I just got my first big submission of 170 cards back from PSA, and I’ve started collecting the data. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how close my predictions were, only overestimating the grades by an average of about 0.8471.
What really surprised me was that PSA seems to grade Japanese 1st gen and old back sets much stricter than new back sets. This was particularly true for the no rarity base set, but also for Jungle and Fossil sets. Here are some numbers to show how much my estimates deviated:
For the base set, I overestimated the grades by an average of 1.1765.
For Fossil and Jungle sets, I overestimated by 1.0667.
For new back sets, my overestimates were only between 0.2 and 0.7.
My two questions left are:
Have you noticed a similar pattern of stricter grading on old back Japanese sets?
How accurate are your pregrades compared to the final PSA grades?
Here are some comparisons to showcase the different levels of strictness.
Sorry I am drifting off topic but those are some really great cards in your submission. Not sure if you have made a post in grading returns yet but would be interested to see your whole submission and the results. (If it is not too much hassle that is)
I have always found old back Japanese to be very tough to grade. Thinking back through my 10 years of submitting to PSA, I think I’ve only got one old back 10. I rarely submit old back Japanese, but still, it is not easy.
I usually find my pregrades to be accurate. There are always cards that do worse than I expect (sometimes due to PSA correctly catching something I missed, sometimes I can’t tell why a card didn’t score high) and pretty often there are cards I think will score lower grades actually getting higher ones. For cards where I’m confident in the grade, I’d say I predict the grade correctly about 85% of the time.
I also agree with @mrbubbles, please post the entire submission!!
Yes old back Japanese is a difficult 10.
Funnily enough a lot of the 10s I’ve had recently have been cards that are clearly off centre and I thought had no shot at a 10
Edit: An example of this from my most recent return
I think it’s all but officially confirmed that for cards with significantly more expensive PSA 10s, the “grading standards” are applied more strictly.
Lots of people make all their submissions through TCG bulk, but who actually grades the cards after PSA receives them is a black box. Some suspect that the cheaper grading tiers are handled by the less experienced employees, but when cards come in, show up, or get recognized like “oh man this is a 1st ed base Charizard in this bulk sub…” It gets handed up to more experienced graders.
Regardless of experience, individual employees are going to be more risk averse for higher valued items because the cert number is tied back to them. If someone makes a video about how their damaged high value card came back as PSA 10, then internally PSA is going to be able to figure out who graded that. Anyone that has worked in corporate knows you don’t want your employer to trace some public embarrassment back to you personally.
EDIT: I don’t actually record anywhere what I think each card will get. I don’t submit cards with obvious whitening, but am generally a bit generous with centering, aiming for ~80% PSA 10. My most recent submission was 172 cards with 77% gem rate. It was my first time grading a bunch of Yugioh which received zero pregrading, so I was pretty impressed.
I’ll disagree with that considering my recent Neo Premium File 1 submissions. That’s old back Japanese from 2000. I pregraded the basic and stage 1 starters and hit 9/10 10s. I graded every holo after seeing that pretty much all graded copies sold at a premium, and those hit 7/18 10s, 9x 9s, 1x 8, and 1x7. I’m honestly shocked they hit more than 6x 10s considering the centering on some of them. None of these cards are crazy expensive.
Usually people complaining about PSA harsh grading on WOTC holos are complaining because they didn’t get the 10 that makes their raw $10-30 card worth $500-800+, and instead got the 9 that keeps it at $30-50.
Japanese old back might be hard to grade, but boy are there a lot of these cards graded. Back in 2020/2021 I graded a Neo Lugia as PSA 10, and back when I had sent it in there were 250ish total in the pop. As of today, there’s 689. Combine all graded copies of this card and it makes up 10% of the total Japanese Neo graded population.
I would be willing to bet that, similar to black labels, most vintage WOTC PSA 10 holders would refuse to crack their cards out and resubmit to PSA today. Why, you ask? Because they know that it is unlikely their card comes back a PSA 10.
Since the COVID boom, many more vintage boxes have been cracked on streams, Whatnot, Drip, etc. and hundreds of holos submitted with the modern practice of taking cards directly from sealed box, fresh pack, into penny sleeve and card saver. Then immediately submitted to PSA for grading, yet the populations of many WOTC era PSA 10 cards has barely risen in the past 4 years. How is this possible if grading standards are truly unchanged and applied equally?
There’s too many factors and assumptions to make a sound conclusion here.
How thorough are people pregrading? Spending closer to 5 seconds on the front/back than 1 minute+ on each will yield different results. Additionally, what’s the distribution of submitters with substantial experience grading vs those who started recently.
Has the process of card printing changed in any way? Clearly a card from SM era is much more resistant to scratching than an old back.
Older cards have to endure 2 decades of handling. Modern cards are sleeved right away.
Scans are also somewhat deceiving. Some scratches/micro dents can only be observed at certain angles/under the right lighting. Lastly, the light emitted from a scanner will lower the contrast between the imperfections and the card (for example light scratches/dust may not show up on a scan).
I would also consider myself a novice when it comes to pregrading. The few times I’ve received a 6-8, I’ve found something that I’ve missed.
I’m not saying grading standards havent changed. Im refuting your point that its value and not card age being the factor in cards graded more strictly or not.
PSA applies their standards more thoroughly on more expensive cards, there is no doubt about it.
From a purely risk management perspective, they need to do it. PSA will pay out due to their grade guarantee. What happens when someone grades a 1st edition base holo, gets a 10, then sells it for massive premium to someone else? The new buyer receives the item, and upon examination finds obvious damage (whitening, edge wear, etc). This significantly damages PSA’s brand and public perception of them being the best. They would pay out that second buyer the value of the PSA 10 that is incorrectly graded.
I took a quick look at some 1st ed base holos and even with the limited data I found (only back to 2022), it’s clear to see PSA 9 populations increasing by 10-20x the PSA 10 population since then. Considering that PSA 9 cards are also going to come directly from newly opened product, this seems like quite the coincidence.
EDIT: Continued looking at PSA 9/10 1st ed base holos since 2022. 10-20x is generous. Raichu is 45x new 9s to 1x 10. Machamp is 32x ratio. It’s an absolute joke to believe that somehow these cards are being graded to the same standards as others.
That’s where your issue is, thinking that vintage cards had the quality control of modern, where an 85% PSA 10 hit rate is considered low. Pack fresh for vintage typically meant psa 8/9 quality.
I do not expect 85% 10-rate, that is absurdly high. 25-50% would be reasonable. Here is a small table converting “percent 10 rate” to “1/odds” numbers for your consideration:
Gem Rate
1/Odds
1%
100.0
2%
50.0
3%
33.3
4%
25.0
5%
20.0
6%
16.7
7%
14.3
8%
12.5
9%
11.1
10%
10.0
20%
5.0
30%
3.3
40%
2.5
50%
2.0
60%
1.7
70%
1.4
80%
1.3
90%
1.1
As you can see, we are talking about gem rates where 10% is “high” for what I am seeing. Most are falling more in line with 7% or lower.
I actually realized I misspoke - this is not the overall gem rate I am talking about. The ratios I’m talking about is the ratio of new PSA 9s to new PSA 10s, indicating the shift in application of grading standards.
