I was looking through the Beckett pop reports and it’s shocking to see how few (English) WOTC BGS Black Labels there are; from Base Set to Skyridge there are only 3 IN TOTAL (Jungle 1st Kangaskhan, Neo Genesis 1st Bellossom and Togetic). Another crazy number: 23,890 Base Set Unlimited cards have been graded so far with ZERO Black Labels (and eleven 10s).
How is this possible?? Why is there such a huge discrepancy between the WOTC sets vs. more recent ones? In comparison, there are currently 119 English Black Label Moonbreons.
Theoretically, what would be the best way to discover one in 2024? Would you have to pull it straight from the pack? Could there be one hiding in a PSA 10 slab? I’m fairly new to all of this but the numbers are making my head spin.
Print quality is better now, the average WOTC card comes out of a pack as a psa 8-9.
Adding onto that, most WOTC spent 2 decades in binders before being graded. The chance of getting some whitening or small scratch over 20 years , even if the card spends most of that time just chilling in a binder, is pretty high.
So essentially the reason is that cards are printed better now and then immediately go into a sleeve & card saver to preserve condition. Which is vastly different from how the average WOTC hit was handled.
I think the ‘best’ strat would be to crack PSA 10s, but it’s still probably a terrible idea to crack 10s and send for black labels.
Most wotc PSA 10s are not perfect cards (arguably the perfect wotc card doesn’t exist, well seemingly only 3 do haha) - hence why it is so incredibly difficult to grade anything above a BGS 9.5 with BGS for wotc.
Id argue that half of the PSA 10 1st edition shadowless zard also have print lines (which would give them either a 8.5-9.5 surface grade depending on the severity at BGS).
Impossible. It has been said many times that older cert PSA 10 cards are in fact more mint than any modern PSA 10s, because they came from boxes closer to release.
Consider the fact that mint WOTC cards have been graded with PSA and other companies for close to 20 years before black label even existed. Coupled with poor print quality of WOTC, low profit to hit ratio (as a % of submissions for black labels), and general grading subjectivity.
As others have stated, when you get into vintage WOTC the cards often would come right out of the pack in BGS/PSA 9 condition
Couple that with the bulk of WOTC being graded with PSA as well as Becketts very strict standards and the personal biases of individual graders and this makes a lot of sense to me
There’s also plenty of accusations and credible reporting that there’s been internal efforts to sway the pop report at BGS. And accusations of corruption with a former employee getting an absurd amount of black labels (sports). Could there have been cards worthy of a black label that were given a 10 or 9.5 instead? Absolutely and most likely
For me a WOTC gold label 10 is basically your black label for that era of cards.
I think you’re referring to something I’ve said on occasion before but that is actually not what I said.
The supply of raw cards was on average more mint in the past. That’s a mathematical fact. The average WOTC card submitted to PSA was more mint in the past. That’s because the lower grade market has developed.
If you limit the analysis range to only looking at PSA 10s, and specifically the best examples of PSA 10s (not ones we would probably all agree should be PSA 9) no there’s no reason to think that old PSA 10s are more mint than new ones, or vice versa. Because the best copies pulled from packs are going to look the same whether the year is 2014 or 2024
That’s what I’ve said. If we’re talking about the average PSA 10 in the wild, the story is different. Overgraded copies don’t get regraded. Undergraded copies are cracked and resubmitted/cross graded. Stonger copies are kept in collections, weaker copies are more likely to be resold. PSA being more particular about expensive cards is also a factor.
But yes, I agree that this thread should not be about old vs new cert. If you want to continue this discussion just ask and I’ll break it off into it’s own thread.
If you are interested in BGS Black Label WoTC cards, I would recommend looking into CGC Pristine slabs. They are a great option if BGS Black Label pops are 0 or near 0 and you don’t like PSA 10s.
