Ok, so let me clarify that I do not have a psa membership or anything like that but I have been purchasing PSA cards on ebay and always talk to the seller to ascertain whether the card was newly graded. I recently bought 2 cards that were recently graded (or so the sellers said) and one had a cert 29XXXXXX and the other 40XXXXXX. From my understanding the cert numbers go in chronological order that they were received, so I just wanted to know if my understanding is wrong or what the deal is with PSA cert numbers.
The numbering is progressive, but it jumps around for some reason, in this case I think most or all of the 30 mil numbers were skipped.
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I remember seeing cert numbers starting with 3 in really old cases so for some reason they already put out a bunch of those before they got there chronologically.
The numbers do jump around for some reason.
Why did you want to know if they were newly graded?
Mainly because I think the labels look much nicer than the older ones plus if they are newly graded, I know for sure the case itself is in good condition.
I believe that some of the older PSA numbers are reassigned once PSA know that the cards no longer exist (cut out of the casing) which could explain why recently graded cards in the new casing receive lower certification numbers…
I believe they assign the cert number during the receiving process, and not during the grading process. Could the “sprinkle system” be why the numbers seem to jump around a bit?
That wouldn’t affect numbers within an order or even along the queue.