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This is not buying or investment advice. I’m simply reporting the data I’m seeing. Please do your own research and make your own decisions. Just because cards have increased in value up to this point or have sold at a certain amount, it doesn’t mean they will continue to do so.
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Update: PSA replied saying "I was able to speak with leadership and received an update the card was re-submitted through our review service and subsequently received an upgraded grade. This is why our system now reflects the current grade of PSA 10 on your order page." I also heard from leadership with more details, and reiterating the same.
Here is the original post and story:
So when I say grading is a crapshoot, this whole story encompasses that statement one hundred times over.
There is a lot to unpack, and the situation is unfolding, so I’ll do my best to explain.
You can read the original article here or watch the video above (if you haven’t seen it on TikTok), and here is a summary up to this point:
I bought a CSG 9 Ken Griffey Jr. 1989 Upper Deck Rookie Card for $125 from COMC, sent it home, cracked it, and graded with PSA. I ended up getting a PSA 9, and decided to just keep the card in the PSA vault (so, I never physically held the card).
I then sold the card at eBay auction via PSA Vault, and while not thrilled with the PSA 9 grade, I was happy that the auction seemed to outperform what a 9 typically does—I sold it for about $240.
I went through with this exercise because the data supported it. This card as a PSA 9 should typically sell for around $200. So, the fact that is was already a CGC 9 had me feeling good about at least getting a PSA 9 worst-case scenario.
And then of course, the upside. The card as a PSA 10 should sell for around $2,500 or more.
My all-in costs were $186.35, my total resulting revenue was $205.97 after fees, leaving me with a tiny profit of $19.62.
And that was the end of it…
So I thought.
Surprise! Your PSA 9 is Someone Else’s PSA 10.
OK, so my discovery of all of this came about as an accident, really.
I was making a TikTok video about grading and just wanted some visual slab examples. So, I went into my PSA account and grabbed the image of my last submission—the Griffey, certification #103289434.
While clear as day now, I didn’t even register that the listed grade was “GEM MINT 10.” Confused, I clicked to “reveal” the card again and I see the party confetti—PSA 10!
Let’s pause just to recap to this point:
My card graded as a PSA 9, sold as a PSA 9, but when I now look in my account and order history, it shows it as a 10.
Thinking it had to be a mistake, I looked to the certification number expecting to see something different—but no, same #103289434.
Now even more perplexed, I reached out to PSA and explained the situation. In the mean time, I also made a TikTok video asking for feedback.
I also was curious if that card had been re-sold at all as the 10…and by a crazy coincidence, the card is actually at auction right now.
It ends in 12 hours, is up to nearly $2,200, and is being sold by Probstein:
Wow, right?
My original thinking was perhaps the person who bought my card got it regraded by PSA and received the 10. In which case, hats off to them. All I do here is tell you about all of the great card-flipping opportunities, and this is one I hadn’t thought of!
That said, I thought for certain that if a card was regraded in any manner, it would receive a different certification number. Seems logical.
Well, I soon heard back from PSA and the initial response was:
“If you’re currently using the PSA app, please note we’re experiencing an ongoing technical issue where the information shown in the app may not match what’s shown on the PSA website. We recommend using the PSA website directly for the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding certification numbers and submission details…
In this case, Cert #103289434 is correctly listed as a PSA 10 per both our internal system and Certification Verification on the website.”
OK. It didn’t exactly answer my question, and the fact that the cert lookup and website had it as a PSA 10 didn’t provide me much clarity. My follow-up:
“My question is, when I got the card graded, it was a PSA 9. I sold it as a PSA 9 through PSA/ebay. Now, that same certification number says it's a PSA 10, and it is currently listed at eBay auction for thousands of dollars, while my PSA 9 sold for about $240. Something seems weird. How can the certification be the same, and how did it get turned into a 10 after I sold it?”
During all of this, a handful of experienced PSA graders were keen to point out that in the event of a regrade, the certification # does in fact stay the same. That in itself doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s besides the point, and I was close to an answer.
I’ll pause here again to highlight grading crapshoot #1 (but know there is more to the story).
If this was in fact what was happening, I basically had my card looked at by the experts at PSA and it was determined to be a 9. But when the new owner of the card asked PSA to regrade, other PSA experts determined to be 10. Same card, difference of opinions, and thousands of dollars lost/gained.
Moving on, my next response from PSA was more of the same:
“There has been an ongoing issue where information displayed in the PSA app does not always match our system records. On our end, the card in question was graded as a PSA 10. If it appeared as a 9 on your end, this was likely due to the app display bug…
That’s why we previously asked if you physically received the card back and confirmed it was a PSA 9. If you did not verify it on the actual label, then the 10 grade in our system is accurate.”
Still not satisfied, now I’m thinking there might be more here, and that if this card was regraded, wouldn’t that be the easy/obvious answer?
My response:
Thanks but this is not addressing the issue/question I have.
My card was graded a 9, and I sold it as a 9.
That card with the same certification number is currently a 10 and at auction as a 10.
I’m wondering how my 9 became someone else’s 10 in a month’s time, and why the certification number is the same.
At this point I’m really just wondering if the certification number should change at any point.
And then, the kicker:
I can confirm that the card’s grade has never changed in our system. Our records show that it was graded as a PSA 10 from the start.
That’s why we’ve asked whether you physically confirmed the grade on the label before it was sent to the vault or eBay. If the PSA app was the only place where you saw it listed as a 9, please note that the information displayed there was incorrect due to a known issue with the app.
If you log into your account through the PSA website and use Cert Verification, you’ll see that the card was indeed graded a 10. Again, I can confirm that our graders originally assessed the card as a 10, and that grade has not changed.
What?!
“The card’s grade has never changed in our system”
“Our records show that it was graded as a PSA 10 from the start.”
“our graders originally assessed the card as a 10, and that grade has not changed”
Needless to say, I followed up asking for recourse.
I was originally told it was a 9, PSA sold it as a PSA 9, but somehow it was originally graded as PSA 10, and is now for sale as a PSA 10. No small error.
I’m not sure what happened between the time I sold it and when it was listed again, but I guess time will tell.
Either way, grading is a crapshoot.
Thanks for following along at this point, and I’ll surely provide a follow-up once I know more.
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