The Giant Professional Grading Thread

What are you having trouble with when you try to search in PSA? The Japanese sets are listed separate from he English sets.
Take 2019 for example. You have “Pokemon Japanese Sun & Moon Double Blaze” and “Pokemon Sun & Moon Unbroken Bonds”. The names of the sets in their respective languages
www.psacard.com/pop/tcg-cards/2019/163661

Hi Steve, the method I’ve used that works is

[Year] Pokemon Japanese [number] - this typically tends to work. I’ve found that limiting the year first and then Pokemon JApanese really helps narrow down the search in the drop down. This method seems to work for lots of people. Hope this helps

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@serpintaxt ,

Thanks man that has been a huge time saver! I’m still new to grading.

Appreciate it!

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Anyone grade with CGC lately? I sent in some cards standard grading and they were marked as recieved 1/7/21 and ti hasn’t changed at all since.

Yes, sent a bulk sub that was entered on the 4th, still no movement

I have a “30-Day” submission with CGC that was sent on Nov 4th 2020 through Ludkins and haven’t received any communication that it’s finished so I’m assuming it’ll be another month at the earliest :unamused:

Anyone else see this?

Does anyone know how PSA would grade this? The back has noticeable indents from where the stamp was applied…


Yeah, I’ve got one with a few bits/crumbs of “something”, a smudge and four fingerprints that show up if you angle a light along the edge of the PSA slab.

I’m torn whether to just get that particular example reholdered (since it’s a 16"“” cert), crack it and gamble on a better grade, or cross over to CGC.

Might be similar to how they do shining tyranitar and just ignore it

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I sent in a 30-day submission back in late October through Ludkins and also haven’t heard anything back. I didn’t realize at the time that CGC was also getting backed up lol

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I’m starting to worry that this is going to turn into bgs, they’re already about to raise their prices significantly

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Yeah, it’s an interesting phenomenon that all grading companies are seemingly incapable of sticking to their stated turnaround times. It’s not entirely clear why BGS, PSA, and CGC are all unable or unwilling to scale with demand. We’ve put men on the moon and eradicated polio, but we can’t figure out how to engineer a service that efficiently places children’s playing cards in plastic cases. It’s pretty pathetic, honestly.

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they all start to get the picture when you pay 50$+ per card lol :wink:

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Scaling fully to a ridiculous, unsustainable, bubble like demand is what the sports cards manufacturers did in the 90’s. It is what beanie babies did in the early 2000’s. It would serve almost nobody best for PSA to somehow 10x their capacity over the next month, clear the backlog and then just be able to churn and burn everything that comes through their doors within 30 day turnaround times. The shock to the market from the initial flood and then subsequent massive stream of cards flowing through would surely crash many things and have lasting negative effects to the hobby and to the graders themselves.

The best way to do it is a very complex optimization problem (but not as complex as PSA makes it). They have a finite capacity for grading measured in cards/day. The optimal solution would involve some combination of both raising prices and raising capacity, surely not just one or the other. PSA has already undergone some of both, but clearly with orders from as far back as May and likely earlier not being touched, their backlog grows by the day. When they get new subs in excess of their current grading capacity, the backlog grows. Pretty simple math that they can’t fully seem to figure out. Still waiting on what I believe to be an inevitable 2x+ in pricing for bulk grading at least in the short term.

CGC is bumping turnaround times right now as well as prices. Increased turnaround times are capable of smoothing variable demand. If you have the capacity to grade 10k cards/day say and you get an average of 8k cards a day but some days 1k and some days 50k then naturally a turnaround time will allow you to smooth out those inputs. Increasing turnaround times theoretically would soften demand to some extent, but with every grading company doing it at the same time while prices run up crazy I really don’t think it does at all. So increasing turnaround times at best kicks the can down the road and the road we are headed on is a long one. I would guess right now PSA is in some state where they are getting 1.5-2x their daily average throughput in new submissions and that just isn’t sustainable. You are going to have people going bankrupt, leaving the hobby or in some other way not having the money to pay for their submissions two years out from when they submitted the cards. In extreme cases you could see orders abandoned at PSA no longer worth paying whatever new fees they increase to down the line when some of the card values have evaporated.

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Same boat. Late October order with no word yet from Ludkins. It’s very weird because I had sent an order literally the week before that and got it back in mid December. I think the late October and early November orders broke them lol I’m even waiting a really long time for a comic sent to them around the same period.

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I agree that it would be a shock to the market. But I think that shock is preferable to having a constant artificial scarcity of cards. It’s the reason why random PSA 5 WotC commons are selling for $25 – it’s because of the inefficiency of grading. If raw cards could be instantly graded and slabbed, the demand for PSA 5 WotC commons would quickly be overtaken by the supply. And fewer people would be burned in the process.

It would certainly depress prices for many cards. But efficient grading services would be a net positive for collectors, IMO. It wouldn’t surprise me if PSA is intentionally not reducing turnaround times in order to keep the market strong. If the entirety of PSA’s backlog hit the market within the next month, prices would crash. They would eventually stabilize, but the crash could permanently injure the market.

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Anyone know the allowance for the BGS Subgrades on a centering for a 10?

PSA does 60/40 for a 10, what does BGS do?

I am trying to figure out if something can cross to a 10

i.imgur.com/r1B88nx.png

In order to get an overall grade of BGS 10, no subgrades can be lower than a 9.5. So you could have as low as 9.5 centering and still get a BGS 10, depending on the other subgrades. For 9.5 centering, you have to be at least 55/45, I believe.

Hmm yeah, I think I’d be lucky to get even a 9.5 centering on this card I think, it’s rough

i.imgur.com/3gHAn1F.png