Hello all, I recently bought a 1st edition Brock’s Rhydon and I’m looking into whether it’s worth to be graded. I’m kind of hoping to get a PSA 9 or perhaps a 10 as I believe it is pack fresh, my heart tells me to get it graded, but my mind is telling me to not grade this one as I can point out some flaws.
Sorry for the bad quality, had to take them with my smartphone, I can make pictures with a digital camera tomorrow once there’s sunlight again
So my dilemma is the following, the card surface looks perfect to me on front and back, the holo has no scratches as far as I’ve seen, the centering is a little bit off but I think it’s still acceptable for any grade. Overall really happy about the front of the card, but there’s quite a nick in a corner at the back of the card.
Now I’ve heard stories that these cards pack-fresh were not of the best quality, would PSA consider that in their grading? I don’t know if the nick was there once it got out of the pack or not.
Overall, I’d just like to hear your opinions before I decide what I want to do with it.
Well okay, If you can already point out some flaws, your best possible scenario is getting a PSA 9. The price of the most recent sales of a PSA 9 Brock’s Rhydon (1st Ed.) is around $40, while the PSA 10 is probably closer to $85-$95.
And another thing to ask is, what were your intentions when buying the card? Were you hoping to flip the card for a profit or add it to your collection? How much did you buy the card for?
Grading a WOTC 1st Edition card will almost always increase the value of the card no matter what, but you have to take the costs into consideration. The cost of grading the card is probably going to total at around $15-$20 for the card with shipping, assuming you aren’t doing a bulk submission. If you bought the card for $20 and you are going to spend another $20 to get it graded in hopes of getting a 9, you are just going to break even trying to sell it at $40. And if you get it graded at anything less than a 9 you are only losing money with your investment in that card. But if you are getting it graded to add to your collection, or maybe even to hold onto for a few years, that’s a whole different story.
So what is essentially comes down to is what were your intentions when buying the card, and then you need to figure out what your best possible option would be to retain your value on your initial investment.
I hope this helps!
Side Note: PSA doesn’t care if damage is caused by the user or caused by the factory. A blemish is a blemish in their eyes. This is what helps maintain the integrity of a PSA 10 graded card. A PSA 10 is an absolutely perfect card. Even if a card may be pack fresh, that does not mean it will get a PSA 10. Some cards will come out of the pack with factory nicks, and factory lines that will “degrade” them. PSA 8’s and 9’s are not bad grades, but they will not pull the high premiums that a PSA 10 would. However since this is a niche market, you will find some buyers who are looking for specific factory mistakes and will be willing to pay a premium for them, but that doesn’t really apply to factory corner nicks.
Thanks for your feedback derpizard, I really appreciate it
You’re correct that flipping was my interest, but I also like collecting so I’m not exactly sure yet what I’ll do, I was thinking about flipping as a “serious” business a couple of months ago but didn’t push through, now I’m on my way to getting my first full-time job and I can afford to have expensive hobbies finally.
I think I bought this one around $7 excluding shipping costs, so it was a good deal and I’m not feeling bad about it or anything, just curious what the grade range is going to be, if there’s a chance on a PSA 9 it’s probably worth the experience, but if it could get graded at a 6 then it may even be harder to sell than ungraded.
I’m looking on getting a bunch of cards graded at least a couple of 20 together, though bulk is better with respect to shipping costs.
If you do sign up for PSA’s membership. They give you a few complimentary grade vouchers and they also let you use their bulk submission deals which lower the grading costs to like $6 a card (excluding shipping). You could also try reaching out to a few of the members that offer up their submission services.
But of course there is that off chance that PSA makes a mistake on grades, so you could try youtubing some PSA return videos to get a general idea of what some grades look like. GemMintPokemon is a youtuber that I regularly follow and he has alot of PSA return videos where he discusses the grades of each card and why each card got their respective grade.
I’ve actually already looked into both resources a while ago, though I can now say that I do understand the PSA guidelines a bit more than before, what I extract from it is that to have a good shot at a good grade (this may very depending on the card you’re grading), you’re going to need to have a card with clear front and back, and for a chance on a 10 you may not spot any issues, a single whitened corner still has a high chance on getting a 9 and with two whitened corners you’re looking at an 8 already, if that’s the case then that’s acceptable.
I’ve found that GemMintPokemon videos are pretty interesting to watch and give me quite insight, but having an overview of cards fronts and backs and the grade it got back as would be helpful as well for comparison purposes.
So I looked at my cards again in even better lighting conditions (used my phone’s LED light) and I’m seeing some scratches on some of my cards, I’m wondering how bad they are though.
Surprisingly the pictures I made with a DSLR camera with the flash on came out very well as well and the scratches are as visible as manually inspecting on the pictures, here’s the pictures:
I bought the Brock’s Rhydon and Erika’s Vileplume 1st editions as singles from Ebay, unfortunately the Erika’s Vileplume came as an unlimited edition but it got refunded luckily. The Shiftry ex I found inside a pretty big binder I’ve bought.
My assessment is that the Shiftry ex seems to be about perfect, cannot detect any scratches apart from minimal ones, very surprised about that coming from a binder not being inside a sleeve or anything. The Brock’s Rhydon looked okay, but I can see minor scratches, not sure about that, they seem to be really minor and hard to detect. The Erika’s Vileplume has pretty bad scratches.
Also just so you’re sure, I’ve confirmed that the scratches are on the card and not on the toploader or sleeve.
I’m wondering how it affects the grades though (assuming the back is perfect)? I was hoping that based on the front the Brock’s Rhydhon would still have a shot at a 10, the Shiftry ex should be a solid 10 and the Erika’s Vileplume might be an 6? but not sure about that.
For your reference… this actually scored a 10! I’m a bit torn about the grade, if you look at the back it deserves a 9, but the eye appeal on the front would make me say it’s absolutely a 10.
The Shiftry ex that I mentioned in the last post also got a 10, though I agree on that one, it’s not BGS 10 strong, but it’s a good PSA 10.