In this day and age where 90% of the time a listing has a high res front and back photo, you’d think these premiums wouldn’t exist.
Free value though for people who’ve been collecting for more than 2 years lol.
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The irony is the cards that are “mint” now are coming out of packs that have been jostled around in boxes for 20+ years that have been exchanged through who knows how many owners.
And, since the cards were printed 20+ years ago, the print quality has remained the same. PSA still gives out 10s to new labels that have hairline print lines.
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There have been too many horror stories of old PSA labels that scare people away, and not nearly as many for newer labels. To the point where new collectors find it easier to just say - screw it, new label only.
Looking at the card remains the op strategy
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I get it when it comes to the really old certs, as I have personally replaced a couple of those myself, but whenever I see people calling certs that were graded as recently as covid era “old cert”, I stop taking them seriously.
There’s definitely no shortage of people that will try to rinse you on the whole cert thing. Like, You’re not getting my mint vintage cards at 60% because of a serial number, sorry.
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I’m the opposite, I love the 0 certs as they were graded during the original era. Then again I’m not a condition collector.
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I will admit, there definitely can be a charm to it! Especially with vintage sports.
I think I knew the whole cert debate was mostly silly when I took some high end sports cards from the 60’s & 70’s to a large LCS, (I was being lazy and wanted some quick liquidity) only to have them be rejected due to the cert.
In my head I was just like… these cards don’t just pre-date everybody in this room, they pre-date PSA itself by 20 years… the cert # is meaningless. Of course they low balled me because they’d “have to regrade.” Lol. I just put them on my eBay and sold within a week for market value.
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its coz the 2x and 4x certs dont have the kurt juice on them
Charm is exactly the word! I remember consigning this 1st Ed Base Charizard a few years ago and wish I just bought it outright! It looked so good in person, and I love that it was graded during the 90s!
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Nice to see appreciation for old slabs!
I bought one like that earlier this year. At first I was concerned that being “old” was somehow a drawback, but the card looked so clean, so I pushed those thoughts aside.
Now I’m wondering if there’s a way to check the year it was graded. Were they up to 05x certs before the end of WotC? Maybe Gary owned mine originally? The history I’ll never know. 
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Thats what I like about MIne as well, Gary was able to confirm that he was the original submitter of my card.
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0x cert love warms my heart 
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I don’t own any old cert slabs, but I do enjoy the sentiment and how it feels like a mini time capsule.
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Old certs also have the benefit of being way less likely to have been altered or cleaned.
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All natural damage 
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Old certs are just graded poorly compared to today’s standards. Many of those old 10s and 9s would easily be 8s now. If you had the option between a new cert with a pristine grade and an old one, why wouldn’t you go with the newer one? I don’t get why it’s so hard for some of you older collectors to wrap your head around, lol.
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I guess Kurt’s card cum could be a concern…
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Childish comment nothing of value to add.
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Facetious, perhaps.
Do you know how Kurt’s cream interacts with a Pokemon card’s substrate over the long term? I don’t, so I’d rather avoid the possibility of it being on my cards.
For the record, I own both old and new certs.
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Not to restart this discussion for the 5000th time but I swear we need to start documenting the bad new certs; people keep repeating the ‘old cert bad new cert good’ idea like it’s fact.
Most of the misgrades I’ve seen lately are new certs. I realise that’s an extremely vague statement but it’s also the same level of detail we accept from scholars of cert theory.
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