1st PSA grading batch back in over a year… Ludkins Plat service. Paid Sept 2020.
QA Around April, Upcharges mid-may
Sent these cards in having never held them, only looked at them through pictures and gave a seller the ludkins shipping label directly.
The 10’s looked very deserved; virtually flawless.
The 9s were a mixed bag though, I am definitely not buying into the new cert vs old cert bias because some of the 9s did not deserve them.
Still, I’m happy to have these in my hand, I have done nothing else but stare at them for the last 24 hours.
Shoutout to @parkermrparker for the referral. The entei is actually his!
@chopstix23 That’s gotta be painful for the seller’s(if they find out) to directly ship the items to a grading middleman and find out that their cards got gem mints and a huge premium over what they probably sold it for raw. Amazing returns man haha
Majority of the items he sold to us were originally priced a massive amount below what we paid, we actually guided him along. For example he was willing to sell a mint 1st ed base Venusaur and Blastoise for $400 combined. He had $0 invested into all of the cards, and 2 kids with another on the way, he was paid very fairly and came back to us continually, even referring his brother to us to sell his collection. I also suggested to the seller to grade some of the cards himself, he wasn’t interested and just wanted to make the sale asap
@parkermrparker Same scenario happened to me early 2020. Seller had a huge wotc collection with a bunch of shadowless holos and other high value holos from rocket/jungle/fossil and he offered me crazy deals. I recommended grading to him and luckily he graded his shadowless Zard/Stoise/Venusaur(they all got 9s/10s) but he sold me the rest and I couldn’t be happier
@parkermrparker I still haven’t graded any of the collection ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s not that I’m opposed to grading… it’s just that it takes so long and is expensive which takes away from me being able to see the cards/me being able to buy more cards(I know it would be much smarter to grade/sell my backlog for more raw card funds though)
I will absolutely be grading the collection once PSA opens back up. I’m just scared to see the upcharges for cards that I mostly plan to keep in my PC :s
A three-card PSA order from August – submitted through Ludkins on the platinum level. These were a few of the cooler cards I pulled last year over the course of my EX Series pack binge. Overall, process went smoothly. And all three cards got 10s, so that’s relieving to see because I felt they all deserved it. Very refreshing after a disappointing CGC order where 6 out of 7 (equally pack fresh) holos failed to get 9.5. Super happy with all three of these (Swampert in particular)!
Oh, while I’m here I might as well show my hilariously unfortunate CGC return. Again, all cards in both of these orders were physically pulled by me (except for the Scyther ex and Manectric, which were pulled for me by a fellow E4er).
First of all, congrats on those upgrades (literally) However, multiple cards jumping between 2 to 3 grades after a regrade within the same grading company (and even within a small time frame, since the previous certs were 4xx already) is not a good look for PSA. No card reached a 10 so I will reserve judgement for those for later, but a 6 going to an 8 or 9 should not happen, especially not 3 times within one submission. It means that people pay 5 to 10 times as much for quality differences that can be considered arbitrary.
While I agree with you that one of the main appeals of a card being graded is an objective (and ideally accurate) grade, I would doubt this would happen very often. If I had to guess, @cosrob cherry picked these cards to resubmit out of many. Looking at the card, not the slab, pays off! If you typically resubmit any random card, I’d be surprised if there was much movement. Grading is an art and science, after all, and I’d bet that you could find cards at PSA, BGS, and CGC where this could happen if you looked long and hard enough.
That all being said, I agree with you that a jump of 2-3 grades is significant, and if it starts to become a more regular occurrence would be concerning for PSA.
Wigglytuff has a small crease or corner bend you can’t see through the slab, only thing I can think of when you got a 4 then a 5.
As far as the Snorlax jumping from a 6 to a 9, I’m guessing it was graded a 6 the first time by someone who viewed a factory corner lip as damage, whereas the 2nd grader didn’t take that into account.
@pokeminnesota , receiving an objective grade from a grading company is the main appeal of grading, so I do consider this a big deal. Judging from this case, it seems that the strong upgrades were dependent on one grader (as the new cert numbers are closely together and probably are from one submission). This implies that cases like this are not an exception, because the grader is most likely working full-time. And that certainly is a problem. I know that these are still humans doing the grading, and I would accept a difference of 0.5 or 1 grade, but 3? With fluctuation like that, there wouldn’t have to be a 1 to 10 scale in the first place, it’s basically redundant. It could simply be Damaged-Played-Mint and say just as much.
Maybe PSA should consider grading each card by 3 graders and calculate the average, then round up or down to the nearest full grade to somewhat eliminate the element of arbitrariness, or implement some sort of complementary AI grading. Otherwise, PSA would render itself obsolete.
@ripguyfawkes, if this sort of occurrence is seen more often, I agree with you that it would be a big deal. This may be the first of many if there has been a significant change in how PSA grading standards are interpreted and applied, and if that’s the case, it’s a problem. I suppose I’m just hesitant to say that there is something systematically wrong at PSA based on this post of a few cards with significant changes in grade. They do have another grader review an original grade, but who knows what that looks like when they have so many submissions to get through and likely a lot of pressure from managers to output xyz cards per day to meet a quota.
@pokeminnesota, I understand your point, and one data point is by no means evidence of a flawed system. However, based on the severity of the issue (and a fluctuation of 3 grades is highly critical for a grading service) and the high likelihood of a full-time grader being the root cause, I would go with the FDA audit approach: assume that the company is making mistakes and insist on them proving that they aren’t.
Full grades as promised. Gym Challenge and jungle cards were pack fresh from a box (except beedrill and Persian which were Ebay NM).
In regards to the resubmitted cards, I’m really not sure why they got the original grades - i honestly couldn’t see any creases or dents (had minor holo scratches).
Also feel this sub compared to my January 2020 sub was much more lenient.
However, multiple cards jumping between 2 to 3 grades after a regrade within the same grading company (and even within a small time frame, since the previous certs were 4xx already) is not a good look for PSA. No card reached a 10 so I will reserve judgement for those for later, but a 6 going to an 8 or 9 should not happen, especially not 3 times within one submission. It means that people pay 5 to 10 times as much for quality differences that can be considered arbitrary.