Some people may have noticed that taking a 9 out of its case and reselling it almost always allows them to sell above a PSA 9 market value. I wouldn’t be surprised if those people are the same ones who say “PSA10?” in their post. Like if you are wondering if it could be a PSA 10 you would be getting it graded yourself but you’re reselling a 9 knowing people will want to try and get lucky. Is this trend potent enough in the current market that PSA 9 grades would become very innacurate; say more than a hundred off?
I think you are being generous I would say people would crack their PSA 8s lol, it’s the go to thing as well for BGS a good listing header would be: Charizard 1st Edition Base Set BGS 9.5 Previous PSA 8?!!??!
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It is definitely a problem and one of the main reasons why I don’t pay attention to any PSA 9 pop count. Nobody cracks a 10 though, so that’s a much more reliable indicator.
In general, I’m not pleased with the current state of PSA and the status quo of grading. Due to it being so affordable, grading has become a business model for the mass market when in reality, it should serve as anything but that (evaluation of your card and protection). Some people would grade and encase their mother if it gave them a shot at increasing her value. If grading was more expensive, people would think twice about cracking cases, and they would think twice about grading all of their bulk that has no other purpose than being flipped for a quick buck. It would also lower the amount of cards PSA has to grade, which gives them more room to be more precise in their evaluation, and it lowers the probability of a PSA employee damaging a card in a rush.
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@darky97,
I think it’s good for the hobby if the price of entry on grading remains low. Because some cards deserve the kind of attention a PSA grade gives, but if grading were twice as expensive as it is now they would never be worth grading and wouldn’t see much trading hands at all; just waiting in a trollandtoad warehouse for someone who wants to complete their binder collection. I think without this “tier” of card, the one that’s worth spending 15-20 bucks to grade but not much more than that, you don’t ever get a handle on how rare all of those cards can actually become. Because of PSA being cheap it causes things like grading difficulty or limited runs on vintage common cards to allow a card to see its full potential of growth based on actual rarity not the rarity symbol on the card.
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Impossible to know the exact amount of inflation. Perhaps more importantly, as more and more graded cards find their way into collections, the pop report becomes even more meaningless because the vast majority of the pop report will not be for sale anywhere anytime soon. We already see this for many desirable cards with “high” pop reports.
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