What makes a card a PSA 8, 9, or 10?

[pfm]

@nuttun

@joetehman

Getting pretty tired of people tearing down PSA cards in listings and messages on ebay. Listen, I understand this guy is overstating his card blah blah, regrade and that is trash and all, this isn’t really about that.

But I am getting significantly more messages from people asking me whats wrong with my PSA 9 or 10 cards and then telling me they see a white spot on my 10 and telling me its not worth a 10 price. Fine, you have your opinion, and PSA has theirs. Buy the card not the grade, sure. Don’t like how my 10 looks, don’t buy it.

Don’t tell me my 10 isn’t a 10 and is worth 25% less than other 10s because YOU see a white spec. I am not selling you a 10 at 25% of the value because you nitpicked a spec and want the 10 for your collection. Half the time its people just wanting a better deal and couldn’t care less if its not a perfect 10 or wanting to flip. I am not PSA, I am not required to defend the grade, if its soft, its soft. I can tell you what I see, but I cannot tell you WHY its a 10 and not a 9 or if I missed anything. I can do nothing about it. It seems to be this whole new thing where people are trying to get significantly lower prices on 10s because THEY see something they don’t like about it and THEY deem it not a 10. Again thats fine, DON’T BUY THE CARD.

Sorry for the rant, but this is getting out of control in the past couple months. If I am selling a PSA graded card, it is to take all self opinion out of my hands, to let someone else with a standard decide what condition its in. Strong and weak grades exist, getting great looking cards for your collection is important, but again if you dislike a card and disagree with the grade, just don’t buy it!

That’s basically on the other end of the spectrum, where instead of people who have PSA 8-9 state that their card can be regraded for a 10, sellers with a PSA 10 are asked to reduce their prices because the card doesn’t look like it deserves a 10.

I mentioned this in other threads, but this is basically a symptom of the buying vs selling fallacy, and the “buy the card not the grade” issue that we’ve all been having. Buyers tend to stick to the “buy the card and not the grade” idea because if they just blindly buy the card as-is and find some imperfections on it, some people will crap on them by saying that you should have asked for more detailed pictures and the grade does not matter. This cues a lot of people doing a crap ton more due diligence now and “haggle” for better prices of a PSA 10. PkmnFlyingMaster just had a thread speaking about this and it was clear that there was a divide of people saying that he should have asked more questions about the card and question the quality of it instead of looking at the grade, versus people buying the grade of the card.

On the other hand, most sellers will sell on the grade and less on the card because as you have mentioned, that’s the whole point of it getting PSA graded so that most of the subjectivity is eliminated. Another nuance is that they may not have another option…PSA 10s aren’t all that common for certain cards and sometimes they have no choice but to choose an imperfect PSA 10.

Unfortunately this is crappy for both sides but the regrading for a 10 is pretty much one of the reasons that make buyers even more paranoid when buying a PSA 10.

Buy the card not the grade.
Sell the grade not the card.

[benoit489]

@pfm

@nuttun

Buy the card not the grade.
Sell the grade not the card.

Beautiful, I shed a tear