The Giant Professional Grading Thread

[lugiaslair249]

My Regular order that was received on 02/26 was moved to Research & ID today.

[pokematt]

@connorc

My quarterly special just moved to grading! Anyone else in this same order? Or does anyone have a (general) idea how long it’ll take from here?

Order Code: SP2-OKF

Shipped to PSA: 6/16/20
Delivered to PSA: 6/23/20
Registered: 7/20/20
Order Prep: 9/21/20
Research & ID: 10/5/20
Grading: 3/29/21

My quarterly special arrived 6/18 and registered 8/12 but entered the grading stage early January and hasn’t moved since… I really don’t think they have any particular order or estimated time on that quarterly special… I still believe all the steps from “registered” to “shipped” are still just fluff from PSA to make it look like something is moving along but there really isn’t any estimated times or anything for how long each step can take. It’s more like “when it’s done, it’s done”.

[mannynotfound]

@pichufan, do you have any insight on how many cards (pokemon or otherwise) PSA grades per day?

[zorloth]

@mannynotfound

@pichufan , do you have any insight on how many cards (pokemon or otherwise) PSA grades per day?

Well, if they’re grading 100k Pokemon cards every 5 weeks that would mean they’re grading ~2900 Pokemon cards per day (on average).

[pichufan]

@mannynotfound

@pichufan , do you have any insight on how many cards (pokemon or otherwise) PSA grades per day?

Daily no, that’d involve me putting way too much strain on PSA’s website. In the past 7 days however I can tell you that they’ve graded 22,655 Pokémon cards, up from 17,681 the week before and 21,727 the week before that - averaging out at around 3,000 per day over the past few weeks.

I only look at Pokémon data though, so I have no idea how many sports cards and cards from other TCGs they’re grading.

Edit: Also remember that PSA’s pop report is only made up of cards which were actually graded - a lot of cards get rejected by PSA.

[serpintaxt]

@pichufan

@mannynotfound

@pichufan , do you have any insight on how many cards (pokemon or otherwise) PSA grades per day?

Daily no, that’d involve me putting way too much strain on PSA’s website. In the past 7 days however I can tell you that they’ve graded 22,655 Pokémon cards, up from 17,681 the week before and 21,727 the week before that - averaging out at around 3,000 per day over the past few weeks.

I only look at Pokémon data though, so I have no idea how many sports cards and cards from other TCGs they’re grading.

Edit: Also remember that PSA’s pop report is only made up of cards which were actually graded - a lot of cards get rejected by PSA.

Is your data scraping public? if not, would you consider making it using something like data.world (their community product data.world/community/open-community/)??) That is really insightful information and I think could be awesome for an entire community to consume and build insights from

[lhh]

It would be very interesting to know how many sports cards PSA graded in one month and compare that to Pokemon, just so we get perspective on the current situation with PSA.

Some people think that with the spike in Pokemon during the past 12 months that it’s now 20% of submisisons, while others think it’s still less than 5%.

If this has already been asked and answered, I’d love to see the data.

[kpod]

Why doesn’t PSA lump all submission into two categories (each with the same speed tiers) and handle pricing that way if the majority of their backlog is sports? Sports and non-sports pricing makes the most sense, rather than rocketing the price up for everyone.

If they won’t to slow down submissions, make the heaviest submitters and the majority of your current pay the most to deter them?

[rainbow]

@pichufan

@pichufan

1 week on, PSA’s 5 week average is now at over 114,515 Pokémon cards graded*, with 5k more cards being graded this week compared to last week.

The three most graded Pokémon cards in the past week were:

• Base Set unlimited Charizard #4 with 344 copies graded (0 PSA 10s);
• XY Evolutions Charizard #11 with 329 copies graded (3 PSA 10s);
• Champion’s Path Charizard #079 with 257 copies graded (164 PSA 10s).

The three most graded Pokémon sets in the past week were:

• Hidden Fates with 1,551 cards graded (886 PSA 10s);
• Base Set unlimited with 1,525 cards graded (96 PSA 10s);
• XY Evolutions with 948 cards graded (181 PSA 10s).

* The number will be higher than this as there will be newer sets I’ve missed: for some reason PSA’s pop report search has not been updated since January and as an example only 2 of the 2021 sets are currently discoverable through the search. I’ve currently manually added in the 2021 McDonald’s and 2021 Shining Fates sets - if anyone knows of any additional sets which currently do not appear when searching for “Pokemon” on PSA’s pop report (www.psacard.com/pop#0%7Cpokemon) please do let me know about them and I can get more accurate figures. All I need is a card’s certificate to be able to grab all the set info.

Turns out I was slightly off here and was looking at data over 6 weeks instead of 5 (yes, I’m an idiot and was using weeks[5] instead of weeks[4]). The real 5 week total is 99,516 - not 114,515 - but as mentioned in my previous post this is missing a few sets which I’m currently unaware of (because PSA’s pop report search is sort of broken). I’m fairly confident it is now above the 100k mark with the missing sets included.

To extend this I’ve just finished working on a Pokémon ⇄ Grade mapping which reveals how many cards have been graded for each Pokémon. With this I can now say that of 1,576,190 total Pokémon cards graded, 193,148 are cards with Charizard in their name (including 393 ‘Dracaufeu’ (French) and 949 ‘Glurak’ (German)).

If anyone is interested in looking at the breakdown of the 191,801 cards PSA has graded as ‘Charizard’, here is a screenshot from the still-unnamed app I’ve been working on for what feels like forever:

This looks really great and exciting. Well done.

[gottaketchumall]

@gottaketchumall

1 out of 3 of my $7.50 specials from last May finally went to assembly. Hopefully I’ll get it back before its anniversary otherwise I’ll have to send a card to PSA to celebrate the occasion.

Got my upcharges and grade summary on this order.

400 cards were sent most were pack fresh jungle and fossil 1st ed non holos or modern (so super quality not at all inflated stuff that I am going to fire sale) but there were a small handful of known sub 8 cards (Legend pieces, COL shiny).

11 Sub 8

102 NEAR MINT-MINT 8

4 NEAR MINT-MINT+ 8.5

197 MINT 9

86 GEM MINT 10

Overall I am happy with the return and feel glad I didn’t get hit hard by the 8.5’s. Interestingly I had 10 upcharges on this order. All were reasonable as they were on clearly $400+ cards but they only upcharged 2/4 of my pikachu 10’s as well as 2/4 of my eevee 10’s. I had submitted 15 total of each and they were split into a chunk of 5 at the front and a chunk of 10 at the back. This tells me that their upcharge review process must be manual which is crazy to me but makes sense when it is PSA we are talking about.

[briantkim09]

Probably just a coincidence but I’ve had three orders move to QA2 this week

Express (4) Received 2/9/21
Entered 2/24/21
QA 2 3/30/21

Regular (7) Received 2/9/21
Entered 2/24/21
QA 2 4/1/21

Express (1) Received 2/15/21
Entered 3/2/21
QA2 4/1/21

Seems like paying extra for Express on the order received 2/9/21 didn’t gain me a whole lot…

[kemost]

Is it possible to grade through Ludkins still while PSA is closed for private?

[shadowless]

PSA is also closed for middleman @kemost you can of course submit super express/walkthrough though

[lamplamp]

I’ve got two CGC orders through Ludkins at the moment. One order sent on 11/12/20 changed from “Grading” to “Returning” about a month ago. Now the tracker says it’s in “Grading” again lol. Anyone else experienced something like this?

[A.P.Speeze]

Does anyone know if CGC will grade these anime collection cards? I’d like to send an order to Ludkins this week and don’t want to send anything that CGC won’t accept.

[kingboo64]

@A.P.Speeze

Does anyone know if CGC will grade these anime collection cards? I’d like to send an order to Ludkins this week and don’t want to send anything that CGC won’t accept.

They won’t

[chewy]

HGA Grading
Hybrid Grading Approach

Choose from multiple slab styles I think its like $30 up to $100 for service levels couole weeks to 2 days or whatever

Submissions shut down at max capacity every week to prevent backlogs and reopen at a set time in the week.kinda weird but Seems efficient I guess

I havent seen any pokemon cards graded by them yet, I think they are newer but everything seems pretty legit and slabs look nice and u can match the colors to ur card

Anybody heard of these guys yet or have any info ?

[chewy]

@lamplamp

I’ve got two CGC orders through Ludkins at the moment. One order sent on 11/12/20 changed from “Grading” to “Returning” about a month ago. Now the tracker says it’s in “Grading” again lol. Anyone else experienced something like this?

Were u bulk or standard? I ask because I have a sub in the mail ATM Lufkin for cgc standard level

30 day turnaround so who knows what that really means

[surgenius]

@chewy

HGA Grading
Hybrid Grading Approach

Choose from multiple slab styles I think its like $30 up to $100 for service levels couole weeks to 2 days or whatever

Submissions shut down at max capacity every week to prevent backlogs and reopen at a set time in the week.kinda weird but Seems efficient I guess

I havent seen any pokemon cards graded by them yet, I think they are newer but everything seems pretty legit and slabs look nice and u can match the colors to ur card

Anybody heard of these guys yet or have any info ?

Only sports

[chewy]

@surgenius

@chewy

HGA Grading
Hybrid Grading Approach

Choose from multiple slab styles I think its like $30 up to $100 for service levels couole weeks to 2 days or whatever

Submissions shut down at max capacity every week to prevent backlogs and reopen at a set time in the week.kinda weird but Seems efficient I guess

I havent seen any pokemon cards graded by them yet, I think they are newer but everything seems pretty legit and slabs look nice and u can match the colors to ur card

Anybody heard of these guys yet or have any info ?

Only sports

Oh haha very poor business choice if ive ever heard one… well disregard I thought I found a new grader… No escaping psa apparently