Why is this a 9 as it says on psa site they may allow few flaws it card otherwise is clean

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I wpuld ABSOLUTELY send rhis back in for a review

It looks perfect to me, so the only thing i could think of is maybe a surface issue not visible to the naked eye OR the grader was having a bad day..

I sent my Van Gogh pikachu back in and it got bumped up to a 10, so i would absolutely try it.

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You can’t grade a card from scans. It might have slight surface issues like scratching, which is common on these promo cards from how they were packed in the tin. Or it could be clean and PSA just gave it a 9 because grading is subjective. Send it in again if you think it should be higher.

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Here are a few things I noticed in the scans. They could be on the slab, they could be dust, they could be irrelevant.

I’m curious about the tiny divots on the front top edge (green boxes). Are those considered negligible in grading?

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Those scratches on back are on the slab not on the card and the small whiting dot that you circled on the back is there yes on front there is that green indents a bit yes I didn’t notice those thanks for pointing those out I didn’t even see those and that black mark you circled on in front is due to lighting there is none of that on card

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You don’t get a 9 for a flawless card. Yes a 9 could be a 10, but when you get a 9 it means the grader has seen a defect. Maybe he could have given a different final appreciation towards 10, but otherwise, there is no reason for a grader to not give a 10 if he could not detect any defects.

It’s an asymmetry, meaning the path going up to 10, and the path going down to 9 are not equivalent

There’s no such thing as “I’ve looked at the card it’s perfect but the grader gave it a 9”
You just missed something that the grader saw, it’s literally his job to find defects.
Sure he is human so he can miss something, but it will be in the sense of bumping your grade upward, not the other way around

So there are such things as undergrading or over grading, but no such thing as “flawless psa9”

New graders could get fired if they overgrade. That’s why if you send a large submission they all could be 10s but some might get the 9 tax. This has been known for years :slight_smile:

A flawless PSA 9 is undergrading.

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No, they will give 9s more often and less confident to give 10s. And old grader can be more lenient. But that doesn’t mean that the new grader give 9s just out of his ass to act like he is competent. That makes no sense. Read the post lol sometimes I think I am too subtle lol

Great eyes,m Stagger! I noticed a few of those things too.. not all tho. :eyes:

Additionally, @Zeltrech , the texturing on sun moon era can sometimes be perceived as damage on the edge. It’s an odd feature, that IMO, graders rarely understand, and grade too harshly.

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Because grading is a human judgement. You got a 9 cos some dudes shift was ending in 2 mins. Some other dude would have given it a 10, and someone else would have given it an 8.

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Hello the sratch you are talking about seeing it goes out of cards border I don’t think it’s a scratch but please free to give your thoughts as if it was scratch it wouldn’t go out of cards edge you can see it’s tip go out of cards or is it only me that white small whiting yes that is there that is 100 percentage true and those uneven edge well could be just uneven texture or small tiny indents so that is that and that edge of top right corner same could be that or a bit whiting

My re-submit guidelines is “If this was a 10 at someone’s booth, is there anything on the card that would make not want to buy it”

If the answer is no, that is usually when I re-submit.

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first-time-buster-scruggs

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That’s not at all how grading works. People aren’t getting fired if they give a card a 10.

Bizarre. I have a “PSA 2” Tag Team Gengar in the mail to be delivered today that I cannot wait to scope out and see why. It’s a POP 1 so I’m cool either way but I’m very anxious to see.

Beautiful card!

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There have been a couple interviews from former employees that do mention a process of tracking if a particular employee is having a lot of regrade corrections during the QA process.

ie, if the average misgrade found during the QA process is like 1/10,000 for employees in general, but a particular grader is making more frequent mistakes like 1/100, I believe its been hinted that is a metric tracked.

It’s coming second hand from an interview, so guess take that with a grain of salt.

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The fear with new graders overgrading and getting fired is very much something that has been documented by former employees for years. It’s not that you give a 10, it’s if you give too many. Your job as a grader is to find defects in cards, and if you give too many 10s then you must not be good at your job. Thats why some perfectly good 10 candidates will get hit with the 9 tax.

That’s literally not how grading works. If you get a lot of 10s on your order, it just means you’re sending in good cards, which doesn’t mean that it’s any fault of the grader to find a defect. I swear, people come up with the weirdest conspiracy theories.

New grader