Also -- I would be willing to bet if you cracked out all the 9s and 10s, and resubmitted, and somehow could trace each card, you would get a very different group of 10s, and probably some 8.5s or even 8s. At the 9/10 level there is a lot of arbitrariness which is what makes it so artificial in my opinion.
I have seen this first hand, a guy I knew who was a huge volume submitter used to regularly resubmit stacks of 9s of major cards and always would be rewarded with some 10s.

It doesn't matter what it would sell for raw. It doesn't matter what it would sell for in a BGS slab. It comfortably sits in a PSA 10 holder and has been awarded the grade of Gem Mint.

I will never dispute that there are cards that you look at in a holder and think boy I don't see how that was given the grade it got. Some are damaged in the holder while others are simply poorly graded. The most glaring example I have ever seen was a 1974 Topps Dave Winfield rookie that looked like a solid 7 but had a 10 on the holder and it still at the time went for $7,400. Whether you or I or anyone else for that matter agrees is irrelevant. What matters is that card still will change hands for more than a card with a 9 up top.

When I got back into cards in 2009 and switched from baseball to wrestling I saw the writing on the wall. It was clear the only way to radically change the value of a card relative to another example was to get it graded. If anything during this time frame the spread has widened even further and that isn't going to change. Someone can either fight the trend or get on it and enjoy the ride.

There is no doubt that much of the value is in the bragging rights and all one has to do is understand this and the rest makes sense. My card is better than your card and only a small number of people can say they have one that is a 10. Throw in rising prices and you have a perfect storm.


No kicking, fighting or screaming is going to change any of this and as the number of participants expands so do the discrepancies. All one must do is look to the gaming category and the explosion there and see how quickly they have adopted getting cards graded. Simple stuff dude.

David, I get it, there is a flip market. I take that as a given. I am not disagreeing with you. I am just opining that its underpinnings are artificial and arbitrary.

I couldn’t have said it better. ( especially with the 1993 SP jeter) I be heard some crazy stories on the regrade your card game. Give me a grade 8 and 90% percent of the time you can’t see it’s not a 9. And take a look at a 9 and I’ll make a case for to be a 10 or a 8.(depends if it my card or yours lol.


I don’t even see graded cards as mine is better then yours because the grade of it. Maybe 2 to 10 but the difference between 7 and a 8 come on.

For anyone who believes in the "10" I encourage you -- no I double dog dare you -- to do the following experiment. Take 20 PSA 10s of cards of significant value, crack them out, resubmit them (yourself, not through 4SC), and report back what you get. Go on.

I have loads of self submitted 10's that you could send in time and time again and get a 10.

This is not an exactly tough set but it is pretty obvious this card is a 10.

What gets lost in the shuffle is some collectors like 10's because many are incredibly aesthetically pleasing to the eye with no wear and perfect centering.

I like them for numerous reasons. I love to collect nice looking cards, they are dramatically better than any other grade for investment purposes, I have active registry sets, I like to uncover raw cards that are beautiful, I can say I have the only copy or one of just a few copies to ever grade that high, huge bank for your buck if you submit them yourself, and on and on.

I have a number of 9s that look like 10s. And probably some percentage would be on resubmission. And probably some of my 10s would get 9s. The guy I knew made a good part of his living getting 9s bumped to 10s. Jordan rookies and the like. It was essentially a numbers game.

I agree with you on the investment, no question. Where we disagree is whether in terms of the actual card, there is a clear differentiation between a 9 and a 10. From what I have seen in decades of doing this, frequently not. Many many 10s are bumped 9s.

That is where it gets blurry. You are right about that bump game. The most expensive card I have ever purchased was a 9 first.

I think some of that can be chalked up to erring on the side of conservatism and card grading isn’t a perfect science. I was naive to that when I first embraced it.