I realized just now we are railroading the real discussion here of why pick 9 or 10, not my predictions.
I am sorry and I think we should stop. It was fun and very nice discussion 
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This is true but then the question is why spend the 10x more money acquiring 10s over 9s. That money can go to other things
it is insightful to see how few people who collect 10s have their reason for quality of card. Most people dont seem to care about the cards quality between 9 and 10 as it becomes more about the label
I thought about your comment today.
I tried to imagine what I would care about ($, grade, condition, diversity, etc) if I knew no one else would ever know about my collection, let alone see it on insta, e4, etc., and I honestly think I would care less about the label. (highlighting that perhaps I am concerned about 10s for bragging rights way more than I thought before).
The ONLY other factor I know for sure is that I like knowing I could probably sell a 10 quickly, and at a predictable price (compared to a 9).
I’m going to put more thought into this, you’ve got me thinking now… 
I already answered this question
considering how hard it is to find a 20 year old card in good enough shape that PSA will give it a 10, i’m amazed all i need to do to own them is pay a bit more than the price of a 9. Since that’s how i feel about it, i tend to stick to my 10s
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When I started collecting years ago I picked up a psa 9 card and showed it to a friend
She said why isn’t it psa 10 - was slightly triggered
The next 300 cards I bought were all psa 10s, before I recently dipped into certain psa 9s (and I regret them already)
Unless it’s an illustrator or something, no more psa 9s for me
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The quality difference between PSA 9 and 10 grades is often trivial - a PSA 9 is usually nothing more than slightly worse centring, some edge wear, a print line or a small corner ding.
This is exactly why I’m not in any hurry to pay the current market value of 5 figures for a PSA 10 Neo Genesis 1st Edition Pichu. Not only was the card worth 21 times less 24 months ago, the PSA 10 now sells for 24 times more than PSA 9 copies do which is just plain silly.
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You probably have a ton of experience with that exact card so maybe you’d have a good sense for this but I wonder how much harder/costly you’d estimate it would be to find+grade a 10 than to find+grade a 9?
more or less than 24x harder?
I see a lot of comparison between 9s and 10s centered around how small the difference in aesthetic condition is. People often point to how comparatively good value a 9 is to a 10 if what you’re after is aesthetic condition - and I think I agree there.
But i think people go for 10s because they’re so hard to get. Every marginal improvements on condition is that much harder to achieve. No print lines, good centering AND no factory knicks? pretty dang hard to pull off
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The pop report alone shows that there are 24 PSA 10 copies vs 272 PSA 9 copies. I have graded PSA 9 holofoil Neo Genesis cards which I’ve found in binder collections and bought as singles from T&T in the past and I imagine a fair chunk of the 272 PSA 9 copies graded were not pack-fresh PSA 10 contenders to begin with.
I think if we generously say 240 of the PSA 9 copies were PSA 10 contenders that brings us to a nice 1:10 ratio, but even that I think is a a fair bit too high. 71 PSA 9 copies have been graded in the past 12 months but only 1 PSA 10 copy has been graded in the same time (source) - I would imagine the majority of those 71 copies were not PSA 10 contenders to start with, rather people breaking apart their binder collections thanks to the prices going up.
I think a more realistic estimate for a pack-fresh card would be something like 1:2 on the high end to 1:5 on the low end. Certainly not something in my mind which would correlate with a 24x price difference.
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I only hold onto dees…
(walks away in shame knowing what discord has done to him)
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@pichufan , I think the recently graded entries is the key metric here.
If you wanted to go from not having the card in a PSA 10 to having it the year of our lord 2021 then paying the premium still seems like an attractive option imo - which is why the premium feels so justified.
1:72 of the mint cards sent in from 2021 inventories landed the 10. This means that your odds of grading a 10 by buying and grading mint cards is pretty low. I think your odds of finding even 20 mint copies to grade is extremely low.
Your other alternative would be cracking pricey heavy packs looking for that Pichu, or at least a card you could grade then sell to buy the pichu. Even if you open a pichu or a comparable holo on your first go, you’re still at best 50% to grade that card a 10, if the odds aren’t even longer.
To me it seems like the hunt for the card itself would be much more taxing than just paying the premium for the 10 even if the price feels inflated at first glance. The only saving grace would be recouping some $ from failed grading attempts that scored 8/9s but again that adds to the laborious process. Worst case scenario is you crack a heavy, pull a lovely pichu, send it to PSA in 2 months for a 5 month turn around and it earns a 9 - and now the PSA 10 is higher.
Look maybe this logic is all i need to justify recklessly copping 10s off ebay but these are thoughts i consider when i’m trying to settle on max bids on PWCC night
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Tbh, if it’s a 10 junk slab of a pokemon I really like or it would be an upgrade to a junk slab I already have, then I’d probably buy it.
My small slab collection has a range of grades and honestly, while I would love to have all 10s, I also just don’t care lol. I do care when it comes to a card I really like and value, whether that be because of art, sentimentality, or rarity/scarcity. I had a PSA 10 japanese jessie and james full art and… it was noticeably off center. I just fawn over CGC 10s just because I like that gold numbering. I agree with you though, the price of 10s can be disgusting when compared to 9s.
Psa 10 cards used to be very reasonable prices, so why go for 8s or 9s? unless it is a super rare card that hardly popped up then yes to lower grades. However in this market I would be more than happy with 9s and in some cases 8s, as the correction in price for the undervalued 10s is enough to deter me for alot of cards. I can get multiple 9s for the same price as a 10, so may aswell tick more goals off imo.
Buy whatever you are comfortable with, if you see a 10 at a good price to you go for it, same with any grade and card.
Plus the difference between 9s and 10s is very minor, a bit extra whitening/silvering. I would prefer 10s but it is not the smart move when collecting right now imo. Unless you are loaded ofc XD It also depends on what cards, and which grading company. There are plenty of cards graded at very reasonable prices in all grades.
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The reason I personally will always hold on to my PSA 10’s is because it feels as though you are part of an exclusive club. It depends on the card for me, but having a 9 makes me feel like a JV player who can’t get to the varsity team, always looking up. Again, depends on the card, if the price is a crazy difference, I will happily go for the 9.
I prefer even numbers
this also extends to cert numbers for me
Power.
As long as you’re on the right side of the pop/grade distribution you can control what you sell it for more.
And I like having the least amount of cards possible - hate dealing with bulk and tons of junk at this point. Exhausted with trying to sell it
I get what you’re saying but one thing to note is that my May 2020 PSA submission which I got back recently contained 7 1st edition Neo Genesis holofoil cards of which 2 came back PSA 9 and 5 came back PSA 8. These were cards I’d quite literally kept in an unsleeved stack in a cardboard box since 2018 - the only reason I submitted them in May 2020 was because PSA 8s were no longer $15 cards and it was suddenly worthwhile me submitting them.
I imagine the majority of the 72 higher-grade Pichu cards which PSA have graded in the past 12 months were very similar - not pack fresh, just suddenly more valuable and more worthwhile sending in for grading. The past 7 months alone has seen more 1st Edition Neo Genesis booster boxes sell publicly than any point in the past I can remember, so I can only assume the population will go up when people start opening those.
Right now there’s a lot of WotC hype which has greatly inflated the value of almost all WotC cards - I don’t think this is going to last forever. In terms of highest sale prices for Pichu cards, the Neo Genesis 1st edition Pichu went from being the 13th most valuable Pichu at the start of 2020 to the most valuable Pichu in September 2020, likewise the unlimited version wasn’t even in the top 20 at the beginning of 2020 and is now the 3rd most valuable. I can’t see this being sustainable in the long term and ultimately the only way I’m ever going to spend more than $10k on a main set Pichu is if that money couldn’t be put towards something significantly rarer.
Why climb McKinley when you can climb Everest? Why roll in a Honda when you can flash around in a Benz and impress the ladies? I think a lot of people feel that way when it comes to their collection habits. The “trophy wife” type collector …
I am more the Honda/McKinley guy and my motivations are different … I am a collector of investable cards that have potential for significant value appreciation.
Personally, just from my own observations -
(1) PSA 10s appreciate in value the most over all other grades, and are easier to sell if needed
(2) It is technically flawless and depending the card, quite rare - although I prefer holding on to the 10s within the 10s. I have seen some 10s where imperfections are pretty obvious and in your face - like a clearly off-centered front - so not all PSA 10s qualify as true 10s for me personally when I decide to hold
If I held all the PSA 10 Rainbow Chars instead of selling them, I would have about $100K extra in my pockets right now … just to emphasize what I mean by (1) above.
I wouldn’t necessarily say they are easier to sell especially relative to selling lower grade cards.
I would say your market for a $500 PSA 9 is substantially bigger than your market for a $5000 PSA 10. If anything you could be waiting weeks/months for the right buyer to come along as A) fewer people can afford the card in the first instance, B) assuming the card is affordable and as a few have mentioned on here, would rather have several PSA 9s for what a PSA 10 costs.
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