Let me preface this by saying I have only ever sent in 2 cards ever for PSA’s financial guarantee so it is a very small sample size. That being said, my most recent experience is leaving me quite dumbfounded.
So recently I purchased a PSA 9 2005 English Championship Arena. I knew going into the purchase that there was a chance of the infamous corner indents, but I was hopeful. I received the card and lo and behold the indents were there. I sat on the card for a little bit, but the fact that the label said 9 when I knew it wasn’t just kept bugging me. So I went and sent the card off to PSA for their financial guarantee with the explanation of the damage and whatnot. This leads me to today when I got an email saying their head grader just looked at the card and determined that the grade of PSA 9 was indeed correct. At this point I am just going to have to accept that the card will always be in the PSA 9 holder and that PSA’s opinion will not change.
All that being said, I am hoping that this thread can prove to be somewhat informational rather than just me ranting. If anyone else has any experiences (negative or positive) with PSA’s financial guarantee, please share them as I am curious to know how often they actually pay out on misgraded cards.
Provide a copy of the e-mail in with a photo of the card if/when you go to sell it. It’s all you can do and it isn’t too surprising to hear.
I wonder how much luck I would have today compared to the financial guarantee claims I did a few years ago on cards then worth ~$1,000 that today are worth $2,500-$10,000+. I think I was something like 5/5 with guarantees as I only ever sent in situations where there was a clear discrepancy of 2+ grades sometimes due to small but obvious creases or just loads of corner wear and clear misgrades.
I don’t have the card back yet from PSA, but as soon as I do I’ll update the thread with pictures of the exact damage. In the meantime, I pulled these from an article that ludkins did that essentially shows the same damage my card has.
I made a post just yesterday saying this. PSA will go through hell and high water to make sure that they uphold their original grade.
PSA does not want to set a precedent of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars of their own money to correct mistakes like this.
So if they’re going to actually uphold the financial guarantee it would have to be something *incredibly* obvious, not something as subtle as what you’re showing in your pictures.
If someone has examples of PSA actually confirming that a card was mis-graded and sending a bunch of money your way for their error, I would love to hear them.
I had a psa 9 base 1st zard that had loads of back edgewear to the tune of them downgrading it to a 7. This was at the time that it was ~$900 or so for the downgrade difference (after I negotiated it up) IIRC so quite some time ago.
Another was a gold star 9 zard that had a crease highly evident in the wing of the holo that went down to a 6 IIRC. Several hundred there. Both came by the way of vouchers for bulk orders I already had there.
I think I had one more in the several hundred dollar range that came to a check but I dont remember the card. Then the rest were old school ex from ruby and sapphire graded 10s and 9s with creases on them that they most certainly didnt have when I sent them in and I believe happened around the time of or during encapsulation. I opened a PSA inconsistencies thread at the time that got a lot of activity you can find in my history.
They dented a shadowless Charizard of mine that was graded an 8 during encapsulation. Sent it in for review and they downgraded it to a 5 and gave me $500 voucher for grading services. This was 2-3 years ago.
@hypernova as with my situation I’m assuming they didn’t own up to denting it?
In my case I had several cards affected with corner creases that they didnt have when I sent them but unfortunately most made it into PSA 4-7 cases so I had no recourse. One was a PSA 9 case so they said it must have been missed and reimbursed me.
Well it’s not like I tried to get them to confess or anything. When I was researching the issue I encountered some stories about people that really tried to push PSA to their limits with regards to getting reimbursed or the amount they wanted to be reimbursed and eventually PSA just blacklisted the people from using their service. I didn’t just roll over and take their first offer of $100 (for a $600 card that was turned into a $100 card, at the time), but I didn’t want to try and push for something like future value lost due to PSA 8 → PSA 5 grade lowering. That may sound ridiculous, but if we assume a PSA 8 Shadowless Charizard is $1300 now and a PSA 5 is $500, I’ve lost out on (1300 - 600) - (500 - 100) = $300 value over time due to those dents, and that gap will only widen over time. I can safely say, however, that the grades I’ve gotten from PSA have made me orders of magnitude more than $300, though, so I don’t hold too big of grudge.
@hypernova, You’ve got the best way of looking at it. Some wouldn’t back down, Argue and end up loosing all future business. Similar to ebay buyers abusing returns systems and ebay not helping. You can either never use them again or proceed to make money. If you loose 1k for every 40k who’s better off. Not to say when it happens it doesn’t get to me and makes me want to hunt the person down, but for your own mental health, take a break and focus on the positives.
That’s tough. I think you just out bid me on this card. I was super hesitant because the seller wouldn’t respond to my emails when asking about the indent. I can’t believe PSA wouldn’t honor their guarantee.
Yea, I just decided that I would risk it and at worst I could send it in for their guarantee as an indent is a guaranteed 6. Obviously that didn’t work out so I am probably just going to end up selling this one and looking for a 5-6 eventually.
How does PSA judge market value? IE what if I have a card that hasn’t had a sold listing in a year? Half a year? 2 years? [Just for some examples]. Do they just use the price of last sold from 2 years ago for their evaluation?
Just to add my own experiences to the guarantee. I sent in a PSA 9 Rayquaza GS for review that had significant residue of some sort disfiguring (blurring, looking like scratches, discolouring) the holo and top front and back edges of the card. Luckily they did bump the grade down to an 8 and I got a few hundred off it but I feel as if it should have got lower than an 8 personally.
As much of a shame as it is that PSA can’t honour things as they should like with this instance, I do understand why. Even if it isn’t right at all
You stated you thought it might be a misgrade, in your opinion, before buying the card. If you paid a PSA 9 price for what you thought could be a PSA 6 card in the end, it’s just something you’ll have to work with. If you want it to be an accurate grade, crack it and send it in for a fresh grade and send in the old label. I don’t think you should expect them to reimburse your purchase when you went into it knowing you could be buying several grades too high. I’m not trying to be mean spirited but it doesn’t seem to be a good practice to go into purchases thinking if you disagree with a grade you can get them to give you some money.
