THE Great Grading Results Thread

[cwebfan23]

Naw I don’t think this has anything to do with it. I think there may be a push to hold cards to a higher standard since they have such a huge influx of cards come in. I’m not trying to insinuate pop control, but it wouldn’t be incredibly surprising that their response to grading more cards than ever is to grade more strictly to prevent 10’s becoming so prevalent that the market sags.

Its just incredibly unfair to their customers if there is some sort of non-public change to grading standards or memo that encourages graders to be more reserved when judging cards 53/47 to 55/45.

I also want to clarify that we don’t actually have any hard evidence yet. We would need a very large sample size from many submissions over the past year or so to see if there is any sort of statistically significant change. I have anecdotal evidence and am gonna press PSA for an answer, but that isn’t good enough yet to make full on allegations.

[stryker2407]

At the moment grading isn’t really fun. This is part of my most recent submission and it feels just so inconsistent. 3 cards had dents/damage that I thought would drop them down to the 5/6 range only for two of them to get 10s and the other one scored a 9 while cards I expected to be 10 contenders getting an 8. Also how is the slowking a 9 with that amount of holo scratches and the turtok an 8. Since the middle of last year submissions with psa are a complete coin flip for me. Some are fine and others don’t really make sense.

[amcgl58]

(Knocks on wood)

I’ve actually had pretty good luck with grading vintage in my last 2 subs. What I’ve definitely noticed though is how harsh they seem to be on base and base set 2 charizards. Alot of 6’s that should be 7’s or 8’s unless Im consistently missing mirco dents somewhere.

[trevcatchem]

One of my recent submissions I sent 4 cards that were certain 8s/9s just to make the 20 card minimum. One got a 10 . Then cards that were 10 contenders got 7s and 8s. This isn’t limited to that submission. My last 5 submissions have been particularly odd. My suspicion is that they are blowing through cards and randomly assigning grades at percentages to push through their backlog. Due to the PSA guarantee they assign more lower grades like 7s/8s/9s to mitigate potential guarantees they’ll need to pay out.

[cwebfan23]

I got in the 9/24 submission in and decided to take a look at it more closely.

To my relief, centering seemed to play no role in grading:

50/50 - 52/48 Centering Grades	53/47 - 55/45 Centering Grades
3/8 PSA 10’s	6/14 PSA 10’s

Note: 2 cards did not meet 55/45 centering requirements.

This seems to help point towards either option 2 or 4 being the most likely (which is what I figured in the first place).

Still an incredibly harsh submission that leaves me scratching my head. Funnily enough though, the lack of rhyme or reason to the grades (incompetency/inexperience) is more comforting than the idea of PSA silently changing their centering criteria.

[dbmoney10]

I think base zards have and will always be held to a higher standard. Not fairly but ya

[hero]

This shift in inconsistency at PSA I wonder if it’ll gradually push more and more people to CGC.

Not the same…but PSA right now, feels like old blue label CGC before they changed their scale. Centering very hash…low 10s…people upset on harshness.

At the very least like SMPratte has preached. PSA atm feels even more that bird in the hand is far better than the risk/time of grading raw atm.

[stryker2407]

I don’t know. If they really hired so many new graders it could be that the odd submissions are from inexperienced graders. Maybe it gets better once the current craze cools off a bit more.

[boo]

Just to add to some of the conversation here. I just got back my bulk submission of 200 Burger Chu’s. The average gem rate is around 88% and my gem rate went to 62%. All of them were pack fresh and had a quick glance over them.

I look at the 9s and wonder what really was wrong with them. Sadly it’s not worth the cost to crack and re-grade.

The bulk tier subs have been pretty heavily scrutinized as of my personal experience.

[zubat]

Does anyone have a visual representation/example of what the minimum 45/55 centering looks like on a non-full art card?

[zorloth]

Did another regrade of some stuff that got hammered in the last sub. Much less bad, thankfully, though still nothing too exciting. But got a few nice ones, at least! Happy about the Sceptile. They were still a bit overly harsh on a few, though, IMO. But generally pretty fair, and much more accurate than the earlier sub.

Here’s a few:

I really feel like this should be pristine, because it is immaculate just with 55/45 centering. IDK, at least give me back my gem grade lol.

I’m so done with this Latios. I think this is like the 5th time I’ve subbed him. He’s genuinely pack fresh, and I thought I might eventually get a sympathetic grader who’d give him gem. Maybe was just wishful thinking because I need a gem copy. Given the corner dots and print line, 9 is a totally fair grade.

Ugh.

Pack fresh mint with rough factory corners. Because it’s a mint card, I feel like it should be a 9, out of principle.

Strongest PSA 8 I’ve ever cracked. Card is genuinely mint, with a gorgeous surface. Nicer than my CGC 10 copy of the card. Might resub it again solely so I can try to replace the copy in my set with it.

Pretty fair grade.

9 is an overgrade because it has a tiny bit of surface chipping on the art (visible in the scan). Should be an 8, probably. No complaints, though lol.

6 was a hilarious, clearly arbitrary grade. 8.5 is still very harsh. Should be at least a 9. Card is very clean.

Definitely retiring this Wailord. This is the 5th or 6th time I’ve subbed him to try to get bumped to pristine.

Meh.

8 is fair. Has lots of surface clouding. No clue where the 5.5 came from.

7.5 was stupid. 8.5 is more reasonable, but this should still be a 9 or 9.5.

8.5 is fair here. 7 was ridiculous.

This was originally a PSA 8 or 7 (I cracked a PSA 7 and PSA 8. Both are now CGC 9s). 9 is fair.

The stupidest grade in the whole sub. Card is actually mint. Absurd for it to get the same grade as the other Deoxys #97 in the sub.

And plenty of others that I don’t have time to add. Overall, a slightly harsh but mostly fair sub. Nothing egregious except for the second 8.5 Deoxys #97.

Kinda funny to see a 2.5 grade bump on three different cards graded only a few months apart. Two the three were deserved (and Entei should’ve gotten a 3 or 3.5 grade bump, frankly). The Deoxys #99 getting a 9 was overly generous and they must’ve just not looked at the surface very closely.

[chrisundrum]

MmmMmm love me some good data. Thanks for the update!

[zorloth]

No problem! Something I should clarify: I highlighted grades where there were meaningful grade variations throughout the card’s grading history. That’s less than half of the sub. Most cards in the sub only varied within .5.

It’s also worth noting, since I didn’t mention it in the post: these were all cards that I specifically thought were undergraded. I have god knows how many other slabs (>1000 probably, but not keeping count) that I haven’t regraded because I thought they were fairly graded. So the variations here are much higher than you’d get if you resubbed cards at a random.

Just as an example, this is the back of the Togetic that got a 5.5:

And this is the back of the Entei that got a 6:

99% of 5.5s and 6s will look much worse than these. For reference, the Togetic has surface clouding/scratching, but the Entei has a great surface/edges–slightly sub-pack fresh, but nothing that would disqualify it from any grade other than PSA 10 or CGC Pristine.

Basically, this is not a random sample of regrades. Honestly, if you cracked and resubbed my whole collection, I think the avg variation would be very low (I suspect <10-15% would vary by more than .5, based on my experience). There would be lots of cards getting the same grade and lots of cards changing by .5, but I think only a very small percent would change by 1 or more.

Not that you needed clarification; just throwing this out there for whomever might read this and get the wrong impression.

[lazershark2012]

Graded 20 cards to justify grading this magmar .

<https://youtu.be/vjTViZyfc34?si=QP1xHzD2F9hhN5pS>

Here is the rest of the cards in video format.

[milad101]

Vintage has been fortunate for me lately, knock on wood!

[fourthstartcg]

Just to add on to my previous posts about recent PSA inconsistency, I just got in a return that was very strong. All Japanese cards, but my 10 rate was 84% in an 82-card submission that ranged from DP through Modern, with most cards being BW/XY/SM. Several of the cards I did not expect to get 10s because of centering did get the 10 grade.

Types of cards that in my experience are pretty tough grades with PSA also scored highly:

There were a few random low grades, but if a card scored highly it pretty much always got a 10.

Stuff like this is a lot more in line with my experience and expectations when I send cards off for grading. Definitely goes to show the importance of what grader you get on any given day.

[dbmoney10]

Congrats on the good grades! Another reason why staggering smaller subs is a good idea to hopefully find good graders. Although it shouldn’t have to be that way

[fourthstartcg]

Not even one day later, I get another PSA submission in which is incomprehensibly graded.

There are frankly absurd grades peppered throughout like this PSA 4 Latias and PSA 8 Latios:

Maybe I missed something on the Latias, but the Latios is in pretty much exactly the same condition as the Articuno I sent which PSA just gave a 10 to in my last submission. They even came from the same lot of cards purchased off Mercari awhile back.

I had a lot more random and unexplainable 9s in this submission:

All these Suicunes I pulled myself back in 2015 and immediately sleeved. They have been in sealed deck boxes ever since. They are all well centered. There is no difference in condition between the 9s and the 10s.

The best example of inconsistency is probably my Burgerchus. I sent off 6 of them, they are all clean, and the card has an 88% PSA 10 rate. My rate was 50%, they gave me 3 10s, 2 9s, and an 8. Tell me the difference between the 8, 9, and 10.

It’s not all bad though, I got strong grades on several other cards, including cards you could make an argument for being 9s due to centering:

As mentioned in my previous posts, the inconsistency is the problem. I feel like PSA is way more of a dice roll than it was in the past. Even within the same submission it feels like the standards change halfway through. I had a run of 17 10s in a row in this 63-card submission, but the rest of it made little to no sense to me.

I have been grading with PSA for 12 years, there has always been a dice roll aspect, random 9s, and cards where I miss flaws. I don’t buy into the “PSA is harsher now” arguments, but even so I have tightened up on my condition checking. Especially on inexpensive or modern cards where 10s are necessary to profit I will not send them if I see anything wrong. Despite being stricter with my pregrading, the range of outcomes when I send a card in for grading has never been wider. At $20/card for bulk and blatantly inconsistent standards it gets harder to justify sending cards to PSA.

[mister]

I am not a big grader, but I have been thinking of using some submissions to help purchase bigger cards out of my current reach. This doesn’t bode well for my confidence lol.

[mrbubbles]

Big fan of your submission videos and it is great to have an insight into the thought process that you share before sending in your cards. It is very helpful to someone who does not grade to understand a bit of the pre-grading process.

Looking at some of your grade results, specially the Burgerchu’s gets confusing and maybe slightly hopeful. Now I have a feeling that maybe hunting for recently graded low grade PSA cards is not a bad idea after all. I always think that buying low grade stuff is probably a waste of money, considering that atleast on the lower end of the grading scale, it is hard for PSA to make many errors. However, looking at yours and the other members posts, it does not seem that bad of an idea.

Sorry about some of the harsh returns but thanks for sharing the data.

Cheers!