Throughout this year, I’ve noticed several people on this forum commenting that 2024 PSA submissions have been unusually strict. Wondering if this is just the view of a vocal minority or a widely shared opinion, I decided to start this thread and run a poll.
How have your 2024 submissions been graded?
I wanna settle this once and for all with this poll! 
fourthstar’s eye twitches repeatedly at the suggestion that a poll of interested E4 users reflects PSA’s overall grading standards
9xxxxxxx are the TRUE grades. All other eras are weak.
I didn’t send too many cards this year but found the grades to be in line with my estimates. Perhaps a little more strict. Certainly not lenient.
First half of the year was in line with previous years, the past 3 submissions have been rough and lack any consistency.
I don’t chalk this up to PSA as a whole, rather individual graders. I know I’ve just been unlucky, so it is what it is.
By and large I would assume PSA’s standards have not changed, regardless of my personal experience.
I’ve sent out a lot in the past month so can chime in whenever my cards return!
Actually I want to expand on this comment a bit more in part because I believe it was a post by me that partially inspired this discussion:
The lack of consistency is the biggest problem. If PSA were to tighten up their grading standards (which there is no evidence of them doing so), I would be okay with that as long as it was consistently enforced.
The problem I have had is that recent submissions feel closer to a random number generator than an actual attempt at grading the cards. Near-flawless or flawless cards, that I would pregrade a 9+ have been receiving 7-8 (and sometimes 6’s), and cards that I considered to be 7-8’s with a harsh grader have been getting 9’s.
This isn’t tied to value either, two cards from my most recent submission that received 9’s (and I thought would be 7-8’s) were the most valuable cards in the submission. So no pop control accusations.
This is an indictment on the individual graders abilities, which in turn affects PSAs credibility imo. I have something like a 75% success rate of resubmitting 6-7 into 9-10’s, which should not be possible if cards are being accurately graded. I know I spend 10x the amount of time looking over each card than a grader does, but still, it’s incredibly frustrating not understanding why your cards got what grades they got.
Edit: one more note, it’s understandable if out of a 30 card submission, I don’t understand 3-4 grades. The problem is when 15-16 of the grades make no sense, both in the positive and negative direction.
Good one!
I never said it reflects the overall grading standard. I was just curious whether it’s just a vocal minority, and if so, how that sentiment came about.
Good point. I think there is value in seeing how people feel, provided we don’t make the jump that X% says PSA has gotten stricter so they must have.
Memes aside, I have always felt PSA grading has been relatively consistent. My submissions in 2024 achieved a high 10 rate, but this was also because I was submitting lots of cards from mint Japanese collections which I bought in 2021. In every submission there are grades I disagree with, some of those grades change when I resubmit cards, others don’t. In my unsupported, anecdotal opinion, I agree that the most significant variation with PSA is within-grader variation.
This is really it. I would say I’ve seen more variability between two submissions within the same year than what you would see comparing average submissions across years.
That’s my experience at least. In general my pregrading averages out to be pretty close to what I end up with and my pregrading hasn’t changed much or at all across time.
Pretty loose in the past few weeks.
Lots of 9s getting 10s.
Been speaking with a few but submitters.
Great time to sub, not so great to buy
I submitted my aunt’s baseball cards that were stored in a rubberband for 50 years and only got 6’s and 7’s so I would say lenient.
I feel like “Incredibly inconsistent “ should be a poll option 
I think you need to differentiate modern vs vintage or else you wont get a good discussion
I can easily get 10s on modern cards,
but 10s on vintage feels like a pipe dream sometimes.
the only 10s i recieved on vintage all year (and these are all cards $1,000+) were so clean that I considered cross grading to beckett for pristine 10.
Thats what it took to get tens on the cards that were 20years old+
stuff that would easily get tens in the past were rejected constantly. I had a 51 card submission where every single card was graded a 9 (and i posted about this in the graded cards thread)
I dont think you need an opinion poll though. Look at card pops and compare psa 8 9, and 10 growth
if a card used to have a 5%, 10%, ext psa 10 rate, this has fallen DRAMATICALLY across the board
Im watching box breaks everywhere, these cards are still being pulled pack fresh but psa is expecting perfection and grading vintage as hard as modern
which is a problem because vintage cards have no protection on the back of the card because they cheaped out. Modern cards have a clear varnish protecting the back so its very easy to come out with a perfect card with no whitening, but for some of these vintage cards its damn near impossible. And the occasional dot of whitening in 1 or 2 spots that psa let slide in years past (especially the 2xxx cert era) are automatically rejected as 8s and 9s this year
What I felt has happened. When CGC entered the card world with its original blue labels, their 10s were the strongest. There was the phenomena of people regrading CGC 9s and 9.5s to PSA hoping for 10s. People began to realize a 10 with CGC was difficult, people want to get 10s so CGC was getting less submissions. Then comes the CGC rebrand with new labels and lower thresholds for 10s. People begin to realize this and start trying to regrade PSA 9s to get CGC 10s. CGC managed to reverse the traffic on PSA. PSA noticed this and lowered their 10 thresholds to reverse the traffic once more. So it is a battle of who can have the lowest standards for 10s among the grading companies in hopes of getting more submissions from customers. Of course there are also peripheral things like streamlining the grading process and integrating the grading process with third party auctions etc.
Just my instinct on the matter, could be wrong.
Couldnt this be explained by less loose mint product in general being submitted?
while i think your reasoning is fine you have to again differentiate between vintage and modern
I think with modern, an easy 10 and a cheap grading cost is what is important. Most modern cards arnt worth much and a psa9 is often devastating for these cards values. Psa keeps rolling out promotions at $13 specially aimed at Pokemon to drive business away from cgc and slow their business growth
Vintage is a whole other animal. The pokemon car boom is owed largely to vintage and their card values. Ppl hearing that charizard sold for “x” amount of dollars and saying whaaaaat? I had that card too! Insane card values was a large driver for ppl returning to the hobby
These ppl gambling on these box breaks, it’s based on the dream of pulling a big card with a psa10
but the psa10 is only worth so much because of rarity. They increase pop too much and card values sink…
card values sink and nobody wants to open sealed product because even best case scenarios are losers
The top cards are the headliners and give prestige, status, and reputation. They need to hear "X"card is worth 10k in a psa 10, these is the headliner. If the cgc card was more rare and harder to achieve the ten, their values would surpass psa10s, and the sellers would instead quote cgc prices as the headliner. and this would in turn hurt psa