not the only one who would be ready to buy a few more. You also need to realise that most of the winners are selling ungraded, have that ever done anything to the price? No it hasn’t
PSA = for this… what the fuck are they thinking lol. Gotta submit every new set early release to them and hopefully they’ll just stop grading pokemon all together.
CGC = for their “early release” shenanigans.
Everyone is stuck falling over each other to attend the sold out circus too.
Like fourth mentioned with the unseen forces dogs, they are without a doubt grading gold stars that were not “properly distributed” or whatever by their standards. If they can’t hold that standard for all cards, doesn’t seem fair to hold it to these cards specifically.
Even though it has been mentioned with the no name trophies I would be willing to bet that with the prices they charge that they will grade any other old back trophy cards without so much as a thought of intended distribution.
@qwachansey, thank you for bringing this up as I had some come back from a sub in October of last year, tried to expedite them two months ago and they got kicked back. I feel better not being singled out, haha.
Well, I guess I need to go BGS or find a cool case for them. If anyone has a recommendation, I am all ears
Is it really PSA’s job to authenticate distribution? Doesn’t that just ruin the collectability of a card for people who obtained it legitimately and just want it slabbed?
At little off topic, but pretty funny that the winner is upset. They still stand to make $100s of $1000s if not a million+ over time selling copies.
Basically made a small fortune winning a contest from an obscure spinoff Pokemon game with average art & whining because they can’t control the full market. How entitled can you be?
for this… what the fuck are they thinking lol. Gotta submit every new set early release to them and hopefully they’ll just stop grading pokemon all together.
