I hate to make this sort of topic. This is just my personal observations:
After spending over 6 figures on Pokemon cards, its just way too obvious to me that earlier certifications are generally much more poor in quality. This is very disappointing after spending / investing so much. My 5XXXXX certifications that are lower grades seem to be generally better condition than say for example 2XXXXX and prior psa 10 certifications, which sucks. All WOTCs. I feel like I’m spending thousands on mis-grades. This has turned me off the graded cards hobby / investment.
Your sitting here with 5 figure cards and not even too sure if it will be accepted in the future because it is a “weak 10”. I wasn’t the type of person to tell the seller, look your PSA 10 card has a big stain and lots of whitening on every edge of the card (lets pretend that corners don’t even exist) - give me my money back.
It is true. While PSA has always been inconsistent, they have become harsher in recent years. I have seen countless grades with older slabs, have handled them, and compared to newer ones. Submitted cards that I know would have gotten 7s or 8s back then and now get respective 6s or 7s. Theres a running joke here about 4xxx certs being better than 2xxx. Many are sick of it, but to answer your question, it is true. Though you will of course always find certain older ones to be completely fairly graded, and some newer ones to be unfairly graded.
To be fair it is most noticeable from grades below 10. I think a 2xxx 10 will generally be just as good as any. But it’s when you run into those old 7s and 8s. What PSA used to do deem NM is just not the same as now.
It’s been shown that PSA has given proportionately less 10s over the past few years. Whether this is a reflection of strictness or a reflection of people submitting lower quality cards is unproven. Any correlation between the first number on the cert and quality is unsupported beyond anecdote
No they do not. A PSA 10 will be no differently recognized than any other 10. 9/10 or more people on average buy the grade anyway. Very few do not. But this most certainly applies to 10’s. I could see a new grade 8 or 9 fetching a tad bit more than an older, but again, that wouldn’t so much be the grade, it would be the right buyer acknowledging that it is a good card inside. Savvy?
Here’s my opinion. Lumping graded cards into 4xxx certs 2xxx certs and now 5xxx certs is a waste of your time. Honestly that number does not mean anything. I’ve come across 2xxx certs that are flawless and 4xxx certs that i wonder how it even got a 10 its the same story over and over again. Graders are human and make mistakes. Some have a better attention to detail etc etc. Also with time technology to inspect cards like magnifiers and lights get better so maybe it does get a harder as time goes by. one day grading might be done by robots and no card will get a 10 besides the truly flawless but that’s in the future.
“Buy the card not the grade”
so many people have said that but what’s more important than that is to do your OWN research. Ask for pictures videos etc etc so that you are happy with the card you buy. Most times questions like this become something more like “my card would’ve been a 10 a few years ago”. This is not against you but many people are just salty cause the card they thought were 10’s got 9’s and bring up this new certs are better than old certs. If you are unhappy with your grade you can always crack it and resubmit it. countless people have done it.
Sorry for the rant. Don’t generalize cards by certs each card is unique
An easy way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt if PSA has grown more strict would be for any 2XXX cert holder to crack out a bunch of 2XXX cert 10’s and submit them to PSA again to get the new 5XXX cert. I don’t see any 2XXX cert holders brave enough to do it though
“Buy the card not the grade” is the same thing as doing your own research. It isn’t more important… it’s the same thing. When you are buying the card, you are analyzing the card and not the grade. You do that by looking at the card and deeming it worthy/suitable to you.
lol sorry i dont mean more important but its more general and it encompasses “buying the card not the grade”. You should always do your own research whether its buying sealed product, raw cards, graded cards statues etc etc. research will never betray you.
To add on to what others have already said, I think the new quality of card stock also plays a factor into this. New card print quality is much better overall than that of vintage sets. PSA doesn’t want to give all 10’s to these new cards, so they have to look for any and every minor flaw with these new cards. That’s why were seeing so many clean 8’s of modern cards. Especially if you’re submitting vintage with modern cards, it may be more difficult for those older cards to “compete” with the newer ones.
I agree with the users above - buy the card, not the grade. If I see a 2XXX Gem Mint 10 with lots of edge whitening on the back and I want a pristine card, I’m not going to buy it just because it was graded a 10. Same thing with a 4XXX Gem Mint 10 that isn’t centered properly - it was graded a 10, but if I’m going to pay a premium for a 10 it has to be pristine. Otherwise I’ll go with an 8 or 9. I’m not so concerned with grade as I am the card itself - plenty of 8’s look perfect from the front and only suffer from a little bit of whitening on the back. Plus if it’s an 8 or 9, chances are the POP is high enough where I can crack it for my binder without fear as opposed to cracking an uber-low POP 10.
some of the most trusted people in the hobby are confirming this, the only people that deny this are those who hold a large position with old labelled cards. This obviously won’t imply than every old PSA 10 graded card doesn’t meet today’s standard or that every 10 is straight out better than a old label 10.
You would have to do hundreds of cards to achieve statistical significance and you would also have to submit them in multiple batches in order to ensure the data is representative of multiple graders grading at different times of the day.
The one critical thing people leave out in this discussion every time is acquisition bias. If you buy a 5xxx cert today, you are getting a card that was likely graded to be flipped and is effectively an unbiased example of a particular PSA grade. If you are buying a 2xxx cert today, the seller has decided they no longer want the card. One reason people sell a card is that they aren’t content with the grade OR maybe they have multiple copies and they decided to keep the strongest example. So even if PSA has been perfectly consistent since they opened, you’re just more likely to get a weaker/misgraded copy of a card if it is older simply because there’s a greater chance you’re buying someone else’s sloppy seconds.
So going back to your experiment, not only would you have to spend thousands of dollars to generate the data, you also need cards that only had one owner. And the owner can not have inflated the quality of their own cards by selling off weaker copies (reverse of the effect I described above)
Wouldn’t the people with the most old labels also have the most experienced opinion on the quality of old labels? And if we throw out the opinion of these people because they have a financial bias doesn’t that just necessarily imply you’re listening to the biased opinion of people with more new labels?
I don’t see how this conspiratorial invalidation tactic is productive. You’re essentially suggesting anyone that disagrees with you is misleading others for their own financial gain. That’s a pretty bold and inflammatory claim
But if grading standards have remained exactly the same over the years, than ANY 2XXX cert 10 should theoretically retain its grade if resubmitted today for a 5XXX cert. Obviously there can be allowance for some margin of error, and I am not going to sit here and come up with that margin off the top of my head, though I would think it is equal to the percentage of human error that occurs when grading. That is neither here nor there though. In theory, almost all 2XXX certs should grade exactly the same. It does not matter if the copies on the market were the original owner’s “weaker copies”, because the fact remains that at one point in time they were graded gem 10s. So, in theory, they should grade 10s now as well. If it’s a misgrade, those happen all the time.
I am not going to act like I look at every 10 I come across, front and back. But what I can say is I have seen flawless 2XXX certs, but any time I see significant edge whitening on a 10, its been a 2XXX cert as well. I have never seen a 4XXX cert 10, bar BW Full Arts, that has more than 2 spots of whitening. The only 4XXX cert 10s that I questioned could be 9s were due to being off-center, but never edge whitening. I’ve seen many 2XXX cert 10s which are in 8 condition on whitening alone. If a majority of the 2XXX certs on the market are simply “weaker copies” or “misgrades”, why don’t we see the same amount of “weak 10s” or misgrades on the market with 4XXX certs?
And money aside, I’m sure many people on the forum own a large quantity of 2XXX cert cards or older. It would really only cost time and the grading fee to get them regraded and prove or disprove what is already known amongst collectors. I’m not asking anyone to do this, I’m simply saying it can be done, if one wanted to. @seafoamarticuno, I’m interested in that video. I will look into it later. And I should note, I look at the card, not the grade. If I see a flawless 2XXX 10 I want, I’ll buy. If I see a flawed 4XXX cert 10, I won’t buy. But, based on my own experience, 2XXX cert 10s are more likely to be flawed. And you cannot discredit my personal experiences because they may or may not be just a drop in the bucket. If a majority share similar experiences, then concrete evidence is only needed to prove what is already known.
@aj84, I’d be interested in seeing pictures of the cards you are questioning too, as I’m sure a few others would.
@enigma, to PFM’s point, it would take a ton of money to prove this in any statistically significant way, but there have been tests. If I recall correctly it was a z&g video a few months back, but I could be wrong
