[raulus]

My sense is that you’re better off cracking and resubmitting. Probably the only exception is if the item is crazy valuable and might receive a lower grade, or if it might be damaged during the process.

The general idea is that if you just send it back in the case, they’re unlikely to really seriously consider it. “Yep - we were right when we looked at it last year. Thanks for paying us to look at it again!” This seems like their likely response if you don’t crack it out.

If you do crack it out, then in theory they’ve got to start from scratch and really consider the grade that it should receive. There are varying opinions about just how much time and effort they put into that process. But at least it forces them to actually work through the entire process without the preconceptions that come from an item that is already graded.

The only time that I’ve not cracked out an item was when I was crossing it over from SGC. It went from a SGC 6 to a PSA 5, but if PSA had some serious concerns about the item, I didn’t want to take the risk of cracking it out first, both because it was so rare, and because I was paranoid that they might struggle to identify or authenticate it without the SGC slab.

And a card, the one that I submitted without cracking it out.