I’ve been around and involved with collecting all types of cards my whole life. I’m extremely risk adverse (the collapse of the modern baseball card market taught me some lessons.)
Right now I’m only investing in 1st edition shadowless base set. I am extremely leary about the differences in prices between PSA 9 and PSA 10 for some, not all of the cards. For example, PSA 9 Blastoise just sold on ebay for around $950. The PSA 10 for around $9,000.
How much of that $9,000 is based on the reputation of PSA, and how much is based on the card itself? I feel like the “PSA 10” is a bit of a myth. I have 10’s that are 9’s if I’m honest.
Hopefully this makes sense. I want to invest in the card and not a companies reputation, which can change. I’ve seen it happen too much to view PSA as an invincible company.
If you collect 9s then people will say why not 8s and so forth.
If it really doesn’t matter to you then just collect what you can comfortably afford.
By the way, assuming it’s not just reddit talk, where was the 9000.00 sale?
You’ll get what you pay for. I’d say to shoot for 10’s if you’re only “investing” because otherwise it’s just laughable that of all the more effective ways to invest big or small you’d choose PSA 9 set cards from pokemon as an investment vehicle. If you’re going to collect and enjoy it different story and put you’re money wherever you feel good putting it. PSA 9’s aren’t 10’s but there ain’t no shame in 1st edition base PSA 9’s.
I only purchase 9’s for my personal collection but I’ve considered investing in some early nintendo era 10’s. I think it’s very dependent on the card itself. Like most people here, I’ve seen 9s that were better than 10s. Being a squirtle evolution line collector myself I would never pay the prices for the gem 10 1st ed blastoise when I can get the same card that is insanely close to the same condition (or possibly better) than that $5k gem for 80% less…
With that being said, when I look at some of the holos from sets like delta species going for $40-50 as gem mint 10s I see a lot of potential there for growth. All wotc era cards are pretty well established in their price and growth patterns IMO but I think that the people who grew up with the early nintendo era stuff are still too young to really influence the market (aside from gold stars and the more popular pokemon of course).
Those are just my opinions. I do not think that the price difference from 9 to 10 on most cards is justified. However, I don’t get to decide that, the market does and you can’t deny confirmed sales. I think that the risk factor with 10s is just much higher than 9s. We are paying for a small group of human beings to examine our cards for 30 seconds and taking their opinion on condition as factual information after all…
Yeah, maybe I didn’t explain it well enough. I completely agree with what you are saying about room for growth and it depends on the card. Also, I am not complaining about the expense, the market is the market. I’m more talking about if there is a line of thinking where for certain cards, with that drastic of a difference it may be better to buy 9 PSA 9 Blastoise instead of 1 PSA 10. There seems to be disagreement over what PSA 10 1st Shadowless Blastoise go for. I’m seeing 8-10k on ebay. If the price is actually 5k, then I have less of an issue. It’s perfectly reasonable for a 4-5x price difference. But when we are talking 9-10x’'s more, it makes me take a step back and wonder if that is partially the companies reputation.
If a card has a 8-10x difference in price between a 9 and 10, isn’t it less risk to buy 9 or 10 PSA 9’'s instead of 1 PSA 10.
Or I guess to use a recent example, would people who bought 5 PSA 9 skyridge charizard 146 be taking as much of a bath than the people who bought 1 PSA 10?
Also, Its possible what I’m seeing on ebay is not accurate so if you have a better price resource, we can defer to that. Also, Ebay doesn’t seem to let you go that far back in time anymore so this could be moot.
It sounds like you’re more of an investor than a collector, why not put your money in sealed WOTC/early TPC boxes, their value doesn’t hinge on the rep of another company and are as close to a sure thing investment as you’re gonna get with Pokemon
What do you mean by a psa 10 is a myth? Sure you may have some cards you feel are a 9, then send them in for review and get compensated the difference in price if it should be a 9. If you are better at grading than psa start your own grading company. They might slip up on some 10s but overall I think they do a great job. Not all 10s are perfect.
If you just want to invest then Charizard is a better buy at any grade than Blastoise at a high grade.
You won’t lose money buying PSA 10 1st ed. base holos but you won’t necessarily have 100% returns year on year. Set cards haven’t grown in the last 12 months, we’ve seen major retraces in the price of most wotc set cards.
You don’t sound like you want a PSA 10 1st ed. Blastoise, I strongly suggest you don’t buy it.
I got into collecting pokemon when Ultra Prism came out, I just recently have been researching the vintage graded cards. I try to keep modern card purchases to a minimum and don’t invest in them. Your suggestion for sealed product is a good one. Thank you.
What I mean is the idea that a PSA 10 is a perfect card. It’s very possible I’m wrong but I think PSA 10’'s are in a bubble. I’m not saying that I never buy them, but for ones that have an 8 to 10x price difference I wonder if all of that is for the value of the card itself. If there is no one here that agrees, then this could simply be my skiddishness from the modern sports card bubble bursting a while back.
Can you expound on not losing money on 1st shadow less Blastoise? Like it’s risk free? As far as the PSA 10, it’s not really liking or disliking the card. I’m putting together the 1st shadow less base set together and that seems to be one of the key cards. If it was 5k, that is about 5 times what the 9 is. That seems reasonable, but it’s between 9-10k, whiche is 9 to 10 times difference. It’s not the amount of money it costs, it’s the drastic difference. Could come down to each person’s opinion on how high is to high of a difference. 4-5x is reasonable, 9-10x i question. So I’m basically seeing if there is anyone else that views it that way or if I’m the only one. If I’m the only one then most likely this is an issue of learning more about the market.
