Hey all,
How many of you buy raw cards in hopes of grading it a 10 for your collection? I have a few 10s that I’d like to acquire and I’m trying to get the right balance (and not spend too much) of buying a raw card and paying for the grading fee vs buying a 10.
What experiences have you had in trying to accomplish this? How successful have you been in doing this? What tips do you have?
This depends on whether you are talking about modern or vintage. If you’re talking about vintage, very few cards in circulation are PSA 10 minty fresh unless you’re thinking about commons, uncommons, or non-holo rares.
There are plenty of cases of individuals buying raw modern cards from eBay or TCGPlayer and grading 10s.
Which ones are you looking for?
I’m more of a buy raw and stick in a binder person myself. Modern is pretty easy to grade and the quantity is super high for just about everything. As you get older for the sets it gets harder to find mint cards, with some sets/eras being easier/harder. Some of these older ones are super expensive in 10s, so a 9 or 8 may be more worth it. Buy one card in psa 10 for $1k, or multiple psa 9s of different cards for the same price? up to you really
Let me reply to a reply of a reply because that’s how I roll as well! 
I do this a lot for semi-modern Japanese cards and have success. It’s a lot of work searching out raw mint cards, and it takes a lot of time now to go from buying a raw mint card and getting it in a 10. But if you know what you’re doing, it can be so much less expensive to grade things yourself.
With English cards it’s way harder, especially since the 2020 boom. Mint cards are harder (not impossible) to find on sites like eBay, more people are pursuing grading and “know what they have,” and when truly mint cards do get listed well, they go for such high prices that it’s almost not worth it. If you’re looking for mint cards now, I feel like your best bet is doing full collection purchases.
I’ve done this for most of my Ampharos cards. The way I approach it is hope for 10s and expect 9s, super worst case scenario is you miss a tiny dent and it’s a 6.
A lot of the cards that I’ve done this with I’ve gotten raw for usually quite a bit less than a 9. The math doesn’t always work out that way of course, but if it does then it’s a win win for me. Either I luck out and get the 10 and save potentially hundreds of dollars, or I get the 9 which I’m still happy to collect, and still save some money.
I think the other factor to weigh in as well is patience. A lot of people feel like they need cards for their collection immediately, or need them physically in their possession and don’t want to send them to be graded. Really all I care about is securing the card, I don’t care how long it takes at PSA as long as I know I can check it off my list. The one hiccup with that is if you miss a dent and get a 6 and need to try again.
To be honest, I don’t trust most sellers with raw mint cards nowadays. Sure, modern stuff fresh from a pack that is barely worth sending to PSA i’ll grab. But if a seller has any idea about grading cards I have to wonder why in the world they would be willing to sell a card raw if it was worth grading? $30/card tier is open and back in like a month. A low monetary and time investment to 10x the value of some stuff. There are plenty of posts I see of people selling graded cards and “raw NM/Mint” vintage stuff. You obviously know the value of grading and yet are specifically choosing NOT to grade the raw cards you’re selling. Sellers always have more information about the card than buyers and most of the time I feel like they’re selling a pipe dream to buyers.
I’ve had some great success in the last couple years still but as said here already it’s a lot more work searching them out raw. Many people would just grade themselves now. There are still people who will sell raw but I feel like for the cards I look at I have to scan ebay for months. I also only do this with cards that have graded relatively easy as 10’s in the past like semi modern japanese promos.
As stated above, it really depends on what you’re after. From personal experience, I wouldn’t really recommend it. My goal was to grade every non-holo Dutch 1st Edition Base Set card in a PSA 10. However, even for just the non-holos the printing quality is generally not that great. Even pack fresh non-holos can easily have print lines and scratches like they were used in a few games of air hockey in the factory. In an attempt to achieve this goal, I’ve bought many collections, packs, and loose cards and when you ask sellers (even experienced graders) about whether or not their card might grade a 10, most of them will say yes just to get you to buy it. And simply based on pictures it can be really hard to spot the difference between a potential 10 and a 9 or even an 8. For me, however, it was more about the journey of grading all the cards myself than simply owning them. Everything considered, I could have probably owned all of them for a fraction of the cost if I had just bought them graded. But where’s the fun in that 
This is me.
We are so far down the road compared to where things were in 2014-2016. It would take a lot for me to believe a raw card advertised as near mint was genuinely in gradable 9 condition, let alone 10. And even if the pictures look good, you are gambling on the scrutiny of the seller who then has to handle and package the card without altering its condition at all.
I have bought and graded 10s back in the “pack fresh” days where you could get anything you wanted on eBay fresh out of a booster. But I think those days are over. I don’t have anywhere near the confidence I once had.
When I buy raw to grade, my strategy differs between modern and vintage.
For vintage, I usually try to stay in the mindset that any raw card I buy is a 8 or 9 at best. IMO it protects me from saying F it and overpaying for a card i think has a 10 shot. Anything that is in a binder page without a penny sleeve or is among other cards that are in rough shape, I will not buy to grade. More often than not, hitting a 10 on vintage cards is few and far between.
For newer modern, I primarily go off a cards centering and if there is any whitening on the back. If it has good centering and no whitening, you most likely are going to get a 10. Surface issues aren’t too common but are definitely prevalant but not enough to painstakingly over analyze a card’s photos. I just pull the trigger if it passes both and Im done with it lol.
TLDR, you are most likely better off buying vintage 10s already graded and buying modern raw to grade a 10.
I only sell my duplicates from modern sets (to get the ones I dont have, so basicaly it’s trading) but I know people who does it for a living and they just want the money fast, they dont have time to grade anything just because it’s probably that the value will decline almost every day from the release to the next month (unless they got a massive hit like moonbreon, sure). Also, for people that are not in the US, grading it’s a little hard when it comes to send stuff to the US due to shipping costs, custom duties, the fear of the package getting lose… and I dont even know if they (PSA, in this case) are taking orders of it has to be done via middleman (that’s my case, I didnt send ANYTHING to PSA from Spain because of that). So there is a few reasons not to grade anything before selling it. At least from my perspective. Anyway there are a lot of people claiming his cards are PSA9/PSA10 and that’s just clickbait, they dont have any idea who grading works and they just want to make easy money.
Modern? Yeah, no problem there. Takes some time to find the candidates, but they can be truly mint. Vintage is tougher, Pre 2020 it wasn’t, I and many others were able to do it all day, but that just isn’t the case anymore. Mint = 7/8, MAYBE 9, NM - 5-7, LP - 5-7, MP 3-6 and HP 1-4. If you want a 9/10 on them, better to not roll the dice on older cards.
As mentioned already, it depends on the era and card. You can still find some mint vintage cards. And probably will for awhile, its just the exception not the norm. There are certain things to look for, even context clues from sellers. But its harder today.
Even box breaks don’t always yield 10’s. But that is what makes it fun. And even more rewarding when you do knock it out of the park!
There are plenty of people with near mint/mint cards that don’t grade them for one reason or another, whether it’s because they just don’t know any better or feel like the barrier of entry is too high. I think it’s really easy to assume that just because we would grade them for more value, then everyone must.
Yes, obviously if someone on Reddit or something who obviously grades a lot of cards is selling something raw and mint then it might be questionable. I think that’s a per situation basis though, and I’d just choose to not buy from people like that. Just a few weeks ago I got a mint Japanese e reader Blissey holo for $25 and it got a 10. I think you just need to try to read the situation.
With eBay specifically, if someone tries to sell something as mint and hides damage from photos, you can literally just return it anyway so who cares. They gain nothing from tying to scam people that way, as long as the buyer knows to just return it.
Not to mention the large amount of capital required to constantly be grading cards.
I think you overestimate the number of people who grade and who know what PSA 9/10s are.
A lot of these people just copy other posts and don’t have the time/patience to grade cards, if they’ve ever done it.
I also think you underestimate the amount of uber casuals listing items for sale.
I think setting out to find vintage 10 candidates on eBay will drive the average person Moby Dick levels of mad. Better off buying collections and crossing your fingers.
It’s more of a risk with English than it is with Japanese.
English print quality is extremely poor. Often riddled with whitening on corners/edges, print lines, pinhole dents etc.
Japanese you can have more luck with but it all depends on the era. Anything modern, I think its a safe bet to buy up a few of the same card and grade the best and sell the rest to recover your cost. I’d feel comfortable using this tactic for cards from XY, S&M era etc. Anything before then it starts to get a little bit more difficult but definitely still possible.