I honestly just like the way the newer cases look. Also, since I started collecting later in the game I have pretty much all newer certs… my OCD won’t let me mismatch labels. Lol (yes I know you can re-case them)
Opens buy thread…
Sees thread is 7 hours old
Sees that thread has 6 pages already *confused face*
Reads that OP is paying $100 premium for 4XXXX Cert over a 2XXXX Cert
It all makes sense now
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This hurts my brain and all logic… I just had a seller trying to sell me something for more and their reasoning was “the case is clean and is fresh from PSA” so that should justify a premium. I don’t pay extra for a case or care about the case, the value comes from what’s in the case.
I track everything I buy in spread sheets with dates and how much I spent. If I went with this thinking I’d have to write down I spent 300 on the snorlax and then also paid 100 for the case regardless of the card inside it. Not that I paid 400 for the snorlax.
Good luck to the OP and I hope it all works out for you in the end, but this pains my brain.
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That’s when you just go, “Nah, I’m all set. I got PlastX.”
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One last thing. If the slab is just a piece of plastic, why does it drive the price up nearly 5-6 times the raw cards worth? Shouldn’t people just buy the raw cards then? I mean if we’re employing the same logic?
If PSA meant nothing and one should buy the card, not the cert, then the fact of the matter is that they will fail in the market.
I can post my pristine looking first ed base set charizard on eBay, but without that PSA stamp, I’ll never even sniff the 5 figure mark without it. If PSA has that much sway, then why on earth wouldnt newer certs vs. older certs be a thing too? To claim that there’s negligible difference is the far more deceiving message to send. It’s all about the market’s opinion and we are all subject to it.
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The value increase comes from the assessment of card condition from an unbiased 3rd party, who is the industry standard/leader in that field. The same reason you go to a doctor for a medical diagnosis, instead of your neighbor.
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Of course. And we all here are willing to pay 5-6 times the value of the raw card just because of it. Therefore, PSA certs are far more powerful than people in this thread are saying.
Who’s to say in 2/3 years that 4xxxx aren’t worth invariably more than 2xxxx?
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@zorkzork69, Third party grading provides a necessary third party opinion. Before third party grading it was the wild west. Everyone has their opinions on condition, and having a neutral third party option is a massive net possessive.
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Hey if he wants to spend more money, that’s a better use of cash vs the total garbage fire waste of the federal government, am I right? (Seeing if I can also make this thread political and really sink it).
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Ultimately you’re fighting a war you can’t win here. If you want to pay a premium for a certain cert number, that is completely up to you. If you’re banking on that cert being worth more down the road when it comes time to sell, only time will tell but I wouldn’t be betting heavily on that.
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Okay. Well. I’ve never lost on an investment in my life and imo, with YouTubers big in the scene talking about how strict PSA has become, it will influence those who do not understand negligible differences and therefore create that dichotomy between 2xxx and 4xxx. I mean heck, what’s really the difference between a PSA 8 and a PSA 9? The difference is probably just as negligible in many cases as 2xxx and 4xxx. Yet the PSA 9 demands far more money.
I guess that’s just my opinion then. If it differs from y’all, that’s fine. 
Some of my best looking cards are in cases with old certs.
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I don’t necessarily discount the idea that PSA grading standards can change with time. If you go with this analogy of doctors, doctors 100 years ago would likely not be able to give you as accurate of a diagnosis as doctors today (just in general). I realize that giving a medical diagnosis is very different from grading a card, but there can be other factors which cause standards to change. I think Scott mentioned before a theory that PSA could be grading harsher due to people abusing the financial guarantee, and now that Pokemon cards are worth more, they have more of an incentive to protect themselves/be more conservative with handing out high grades. The problem, like many here have stated, is that all of the evidence for this “change” is anecdotal, with the largest PSA submitters mostly disputing the claim.
Even so, I agree with zork that we have already seen an effect on the market. New certs ARE earning premiums in anecdotal instances that I have been watching. In a market with such low supply like we are seeing, anecdotal instances are magnified because everyone is looking at the same cards. This kind of stuff can quickly catch on and influence the market even if the underlying assumptions are false.
Given this information, as a seller I would not auction off my 2xx certs, nor would I accept any kind of a discount for them. They might sell more slowly but the right buyer will value the card the same as a 4xx cert.
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@zorkzork69 buying the card not the grade doesn’t mean we should just disregard PSA’s grade. For a hobby where almost all sales are done online you need the third party unbiased grades to have a general standard of the card’s condition that you’re buying. The standard can vary since there are different graders and each grader can have their own opinion. Without the third party grading, people can hide flaws & defects and it makes it more challenging to determine the true condition of the card you’re buying. Grading is overall a good thing and helps narrow down the range of the condition for the card. However, grading is still subjective regardless of when the card was graded and even if you believe the standard was raised there are still tons of cards that are deserving of their grade with old certs and, on the other hand, undeserving of their grades with new certs. This is why you should still look at the card and not just offer extra money based on the Cert number. Think of the grade as a condition range, then you should look at the card to see if you think it meets your own standard for the grade the card received.
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The irony is this conspiracy only hurts the buyer. @garyis2000 comment hit it on the head. He found his strongest grade, but the galaxy brain buyer only wanted a 4xxx cert, so they ended up buying a weaker option.
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To be fair, this happens a lot more than you would think and it isn’t really a 2 vs 4 cert issue
A few weeks ago a Flareon 1st sold for $295 at auction
I was immediately able to buy the exact card for $239 as a buy-it-now that ha been posted and sitting for over a week
Sometimes people just do things that don’t make sense
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I completely agree.
The only thing I have to say about it is that when the average collector sees a 2 Vs. a 4 in 5 years from now, will they scrutinize the 2 more than the 4 solely because of when it was graded? Will they nitpick the defects of the 2 and say it’s not worth the same as the one with the 4? That is what I’m trying to avoid by going with a 4.
Everything else you say definitely holds absolutely true. Of course you’re going to look at the card regardless of grade before you buy it and you definitely should. I wasn’t just gunna buy a 4 to buy a 4. I just kept my OP concise.
Also, remember a lot of these cards are 15-20 years old and the majority may already be graded with older certs so you could be severely limiting your options if you only purchase 4xxx Cert cards. I also know if I was a seller and had a psa 10 with an older Cert that was deserving of the 10 I wouldn’t sell at a discount based on the number. I can see this potentially having a slight impact in auctions though where sellers can’t take their time with the sale.
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And yes, they very well may scrutinize it more but if it’s deserving of the grade then it should sell at the same price as the 4xxx Cert. Realistically you should always look closely at the front and back of every card you’re buying.
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Are 1xxxx better than 2xxx or worse? what about 0xxxxx? Are 5xxxxx equivalent to 4xxxxx or will they be more desirable? Is 40xxx less desirable than 45xxxx because it’s closer to 2xxx? Paying attention to these minute differences is very short-sighted if you ask me. Any value in a particular cert is only relevant as long as the perception lasts. When we inevitably get to 7xxxx cert numbers are people going to consistently be able to sort 0xxx to 7xxx in order of quality? Is the first digit really an indication of anything? It’s such an arbitrary cutoff. I can tell you in the past people have even broken down the 2xxxx label into some that are better or worse, where are those people and ideas now? Forgotten.
I’ve looked at the numbers. It’s an undeniable fact that in terms of WOTC cards, PSA has graded less 10s when comparing the end of the 2xxx to the 4xxxx “eras”. Whether this is because they started grading harsher or the average quality of submitted card has fallen is totally up for debate. Keep in mind that 2xxx cards correspond to the time when the most boxes were being broken and graded. Even if we assume that the difference between 2xxx and 4xxx is entirely due to a change in PSA strictness, in the most extreme case you’re looking at a deviation of about 8 in 100 4xxxx cards getting a lower grade than the average baseline expectation. All factors ignored, the vast, vast majority of 2xxx and 4xxx cards are receiving the same grade as expected from the average expectation.
The most relevant thing to consider is even if there was definite proof PSA has suddenly become harsher, that is only established by averages. When you’re buying a single card, you’re not buying an average. From a statistics perspective, it’s like sampling a single data point from two near-completely overlapping Normal distributions. By random chance, (assuming there is a quantifiable difference between 2xxx and 4xxxx) it’s going to be a common outcome to see that the 2xxx is in better than the 4xxx when you’re only sampling from each distribution once and not working with averages (which is captured by @gottaketchumall 's point near the beginning of this thread).
Imagine a modified roulette wheel where 18 spots are red and 19 spots are black. Naturally, all things equal, black is a better bet. If you’re playing over and over and doing long averages, you will benefit from actually paying slightly more fore a black spot than a red spot. But if you’re playing one time and you’re paying 25% more from a black spot… well that’s basically this thread. Of course the caveat here for this analogy is that we are again assuming there is a slight difference between 4xxxx and 2xxx (which is my stance based on the data I’ve seen) and what we are actually caring about is condition (“winning in roulette”) and not what people are perceiving condition to be.
tldr. the real difference between 4xxx and 2xxx is trivial if it even exists. A single random sample doesn’t have to be concordant with the average, ESPECIALLY when the differences are so small. People won’t be talking about 4xxx as anything special as we cycle to the next arbitrary thing, just as 0xxx and 1xxxx and 2xxx have no hierarchy
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