Does PSA give favoritism to certain dealers/customers?
 

Does PSA give favoritism to certain dealers/customers or on very rare high grade cards?

Yes.

Vintage Card Curator on YouTube has done some great videos on this. The Rickey Henderson and Eddie Murray RC’s come to mind.

Does PSA...
 

Yep. The notion began with their first graded card.

Trent King

All submitters are equal.


Some are more equal than others.

aka. my rule of Animal Farm grading

How do I get on the list to be more equal?

In a word, YES. How about the other TPG’s?

Some members here like to pretend their grader of choice does not participate in favoritism but it is clear it happens at Beckett and SGC too. PSA is far and away the most obvious offender and been doing it longer than anyone despite multiple changes at the management level. So far, and to their credit, CGC appears to have not tossed their hat in that ring.

Regarding Beckett, see the immortal "Eagle Eye" Joe thread on Blowout. That forum at its finest.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1297069

Talk is cheap, but money talks.

;)

An all-timer.

How is one to know I would say it’s very anecdotal… I think it’s more of the roll of the dice. I often wondered if auction houses received lower rates for grading. I believe they probably do…

100 percent. I know of guys who submitted through major auction houses. I have seen some gift grades in this process.

In a world where the only thing that matters is the number on the slab........ there are going to be lots of opportunities for certain individuals/entities to "coerce" a better number out of a grading company than the average schmoe could walk away with..............

This one has been hashed and rehashed only about a gazillion times over many years and yea there are just way to many examples of it happening for it to NOT be happening.

In theory, no. In practice, probably. Which is gross.

Absolutely not in any way shape or form, just another urban myth. Seriously they are way too inconsistent to worry about favoritism. Who hasn't had cards that you complained about being under graded and cards seriously over graded that you sold because it deserved the grade? It is almost as silly as the raised the bar and they are now grading 2 grades below a couple years ago. LOL, I have been hearing that one for decades and if true a 3 would be the highest grade they gave out by now. I know I can easily cherry pick cards from any era that are over and under graded just like many others are doing.

I'll relay a recent experience to this effect, and sorry up front for the lack of specifics, as I prefer not to identify the AH...

I recently broke a somewhat scarce card out of a PSA 5 Holder. I wanted it in the SGC "Tux" to display it and show it off better. So I submitted it to SGC, where it received a grade of "A". I knew this was BS, so I cracked it out and decided to try an experiment....

I sent the newly cracked raw card to a well-known auction who heavily features PSA-graded cards in every catalogue. I can't bring myself to send anything to PSA, so left it up to the Auction House to get it graded and put it in their auction.

Sure enough, it came back a "7" this time around. So it went from PSA "5" to SGC "A" to PSA "7" (when the prominent Auction House submitted it). This entire debacle aged me, but worked out okay financially (even though I'd rather have kept the card). Mostly though, it demonstrates the following....

Either the prominent AH gets preferential treatment from PSA

or

The issued grades are completely meaningless and random, depending on the grader of the day.

Bingo. Again, if you have raw cards and want to get graded and sell, pick an AH an submit through them. You will be pleased, believe me.

I was recently talking to a friend who was getting ready to submit a whole bunch of T206-era cards for grading. He was saying that he should have them back in a couple of weeks

Being in the middle of waiting for my own submission to be graded, I told him that their lead times had been moved out to about 25-30 business days.

He told me that he was submitting through one of his other friends who always gets them back in a week or two, regardless of the stated lead time.

We'll see if he was speaking the truth, or if he was just blowing smoke, but I told him, "wow, that sounds like the kind of preferential treatment that the grading companies swear doesn't exist".

I guess I'll know in a couple of weeks if it's true.

Out of curiosity... are you allowed to change your mind? If you see that the card came back a 7, are you allowed to contact the AH and say, "you know what, I changed my mind... I just can't bear to part with that card after all. It belonged to my dad and I'm feeling really horrible about selling it"

I mean, they'd obviously charge you for the cost of grading and shipping, but can you rescind your agreement to sell through their auction?

It's absolutely not an urban myth. The evidence is right in PSA's own data, where there are numerous examples where large blocks of cards being submitted by a single seller are all miraculously given perfect grades.

When a single submitter does better/gets luckier than another single submitter, an argument can be made that he just has a better eye for this thing, or he has a better rabbit's foot in his pocket. But when a single submitter does better than the rest of the world combined -- by a factor of 1000 -- then that amounts to statistically provable fraud.

It's not that the single submitter has a great eye... it's that he miraculously comes in contact with more perfect cards than the rest of the world *combined*; and that's just not logical, reasonable, or possible.

To be fair, part of that may be the use of the minimum grade -- the cards that don't qualify may not get a cert. number.

I’m pretty sure they still get assigned a cert during the grading process. The cert just doesn’t show up in the database because it never gets activated. So you would have some gaps in the certs if you tried to check out a bunch of certs all in a row, if some of them did not meet the min grade specified.

The 4SCs of the world seem to get more than their share of 10s (to put it mildly), but it isn't every single card.

Every thread needs a card

I would hope the TPGs have a "blind" system in place whereby the graders have no other information other than the card in front of them. I might be dreaming, but it would crazy for it to be any other way, both from an ethical and a business standpoint, it seems to me.

Well they that is the myth that was spun since day 1...that grading is anonymous. Not even close from what I have been told by people who are more involved in the hobby than I am and for much longer. The other myth is that 3 graders see each card. Maybe a T206 Wagner has 3 sets of eyes but a 1968 Topps Drysdale has at best one full sets of eyes for 10 seconds.

I've always thought there could be merit in the common complaint that they don't do a great job at what they do, i.e., inexperienced, overworked graders and the like. I don't think KFC makes very good fried chicken, either, but they're still the biggest, right? But I do have a hard time seeing what would be the advantage, especially of PSA, the proverbial 800-lb gorilla in the hobby, in overgrading even for the biggest clients. Seems to me they would just have too much to lose if that was ever proven to be the case, which I don't think has happened yet, has it? And with the volume they handle, I don't know how they could make that kind of bias work without gumming up the process and creating even more delays in an organization that is already constantly "in the weeds," as we say in the bar business when you just can't keep up. I'd like to have more than hearsay to go by for such a serious accusation.

I was simply speaking to the concern you had about anonymity not what PSA does with the transparency of that anonymity. PSA is giving an opinion and I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to prove their opinion is or that process is fraudulent absent people on the inside testifying. Whenever this topic is brought up you have people on this forum who post their observations that certain companies seemed to get more favorable results. Maybe it is nothing more than if a card is between a 7 and an 8 they give the favored submitter the 8 while the rest of us would get the 7?

I don't think it is uncommon in the world today that a large client would get better service than a smaller client.

Maybe it is part of the reason for the delays they have in processing submissions?

So on the Gretzgy Wagner - It sounds like the entire world believes that it is not a legitimate "8"

Is that correct?

To me - a grade of 8 on that card is not a stretch - What am I missing?

I think the issue with that card in particular is that it is trimmed, and was known to be trimmed when PSA graded it.

It's such a shame that anyone would trim that card. Unfathomable.

And it's unreal that the VERY FIRST CARD PSA GRADED was basically a scam, of many scams to come, and people still submit to them. Ugh.

AHHHH - OK - can see that happening on it.....

If I had to guess - I would say trimmed top and top corners?

Does PSA give favoritism to certain dealers/customers? In theory, no. However, as a very wise man once said:

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." - Yogi Berra

Bravo...that was perfect!

Oh, better service, as in faster turnaround time and the like, for sure for the bigger clients. Better grades, though? I just can't see a PSA honcho telling any grader or group of graders about a particular submission or collection, "these guys are our friends" (wink wink, nod nod) or the like. Call me naive, but I can't imagine it for a number of reasons. OK, you say, it's nothing ever said, it just goes without saying, as in the corporate culture, etc., but as I said before it would be too easy for that to become widely known and all credibility is lost along with millions of dollars worth of business. Now I hear you saying that it IS widely known, that's why we're discussing it, but I want to see actual evidence of some kind, be it studies of some kind, testimony from employees, etc., before I'd be willing to accept what I view so far as merely anecdotal disparagement based on nothing in particular.

Maybe, but I just don't see how that kind of interference in the process would work, for one thing, and what PSA would have to gain by it, for another. Everybody uses them now, as it is, why would they take a chance on that kind of widespread fraud that would damage their reputation or worse?

Plenty around here who are SGC diehards and refuse to send a penny to PSA, notwithstanding they are both owned by the same parent company.

And some of this behavior might have been more prevalent in the past, rather than ongoing today.

I am not here to convince you or tell you what you should think or believe. You are entitled to your opinion as each of us are and I do understand your skepticism. I just do not agree that it would be hard to pull off favoritism in the grading room. Here is one way it could go down: Favorite Dealer #1 gets back a submission, does not like grades, contacts his person at PSA. That person tells Favorite Dealer #1, just send those back and I will have the graders take another look.

In the short time I have been on here I have read numerous threads that refer to PSA invitationals and what goes on at them and who gets invited, etc. I think the culture of grading has an element of corruption and not all submissions are treated equally. Again this is from talking with many presumably seasoned dealers, some who have auction houses and not just guys who are bent because their 8s are usually 7s.

They 1000% do and its been going on for years

It could be much simpler, and still technically conform to blindness.
Grader A, B and C... All consistent. Except grader B is consistently lenient normally being a grade or two higher than the others.

Big customer is sending in a big order, office wants to expedite to make the big customer happy. So they know the tracking number and when it's delivered the pull it out and log it specially, jumping the line.

Then walk it over the grader B and ask him to do this order right away.

Quick service and better than average grades, and grader B has no idea whose card they were.

Fair enough, and here's my final thoughts about all this: on your first point, what you've left out is where the submitter's person at the TPG tells the original grader, or a different grader, what grades the submitter would be happy with for what cards, or even to bump them all up a notch or two, or even that the submitter wasn't happy, leaving it to the imagination of the grader as to how far to go to please said submitter. I just can't see that happening, for all the reasons I have laid out before. As to your experiences listening to the complaints of those convinced they don't get the love for their submissions as the AHs, whales, etc., I have no rebuttal that other than the same vague feeling I get when I take my 2007 Highlander into the dealership for service that I might not be getting quite the same level of care and attention as the guy with his brand new Sequoia. No proof, mind you, just a feeling, and don't get me wrong, I love both my Highlander and my dealer.

Wow, 1000%! There must be lots of proof, then.

Buy 100 PSA 10s from 4SC. Resubmit them raw. See how many 10s you get. It won't be more than a handful.

Read the Blowout threads about the staggering number of altered cards graded for certain substantial dealers.

I have known, for better or worse, dealers willing to tell me things and there is no doubt at all that who submits, or asks for a review, matters. You can choose to believe what you want or demand any standard of proof, but this is how it works.

PSA grew on the backs of dealers and auction houses, not individual collectors. There was every motive in the world to make those people happy.

Totally get this. Do you think the results would be different for PSA 10s from 4SC versus PSA 10s from some randos off the street?

I could be wrong (it's happened before), but it seems like the results would be similar, which is more an indictment of the consistency in the grading process, rather than a clear and obvious indication that 4SC is getting preferential treatment.

The better question is, if you and 4SC submitted the same 100 raw cards, would the results differ? And don't mean to single them out, there are similarly situated sellers. Have you ever looked at their listings and recreated the subs? Do that and tell me what you think. I am not saying the cards don't deserve it, but as we all know the difference between a 9 and a 10 can be arbitrary.

If you were a business dependent on submissions, would you not make sure your biggest most important customers were happy? Of course you would.

The card was handcut from a “sheet” by which people probably meant a strip or a panel of a sheet, and then later trimmed again. All sides are probably trimmed.

I don't recall if Bill ever gave specifics about whether he cut all the edges or not. But again, for the 100th time, from my perspective it was already an AUTH when he did so because it was sheet cut to begin with.

Fair enough!

Now I just need to get the 4SC guys to sign up for this study.

I find it very difficult to conceive of people putting a "minimum grade 10" on their card, unless they know they're going to get 10s. Why would they pay for all the grading fees when 98% of "mint looking" cards traditionally don't receive a 10? And why WOULDN'T they want a 9? The card would be way more valuable in a 9 than it would ever be raw. That doesn't make sense to me.

There are many examples where there are a very limited number of 10's have ever been graded of a certain card over decades, and it turns out the majority of them were all graded at the same time, in the same submission, for the same submitter.

That's not happenstance, that's fraud.