Personally, I’ve found the greatest value in PSA 9s for English vintage. For Japanese vintage, I’ve found that PSA 9s can look a bit more raggedy than what I would expect or want, so I tend to buy PSA 10s if they are not prohibitively expensive. If you are looking to buy graded English or Japanese modern, PSA 10 is the only relevant grade.
I would especially ask yourself a few questions before buying a vintage English PSA 10, where the 9-to-10 price difference is massive:
Are you comfortable with the PSA 9 to PSA 10 premium? Is 2x, 3x, 5x, or 10x the PSA 9 price reasonable given the visible difference in card quality?
Do PSA 10s of this card/set often have factory damage that may detract from your enjoyment (e.g., Neo Genesis or Base Set 2 print lines; EX era weld lines)?
Are the PSA 10s available on the market meeting your personal standards for a Gem Mint 10 card?
If you buy this PSA 10 card, is it preventing you from making several smaller PSA 9 purchases to further your collection goals?
Are you buying the PSA 10 grade because you want the highest possible quality card or because you value the label itself, conditional rarity, or chase/bragging rights?
I don’t think there is anything wrong with being a PSA 9 or a PSA 10 collector. Both paths require some level of sacrifice - being card condition, money, and time.
I buy 9 for all eras. With modern the difference between a 9 or 10 is still 2-4x+ for majority of the full arts.
But I like to collect a lot of different cards from different eras.
Investment wise those saving up for a couple high end 10s are doing well so I wouldn’t recommend buying 9s if your goal is to turn a profit and some (most?) prefer fewer cards.
The reason I choose 9 over 7/8 is because I started with WotC and found the holos to have too many scratches at those grades. I notice holo scratches the most in terms of defects (besides like creases or tears).
PSA 9 or below is inherently fine because you’re still buying the same card, often in very similar if not identical condition to a PSA 10. But people are lying if they say anything below 10 isn’t a cope. Everyone would take the best if they could access it.
If I am collecting a series that is almost impossible to grade entirely as PSA 10 (e.g. MTG Heroes of the Realm cards), I grade all of them as PSA Authentic to be consistent.
This has been discussed quite a bit on here, but it all just comes down to personal collecting goals. There’s not really a ‘wrong’ answer, more so it just depends. Personally, I like having 10s in my collection, but I also rarely buy them as the premium can be quite steep over a PSA 8 or 9. If I feel the PSA 10 value is not too steep and I love the particular card, I will usually opt for a PSA 10 over 9 for my graded collection.
A lot of times I will even buy a PSA 8 over PSA 9 for the simple reason they’re most likely going into my binder sets at some point or because the cost saving compared to a 9 or 10 is going to be significant while still being a really clean NM copy of the card. It’s also a lot less risky than buying a raw ungraded NM holo (esp. WOTC era cards). I also find this adds ‘balance’ to my collection, and I generally prefer quantity over quality especially when it’s just regular not too rare set cards.
I think though overall a PSA 9 makes a lot of sense over buying a PSA 10 for the majority of collectors. One of the challenges with PSA 10s is for some sets it’s very difficult to even complete the set in a PSA 10 to begin with even if you have lots of money to work with. This can be both fun & enticing to take on as a collector, but it could take potentially years to ever finish your goals when you opt for PSA 10s only or you may never finish the goal at all.
My main advice would be that it’s good to do some solid research into the particular set/card and set some realistic goals for yourself and decide if the 9 or 10 is more worth it for you.
I actually collect 9s when I buy graded. My reasoning is much like those stated above. You still get a mint card, with really minor differences from a 10, for a fraction of the price. I do this for all eras, even if the price difference is marginal, because I like consistency in my collection.
I can assure you going for 9s is a thrilling and rewarding challenge!
really dont like this logic
It can easily be applied to a psa8
“in actuality, buying a psa 9 is just buying a strong PSA 8 but for a multiple of the price”
Even if it isnt perfect there are still objective standards.
If you cracked 20 freshly graded slabs, ten 9s and ten 10s, and told the ppl on this forum to sort them in their proper grade, ie the ten 10s go in one pile and the ten 9s go in the second pile, and gave forum members a 10x magnifying glass with 1800 lumen light i would wager the overwhelming majority would correctly sort the cards
Even though some 9s are borderline and there could be a case made for a 10, and sometimes even regrade a 10, nines are never perfect and there is always something you can justify the 9 score
even on the 9s that i was most angry with saying “how could this be a 9 I meticulously pregraded this” I am always able to find something to say "okay i can see under 10x this is missing textures, or oh they must not like “x”
what makes people angry is that sometimes these pass through and still receive a 10. Grading is subjective and graders also miss things. There are weak borderline 10s and very strong 9s.. thats part of the shortcoming from using round grades and no subgrades, but if you compile a large sample cards that are both 10 and 9 you will be able to discern that the 9s are a small step below the 10s and any objective person will agree to it
Except it can’t easily be applied to PSA 8s (except for maybe PSA 8s from sets with lots of persistent factory issues that PSA dings for–e.g., Neo Genesis, Jungle, Deoxys). From sets with normal print quality, I rarely see PSA 8s that are actually mint. Whereas there are plenty of PSA 9s from such sets that are mint (although not all are, obviously).
I disagree. I don’t think PSA’s grading is consistent enough for it to closely align with how collectors here would assess the cards. The error wouldn’t be on the part of E4 members, but on the part of PSA.
I used to collect PSA 10s, and I just really haven’t found this to be true. My argument is not that there isn’t such a thing as gem mint–it’s that PSA (or any other existing third party grader that I’m aware of) isn’t consistent enough at differentiating between “mint” and “gem mint” for it to be a useful label.
If you, I, or any of the other highly detail-oriented collectors on this forum were grading cards for PSA, I have no doubt that PSA 9s and 10s would consistently differentiable from another. But I just haven’t found that PSA graders are nearly so consistent or detail-oriented.
(And to be clear: this isn’t a knock on PSA specifically. It applies just as much to CGC, and probably to an even greater extent to BGS).
Not to diminish your point, because I don’t disagree about PSA’s ability (or lack thereof) to consistently distinguish between grades 100% of the time. But it’s a pointless debate to have because grading always has been and always will be an inherently subjective exercise. You have to draw a line somewhere within the analysis of a grading house’s ability to deliver consistency, for the sake of having a scale of condition desirability when collecting these cards. A higher grade by its very nature means a stronger version of the grade below it. There will be many PSA 7s as strong or stronger than 8s or even 9s, and likewise 4s that are stronger than 5s. Where do you draw the line? Naturally there are standout individual examples that are excruciatingly obvious migrades, but relative to everything graded it’s just simply not common. To engage that debate is just part of the copium I was talking about. Given a choice where all else was equal, collectors want the top condition which most of the time is reflected in the top grade.
If your argument is: “if cost were identical, every collector would prefer a PSA 10 over a PSA 9,” then I, of course, agree with that–bc on avg, a PSA 10 will be in better condition than a PSA 9. I just think that the overlap in the condition ranges of PSA 9s and PSA 10s is so large that a significant premium (let alone the wild premiums that people currently pay) isn’t justified.
And for those of us (myself included) with finite financial resources, it makes, IMO, very little sense to pay the existing premiums.
He’s saying it’s not money cope. It’s that you are often literally paying for nothing more than a label that says 10.
If that’s what you want to buy then the premium is not a problem. If you want that 10 to mean something and you’re paying for it to mean something, then the current grading system is far too unrepeatable to warrant the kind of premiums we see
I’m not sure thats what hes saying though as whats posted here it pretty contradictory
I think if you read in between the lines what hes really saying is that it’s not worth it for a negligible difference. And thats okay but you have to remember something. PSA doesnt set the market prices, people do. And the reason 10s are so expensive is because they are hard to come by. a 9 will always read as “flawed” in some way
A lot of times modern 9s are worth raw price for a reason. It’s much easier to gem modern cards but the price is also more reasonable for modern psa10s because they are more common and have large pops. But when we go to vintage, gem rate might only be 1-5% for a lot of these. The market sets the price of what you will pay for a “perfect” card. even if the ten isnt truly perfect
There’s nothing contradictory in what I’m saying. On avg, PSA 10s are in better condition than PSA 9s. Obviously. But there’s ALSO a massive overlap in the conditions of PSA 9s and PSA 10s.
Of course people can justify the premium to themselves. But that doesn’t make the premium justified (i.e., rational).
I buy the 10’s when i feel like its too good of a deal to pass on. For example the Sandslash reverse holo psa 10 from ex delta species i bought at a con this year for 160,- euro’s. It just didnt have recent sold data so it wasnt stickered at a crazy price yet.
After spending five seconds on social media it’s clear that much of the new attention in cards is directed towards the 10 grade. Which is great for people who like to collect cards, not labels
For that price, you could have 5 CGC 10 copies of the card. This isn’t a Neo Discovery Yanma, either–it’s not a particularly difficult PSA 10 to grade, based on the distribution of grades in the pop report.
“But Zorloth, that’s a CGC 10, and everyone knows that CGC 10s used to be 9.5s! And because 9.5 is a smaller number than 10, the card MUST be in inferior condition! Don’t you know how to math? Also, CGC is literally satan.”
Is someone really going to tell me that a PSA 10 of this card is worth purchasing over 6 PSA 9 copies? C’mon. If you buy 6 random PSA 9 copies of the card and 1 random PSA 10, the strongest condition card among those 7 is probably one of the PSA 9s lol.
I’m not adding much to the conversation at this point but for me, depends on what I’m buying. Any WOTC or English (aside from ultra modern where the quality control is better) a strong 9 vs a 10 is just what mood the grader is was in that day and at that point I think you’re paying exorbitant amounts more for the number on the label.
The exception for me has been Japanese. Since I’ve heavily gotten into Japanese collecting the last couple years, I only go for PSA 10s. The quality control is so good it really only makes sense to collect 10s because in some cases it’s actually easier to find 10s and with most cards, set cards especially, 10s don’t carry such a huge premium like English. So PSA 10s really only make sense to me. Also as others have mentioned, I do see more of a difference in quality between a 9 and a 10 in Japanese - centering, more edgewear, etc. So my long-winded answer is… for me, it depends.
