Hypothetical cracked psa pricing?

I was wondering, if somebody owned a PSA 8-9 set (assuming most wouldn’t break open a slated 10s) and cracked them into loose cards again(still had the label), would the premium immediately go down back to as if they were never graded? This would also be assuming the cards weren’t further damaged when opened.

Was just curious since a binder full set of loose psa 9 labeled cards would look quite interesting, and use less storage space. Just not sure how much less financially viable it would be.

I would hope they could maintain a pricing more relative to the psa slated grade than the loose grade, but I haven’t personally seen it before

I’d imagine worst/most shady case, if someone could do that, they could also just as easily replace the 9s with 8s or 7s. So even with the loose 9 label, they could only be worth as much as at least 2 grades less than the label they came in?

Was asking because I was thinking about doing it myself with 8s or 9s for personal collection aesthetic purposes, and this situation came to mind.

Like you said, hard to prove that the card belonged to the grade/label.

1 Like

It depends what you’re cracking really.

I snagged up some 8 shadowless holos for cheap and cracked them for the binder collection, but I definitely wouldn’t crack a 9 or 10 for a binder collection.

For say shadowless holos, most 8’s are pretty cheap and look pretty clean, so you could actually make more off it selling raw vs graded if someone’s chasing that 9 or 10 for cheaper… I mean, it’s kinda immoral I guess lol, but a reality.

2 Likes

Oh nice, yeah 8’s definitely seem more reasonable to do. I do like the look of nice binder collections. Having the label alongside it makes it sound like it would actually decrease potential value in more than one sense. Not that it matters terribly much if it is purely for a neat collectible aesthetic, over value, while looking through them or showing to friends.

Ohh I missed that part with having the labels, and funny enough about 5 months ago I made custom binder pages from some Chinese manufacturer that had gaps for labels. Initially I wanted to do the same thing and use PSA labels for it, but was annoyed they don’t recognize errors I like, so figured Id just make my own and have space for it.

One thing to keep in mind if you go that route is PSA population reports. I know they aren’t perfect by any means because of cracking, but best to not add to it by throwing the label away or keeping.

Oh true, I remember reading about pop report accuracy being a concern, probably wouldn’t want to purposefully skew that up further then, especially for the higher grades.

Once you crack a card, it’s no longer a graded card. There’s no way for me to know that the cards weren’t damaged when you cracked them or accumulated damage while it was in the binder.

Additionally, a lot of the “premium” with a graded card is the time/money/effort saved not needing to send the card in to PSA yourself.

7 Likes