In light of more sophisticated fake cards, card cleaning services and the general enshittification of our beloved hobby, coupled with this upcoming scandal, what are your “favourite” PSA cert ranges to purchase these days? The older certs don’t have PSA scans, have often been generous with grades, labels have changed from an aesthetic point of view, and various security measures such as holograms and fugitive ink have been added too, so the question isn’t necessarily so simple…
So are you in the “new cert” or “old cert” gang, or somewhere in between?
Let’s assume high end grades for this question. Are you rolling the dice on a 17X PSA 10? Do you agree with premiums being assigned to “fresh certs”? Or do you feel that nowhere is safe?
My personal favourites are 4X, so I guess i fall into the “older” cert category. I think this strikes a good balance of PSA scans, newer label, and old enough that card altering was (hopefully!) still in its infancy.
I have a special fondness for the oldest possible certs, particularly from that small time window when Gen 2 not yet had received English names.
I also like the 2x and 4x certs as these were from the years just before the pandemic - before prices escalated, and represent a more innocent time.
For the recent scandal so far, this seems to only affecting very expensive PSA 10 cards. If you are not a millionaire that started collecting two months ago, I think you will still be mostly fine buying the same cards in lower grades.
I’m kind of agree with that, but there are so many counter-example (logan’s pikachu kek as the best exemple).
Personally, I’m always trying to focus on slabs with scans available, at least you can inspect everything.
The fact is, I’m mainly buying 9’ (even 8’) so it’s probably safer. As I said before, you can find perfect cards on lower slabs that could be 10 if the grader dude took more than 30s to put a grade.
Since I dont really care about making profit -since I’m not selling- but mostly about having a great card under protection ; 8’ & 9’ are always my way to go.
0x certs don’t have scans, have less securuty features, and sometimes are just a little funky. And that’s because none of this hoopla and nonsense existed. I value looking at a card and thinking about the simplicity of it all over resale value.
Sad thing is that as more fake slabs and scams happen, people will send in to reholder their cards, and we’ll lose some of these relics to history.
(this means any recently reholdered card or any newer 6X+ cert or any older 5-6 cert submitted at a higher tier)
and..
Slabs that are pre “Gen X” as defined in this article, since I don’t believe you can remove ink off these paper labels, (this means older 27X certs and prior, check out 20MCT)
as @Nrx hinted at, non PSA 10s at the moment aren’t really being targeted. Not saying they won’t be, but the fact that you need a VERY clean card for a “fake PSA 9” makes it so that there’s almost no profit margin to be made by buying a clean raw card and adding a fake 9 label. The bar for 9s these days are very high.
I only buy vintage PSA 10s with notable scratches/print lines/whitening/chips/dents - that way I know its not a cracked PSA 9 in a 10 case with a dash of Kurt’s juice
As someone very interested in security Id say there isnt a cert range thats 100% yet.
It would definetely be difficult to fix, but look at a hypothetical scenario where PSA incorporates biometrics into the grading process.
Youd set up an account, and provide your fingerprint upon account creation via the app. Then whenever your cards are graded they can be linked to that fingerprint, but wait- everytime a card is sold or traded you could incorporate a feature to relinquish your biometric only AFTER confirming the authentication of the actual owner. This would add a layer of non repudiation, but its just an idea in a direction, and its not perfect or ideal as not all trades/sales are done in person. What im getting at is that any grading company can always implement a better feature to their platform to provide customers with better service, and we’re just trying to figure it out as the threat landscape changes.
…I don’t think I actually have any preference…but again, the only PSA slabs I have are the 2x cert that I graded myself since over a decade ago and still am going back and forth about reholdering just for the security factors (slabs are all fine with no damage, but I heard way too many horror stories about PSA damaging cards during reholdering or they think the cards no longer deserve that grade and knocking the grades down plus the possibility of my cards might just go missing while reholdering, so I just dunno if it’s worth the risk…), so…
card altering really exploded on YouTube and TikTok in the 9-14 cert range imo.
and I also would be suspicious of new cert vintage at cgc tag or bgs. because someone getting back an altered authentic reject from psa is going to resubmit their card at tag or bgs.
