Tell me more. I’m not aware of those👀
Ha those are awesome! Thanks for sharing
.Congratulations on the return. The Battle Festa Pikachu is absolutely gorgeous.
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Mailday. Holo’s and Reverse of several EX series.
59 are PSA 8
164 are PSA 9
29 are PSA 10 (and most 10’s are reverses)
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love ex holos
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Have you got them back yet?
There are so many examples of PSA damaging cards (ridiculous considering what service they are providing) that I am not surprised.
Yes I got them back several days ago but have been working 15 hour days for 10 days straight, so I haven’t been able to address them beyond initial unboxing and looking thru them briefly. Unfortunately, PSA did damage a few cards. But it appears as though around 65/70 cards were undamaged. So for the most part this was just an ass grader. But yeah, I will take pics today, and look at a few after cracking.
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I love the Trainer Magazine Dratini evolution line cards. Congrats!
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Thought I’d stop just lurking and post for the first time to share a few cards that returned from PSA today, which I had signed by Mitsuhiro Arita at a comic con in Pau. They did well, and as a Gengar collector and these being mementos of the first artist signing I’d ever attended (was a fantastic experience!), as well as the first holiday trip I’ve taken abroad with my partner, they mean a ton to me.
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Beautiful cards, @Lev! Is your name written in katakana above Arita’s signature?
Thanks! The Gengar sketch has to be a favourite in my collection now. Watching Arita effortlessly draw it, and so quickly, was so satisfying and awesome!
And yep, it’s the closest translation of my name. It doesnt translate all that well, but think it looks nice on the Japanese cards 
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Ah, that’s so cool!
Gengar EX from Flight of Legends is 10/10 - even cooler with that sketch.
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Preface: This is a seminar of sorts. Welcome.
So yeah, as it turns out, regarding my messed up order, the grader was just an ass. My pack fresh non holos have zero reason to be lower than 9’s. And my pc holos should never be sub 8, and in half of cases should easily attain a 9 by any grader. The guy just hated or had zero awareness of wotc cards. As handschoen put it above, they likely just didn’t have any experience with english or wotc (or even pokemon overall for all I know). I just said things like spite and other harsh words because I was angry. And I still am of course. But time heals wounds.
Only a few cards were damaged. A few too many, of course, but the rest were in the condition they came in. Here are some highlights of insanity for those curious what could happen in a bad case scenario. First, here is the lightly played Vaporeon that gets a 7, within the same order as cards that are pack fresh getting 7’s. This is one of those reasons I was so frustrated upon seeing the grades. This vaporeon is graded very fairly. I pre’d it a 7. Funny.
It’s especially funny because Vaporeon falls under the ‘hard to grade’ criteria, even furthering the blow that it could get the same grade as a card with a dark background and 1 or 2 faint printlines (or in in the case of the following gary, a couple micro scratches, not one lengthy printline). Compare it to Gyarados.
Crazy pills.
I always throw a few non mint cards in a lot, for selling, to spice it up, for the fun, etc. All my non mint cards got the same grades as the mint ones. 7’s or 8’s. It’s crazy.
As it were, in typical fashion, here is an average 9 I purchased graded recently. It looks like most 9’s I have that have holo. Printlines galore. But this grader knows how to grade. They said, welp, it’s still pack fresh and while I could give it an 8 (which you could argue is fair), I don’t think this factory damage detracts from the appeal and I think downgrading it 2 grades is a bit harsh. I would agree with this sentiment. But what I certainly wouldn’t do is give it a 7.
Here are the the 2 out of the 3 cards psa damaged. It is pretty upsetting, when one is a 10 contender, and the other is sentimental, pack pulled, gem condition. They scraped it good.
golduck and charmeleon damaged
this card did not have so much as one single printline. A perfect specimen. These are not printlines. They are scratches. Scratches that weren’t there before I sent them.
And this is a ding that probably is from pulling the card out of sleeves. This was a 10 worthy non holo now given an 8. I would never submit a card with this kind of damage when the card is only being submitted with a great shot at a 10.
And really these are just some of many examples. I did not pictorially touch on the fact that I got 8’s on pack fresh cards with near perfect corner cuts. Such as light slowbro, that dreaded shadowless porygon above, and gym heroes recall. Anyone that wants to see pics of those pack fresh cards graded 7’s and 8’s can ask me and I’ll take more time to show.
I only did this because more members than I expected expressed interest or stopped to comment. I’m picturing a lot of these for selling anyway.
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Can/will you be asking them for a refund or compensation for damaging your cards?
Once again, I can’t believe that they can’t get the service they provide right. Their only job is to make sure they don’t damage the cards and that’s exactly what they do. What a joke.
I will not be doing so. As much as it is unfair, I know what I am getting into with PSA. They are a mob man. A straight mafia. You can’t mess with them. I would have to spend $ on shipping there and back. I would have to send the cards in in their slabs under their review. They would have to review their pre-pictures which they probably do not disclose (I could be wrong there). The card could easily have been damaged before any picture was taken. It is such a low likelihood, over what? Some $30-50 difference in value, for all that effort? They sure as shit aren’t going to pay out a 10 price difference just because I say it was in that condition. Same goes for the other card. There’s no winning this. That’s how it is with this company.
I’d rather just eat the loss and move on, and save myself a massive headache and massive amount of time. If this were a thousand dollar card you bet your ass I would have taken clear pics from every angle before and pursued them 'til I won. But in this instance I just have to be angry and be careful about what cards I send in and prepare for bad cases. Or, more importantly, stop grading with them very soon and just enjoy my binders, let others deal with this bullshit, and buy my own 9’s after carefully vetting each card and annoying sellers for pictures despite them thinking they are above it because it says mint on the label (lmao).
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Rough that all of this happened to you. Just a noob question for my understanding, do you have pictures of the cards before you shipped them? If so, can you not use them for your claims and possibly refute their grades or even point for the damages?
Cheers!
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I have pictures of the front and back. But no, I do not have the detailed pictures required (as in like how I would list them on ebay) that would prove one way or another, but more importantly, I’ve seen that they don’t care as much as checking their own footage to confirm how it arrived. They measure it up to their initial scans or whatever they use is what I’ve seen. In the case of golduck, that scratching is only visible by that type of angle. I did not shoot angles of all my holos like that before shipping. Only a couple valuable ones. Like blastoise and chansey etc.
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