Grading for current rookie cards
 

I’ve dipped a toe recently into the hunt for the next great rookie card. A question on grading: for these fancy Autographed refractor type cards in the past few years, does a Beckett 9.5 trump a PSA 10 on market price, or are they basically the same?

Five years ago, yes. A 9.5 card/10 auto would beat a PSA 10 in sales price. However, the market has swung to PSA even on chrome autos, I believe. In baseball, you're probably better off for resale with PSA. For basketball, it's probably still BGS.

PSA introduced dual grading (card and auto a few years ago), but most autos are not graded with PSA if they were pack inserted. The card grade implies the auto is authentic for pack-pulled cards post 1998, unless the specific card has been known to have counterfeit autos (some Brady, Willie Mays, Peyton Manning, etc).

Some people have taken advantage of that by wiping off the original smudged auto and then signing it themselves, or having the player re-sign the card for a '10' auto. Which technically is an alteration since it's not factory original.

If you want to get the most likely to appreciate, PSA 10 with 10 auto grade (dual service) is probably the one.

Thanks John. Really helpful.