Ok so, having never gone through the grading process myself and primarily buying only graded cards this is something I’d like to learn a lot more about. I’ve read the PSA guidelines (although I swear I still have NO clue how to evaluate centering on pokemon cards), have watched a bunch of videos on grading including smpratte’s, and just want to generally get better at knowing what to look for in the process.
Rough corners - easy enoughedge whitening - easy enoughcrease - deathholo scratches - easy enoughwax stains - struggling with what to look for herecentering - just no idea, everybody in the videos looks at the card for about 0.3 seconds and says “oh yea that’s definitely within a 70/30” and I just feel like an idiot
So anyways, I’m going to pull 3 raw cards from ebay and would love for anybody to walk me through what they see in them. I’ll put them in follow up posts to this vs in the OP so they can each have their own discussion
ok so — I’ll start with the easy one. For the Shining Charizard the holo looks really good to me, nothing noticable immediately. Ignore centering since I still don’t know what that means really but this card has a ton of defects otherwise.
The front has whitening across the top edge and a knick on the right hand side, a white spot on the bottom left hand side, and some heavy-ish whitening on the bottom
The backside also has a ton of whitening. Corners aren’t too rough other than the whitening around them but it’s pretty persistent across both sides of the card.
I’d say there is no universe in which this card should be described as “Near Mint”, but would love to know what I missed and what this might get as a grade
Front is riddled with issues - dirty, staining, bottom left and bottom right corners both bent, what looks like silvering along the right edge. I circled much of what I saw but I’m sure I missed things here, please help me out!
The backs of these are often much harder for me to tell, but there is some obvious staining, fraying, and corner issues on this one
Ok 1st ed Zard is definitely the hardest for me here to find issues with but while at first glance it looked pretty good, zooming in shows me a lot I hadn’t seen initially
left side fraying here along the edge — possibly from squeezing card? – how big of a detractor is this sort of damage in a PSA grade?
another closer look at that fraying, and is this a scratch on the holo or part of the holo pattern?
And finally where this all falls apart (as Smpratte mentioned it would) is the back of this card. Tons of whitening, knicks, spots, and edge issues
What would this card grade? I have no idea. Let me know what I missed and what you would expect it to grade as, and thanks a ton for anybody who has made it this far!
Actually I revise my statement, for some reason when I think of NM in raw I think of higher than a 7. I agree with you this is not nearly as bad as a 6 would be, and 7 or even low 8 could be viable
A lot of people believe “near mint” means PSA 9. PSA itself defines “Near Mint” as PSA 7, so quite a lot of people use that as the basis when selling cards; it’s one to be careful of. If I’m buying a raw card which is advertised as “near mint” and I’m looking for a PSA 9 or above I’ll usually ask the seller for some additional pictures - it’s very easy to hide damage.
Fraying on an edge is usually like that right out of the booster, possible due to dull blades used in the cutting process. While it may deduct one point, I have seen otherwise nearly flawless cards get a 10 anyways. Another example in this category would be jungle holos, these are notorious for silvering along the edges, yet I´ve seen plenty of 10s with silvering.
Centering standards by PSA are: front:
PSA 10: front: 60/40 back: 75/25 while this may not sound like much, a PSA 10 can be visibly off center and still very well deserving of the grade
First think I noticed on the 1st base Charizard was poor centering, mostly in the bottom to top direction, but also slightly from right to left. Depending on other minor flaws, it will be difficult to get more than an 8 with that centering I would think.
This was indeed the first thing I noticed as well. Definitely top/bottom off-centered that deducts a grade. Left/right isn’t too noticeable, although the right border indeed seems to be slightly wider than left.
I’ve only graded three times with PSA in my life, and usually when grades have to be guessed based on pictures I’m completely wrong, so take everything below with a grain of salt, but here’s what I personally think:
Base: PSA-8.5 - the top/bottom centering will deduct a point, and although I don’t see any holo scratches or print lines in those pictures, the back does show a bit of whitening, and the front indeed has some minor damage at the left-hand card border. It has a solid chance at the PSA-9, but my guess is that it will be a very strong PSA-8 instead (or just plain PSA-8.5, although PSA doesn’t give .5 grades too often).
Neo Destiny: PSA-7 - too much whitening at the back, but considering PSA considers Near Mint a PSA-7, that is actually a good description. I don’t see any major damaging at the front, so it might have a very small chance at a weak PSA-8, although it would deserve a PSA-7 based on those picture imo.
Topsun: PSA-7 - although minor, it does have quite a few little stains at both the front and back, as well as some chipping/whitening at the back (although harder to see on the white/green card). Although I don’t have any experience with Topsun cards tbh, so it could also be a PSA-6 or PSA-8 for all I know.
Again, these are just guesses, and my guesses for PSA-grades are usually wrong.
I have graded a couple hundred cards with PSA and I’m usually dead on with my own assessment. I have actually been surprised at how good my pregrades tend to be, but I will say this… There is NO substitute for seeing a card in person. I would agree with @quuador, and others on their assessment, but it is tough to truly be sure without the card in hand.
I will say that the centering on the zard is off and I know personally how centering can hurt because I have a similar zard in pack fresh condition, but the centering is horrible. It basically results in a strong PSA 8 automatically. I would say any other notes about the card have the chance to knock a card an addition grade possibly. For this reason I would say the xard is a 7-8 just to not get your hopes up.
Centering usually only takes a second to judge because our eyes can see very easily if a card is identical or not on the borders. It takes very little to look off balance. The harder it is to distinguish the thickness between left and right and top and bottom the better your centering will be. That zard you can see it instantly though. For sure top to bottom, but left to right is less.
Definitely agree with in person assessments. As I mentioned, I haven’t graded that much yet, but from the ~15-20 cards I have graded thus far, my predictions where on point after close examination of the cards prior. I’ve only had one 10 where I thought it would be a strong 9 and one 9 where I thought it might have a chance at a 10, but all my other predictions were correct with the cards in hand (including a PSA-4 which I had guessed as a 4 as well - lower grades are a bit harder to predict imo).
But based on pictures it’s more difficult. There could be an invisible dent or crease somewhere, or print lines that aren’t visible in the picture. Although the pictures above are still taken pretty well.
Something that’s helped me understand centering (and I’m no expert by any means) is comparing the yellow border around the Charizard art to it’s parallel side, so comparing the top border to the bottom border and comparing the right border to the left border. So if you look at the Charizard you can see the bottom border is thicker than the top. The right side is also slightly thicker than the left. If the card was perfectly centered the borders would appear even.
Not sure if I explained that well but if you take a look at this guide it should help you a little bit more
That’s actually super helpful. The one video I watched prior on centering was about sports cards and what they were looking for was misalignment on the card so for instance letters lined up in the wrong spot or a white space where the guys elbow should have been but in the layers they print/stamp in it was misaligned. I could never see anything like that in Pokémon cards (certainly not in 5-10 seconds) so I was always confused
I understand your confusion then. In Pokemon, centering almost always refers exclusively to the relative width of opposing borders.
Say your card has has 3,5mm yellow border on the left and 2,5mm on the right, you have ~58/42 centering left to right (just divide 3,5 or 2,5 by 6 [6 being the total width of both borders combined]). At least that’s how I do it.
It helps tremendously if you have a scan of the card you can magnify and measure, it gets way more precise that way.
One very subjective observation I’d like to add is that to me PSA often seems to be actually too strict on the centering by their own standards. Very much depends on the card though, with e-series for example they are much more lenient.
