At what point do people start to become critical of their 10s, is it a price point? A card you love?
Also does it matter what wear is on the card (eg whitening, scratches, edge wear)
For me it’s when the card is worth over 2k, anything less i don’t really mind as long as PSA says its a 10.
Its like I always say, I’d rather have a weak psa10 than an even stronger psa9
Different people have different opinions of the PSA 10 dilemma! Here’s mine:
At what point do people start to become critical of their 10s, is it a price point?
Price point is definitely one of them. If I had to pay a premium for my PSA 10, I sure hope it’s at least at the quality that’s better than a PSA 9. Sometimes for some reason, I notice imperfections on my PSA 10 that I would think it won’t even make it to a 9 standard.
A card you love?
Usually for 10s, those cards are more for investment than to keep, so I try to find cards that are in as pristine condition as possible so the next collector would be happy with it. For cards I love, it matters much less because I would keep them anyways, and if I got a PSA 10, it just meant that the price differential wasn’t too big of a deal to begin with. Note that I also have very low standards for cards I collect (just no creases please)
I guess the most important to me is the price, to a certain extent. I mean if I paid x2 for the price of a PSA 9 for a PSA 10, I sure hope it’s at least better than the PSA 9…
The way I handle it is after I receive a card if I don’t like it I throw it up on eBay and buy another. Pretty simple.
Anything more, usually by anal retentive collectors, just hurts the hobby.
I won’t buy a card unless I like the eye appeal of it, regardless of what the grade says, personally if I’m buying a psa 10 it needs to have zero whitening
True that… I hate the thought of weak/strong 9s/10s… but its still an opinion of the grader.
I feel like there are a lot of people out there that focus on evaluating PSA 10s (and other graded cards) solely by their back edges/corners. I’ve always found this strange becuase you’d think the front of a card would be more important and critiqued more strongly than its back. I think this largely has to do with eBay where sellers/flippers often limit depictions of cards to only a few key traits. As a result, you now have many, if not most people that are just buying the backs of cards instead of evaluating cards as a whole.
I personally enjoy a clean front over all else. Nothing compares to looking at a card under intense light and seeing a vibrant, clear, untouched foil that pops out at you and clean, unchipped edges and corners with no silvering. In a trade-off, I’d gladly give up a dot or two of whitening on the back for a gorgeous surface rather than have a card with clean edges and corners on the back and a holo with light scratches.
I think this is more of a problem for people who buy/grade individual cards.
I’ve submitted hundreds of cards and got unexpected grades both above and below what the expectation is in regards to PSA’s guidelines, but in the end it all evens out.
My strategy is to keep the weak 10’s in my collection until I can replace them with a definite 10, at which point I will sell the weaker one, obviously with good quality pictures so people know what they are actually buying.
To be honest, anything that comes back below 10, save some rare exceptions, just goes on ebay straight away.
If the price difference between the 9 and 10 is significant (say like a x4 or more) then hell yes I better be getting a solid 10.
If it’s for my collection is prefer a strong 9 over a weak 10 generally.
I just picked this card up the other day and when I got it noticed that there is some whitening/almost chipping on the bottom of the card. It’s in the listing picture so I didn’t notice it when buying but still wouldn’t have stopped me. The camera actually makes it look better than it is lol.
Now if it was a $2k card (Money is different to everyone so I’d say $100+ for me) I would definitely be looking to find the best condition PSA 10 of that card there is. Also I guess it would depend on if it’s something you wanted for yourself or if you wouldn’t mind getting rid of it later down the road. Then knowing that people would eventually most likely want the best possible condition card, that would be smart to me.
As they say, buy the label not the card… wait wut
But honestly I’m glad a lot of people do just buy the label. I try to not look too closely at my PSA 10 returns because I don’t want to notice issues with them. I’ve seen some rough ones when packing them up and it’s pretty infrequent to get returns or questions over them. As it really should be because PSA is the ones who graded it.
huh, weak japanese newbacks, never heard of them. Actually the surprising thing is that these aren’t from japan-daisuki. A lot of those ones seem to have bottom damage, almost wonder if they got rattled around on their way back from PSA since the case tolerances leave the japanese cards very loose.
I want to see a paint-shaker test on these new PSA slabs lol.
Couldn’t agree more, which is exactly why im still trying to complete my LC reverse set even if its LP and the front looks clean, im okay w/ that…
Imagine if the President of PSA had a video about this topic. It’s actually a great video too:
@ozenigma, this addresses more specific tastes when it comes to types of damage in lower grades. He talks of 6’s, 7’s, and 8’s and whether or not you are a centering guy, or a corner guy speaking to the variance in those grades which naturally the further down the scale you go there is more variance. A guy big on centering will want a PSA 6 with a nice centering where it may have more edge or surface wear. Someone crazy about the centering may want one that is PSA 6 mainly due to it being off center.
This doesn’t remotely deal with weak/strong 10’s in the context that we frequently discuss them IMO and I don’t think you’d ever hear Joe talking about that concept. 9’s weren’t even mentioned in the video unless I missed them.
You’re clearly not looking at the content for what it’s worth, nor understanding how the grading system works in its entirety. I’m surprised to be honest.
Every card is going to have some type of imperfection, and even the PSA 10 grade has some room for minor imperfections.
It’s how we view those imperfections that ultimately determines how we specifically view a weak or a strong grade in many cases. Maybe less so in the ultimate grade, but there’s still elements of our own perception in how a grade assigned aligns with our own expectations. That’s how we see a weak grade essentially.
As @acebren has said, he wants no whitening, but he might tolerate closer to the extremes in the centering component.
For me, I care a lot about the front of the card and prefer a better surface and centering and will allow for back edgewear, back centering etc. Some people may see some of my cards as weak 10’s, but I may view some of their cards as weak 10’s.
The video highlights the extreme side of this, becoming comfortable with our own purchases. Buying the card, not the grade. There is no universal strong grade that doesn’t fall in the realm of absolute perfection in every sub category of grading (surface, corners, edges, centering).
When you collect, you should focus less in what other people think about your collection, and more on the items that make you happy!
Joe’s video highlights the subjectivity and the reasonable relaxed mentality of a serious collector. I think a lot of people lose sight that we are collecting cards, not condition. I get that condition plays a role in the aesthetics, but it is only a role. There are a lot of people who have the “PSA 10 only” fallacy, and miss a lot of opportunity with that linear viewpoint. Buy the card first, then the grade second.
The “strong vs weak” issue makes sense when spending serious money on an item you truly desire.
This. I’d say the premium or value would make me super picky about buying a 10.
Cards like Shadowless Zard come to mind. You can buy 9s all day long for $2k or less. If a collector drops $20k(10x premium) on a 10 it better look flawless!
I think that’s a really good example of what I’m talking about. Same as those neo cards with impossibly low PSA 10 populations (slowking, yanma, typhlosion, etc). I’d be really disappointed if I paid $2000 for a 9-worthy card that had good RNG at PSA. Whereas if I’m buying some newback Japanese promo where the 10 sells for $40 and the 9 sells for $20, I am going to be more tolerable of flaws.
@ozenigma from their website:
I’ll say it again with more clarity on what I meant. I 100% understand the grading system and how it relates to individual tastes. I’ve gotten Masaki 6’s with a corner ding and I’ve gotten more “standard 6’s” that exhibit consistent all around wear which clearly would have different appeals to different collectors.
If Joe were directly asked the same questions in the video of “buying the card not the grade” with respect to the way we talk about “weak/strong 10’s” on this forum he would turn and run. This conversation would not happen when it comes to the 10 grade which is why he spoke of grades from 3 to 8 in the video and again it really doesn’t relate to the way we speak of weak 10’s. The guideline above leaves very little (or zero) room for words like “silvering, chipping, whitening, scratch, scuff” etc.
Hell even mint 9’s he didn’t discuss and I’m sure he’d have to be extremely careful in that conversation as well.
Since there is room for “only one” flaw then you could say a centering guy could take “only one” imperfection elsewhere and a guy who doesn’t care about centering could take 60/40 centering and no other flaws.