I think both of those cards were undergraded by PSA the first time. The Art Shell is a MINT 9 any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I don't know about a 10, but 10's from PSA have always seemed like kind of a joke to me anyway. With the spots on the back, probably should not have gotten a 10. But absolutely no way is it an 8. Same thing with the Havlicek - it's an easy 8, and I have no problem with the 8.5.
I have submitted a lot of cards to PSA in my day, and if anything, I have always felt that they are much more likely to undergrade than overgrade. I don't like PSA any more than most on this board, but to me it's not so much an issue of overgrading as it is undergrading. Maybe it's true that some of their big customers get better grades - I don't know. But, if I were grading these two cards, I would have given the Shell a 9 and the Havlicek an 8 based on how they look in the scans.
I agree that paying thousands (or even hundreds) for a 1973 Art Shell card in any grade is insanity. Unfortunately, that is what this hobby has become for better or worse.
I guess the other side of that issue is that back in the days before grading, people would pay too much for a VG/EX card that some old time dealer said was NM, or an EX/MT card that some guy said was MINT, etc. At least the third party grading has eliminated a lot of that type of nonsense which was basically standard practice back in the day. Overall, I think that 80-90% of the graded material from PSA and SGC is pretty fairly graded and sells for a fair price.
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