We try not to involve ourselves in the discussion because we view the boards as a valuable collector to collector discussion, free of seller influence. We want to take a moment to comment here to simply inform the community of our stance and hopefully limit any confusion.
A couple key points:
1) We are only assessing the eye appeal of a card; not the technical grade. We are not qualified to comment on the technical accuracy of a 3rd party grade and, frankly, we PWCC would not exist without companies like PSA, SGC, and Beckett. We have the utmost respect for the service these companies provide and have zero interest in second-guessing their work.
2) The PWCC ‘High End’ designation has been around since 2012. Nothing has changed here, except we are now certifying it to allow this designation to stay with the card (if the buyer so chooses). I’ll explain more the logic behind this program below.
3) The PWCC High End Certification only applies to those cards which appear FAR better than the assigned technical grade (even though the technical grade may be completely accurate). Case in point, from our entire auction #5 (over 12,000 lots), we applied the High End Certificate to just over 3 dozen cards. The point of this service is not to highlight every strong card we sell; rather to highlight only those cards which appear FAR NICER than the assigned grade. As such, a card grade PSA 8 that appears very strong for the grade would not qualify, but a PSA 8 that looks like a PSA 9 might. This may sound like a subtly but it’s a key distinction for us.
4) We are not implying that we at PWCC are smarter than other advanced collectors. What is unique to our situation is that we are lucky enough to physically hold each card we sell. This gives us the opportunity to review a card beyond what any scan can provide. Bottom line, we do our best to make scans as life-like as humanly possible (despite accusations on some of the sillier posts) but even this is not the same as holding the card in your own hand. For those who are not advanced collectors of a particular issue, our opinion on the eye appeal of a card may carry an even greater weight.
5)
We do not charge for this service and the consignor has zero influence over our decision. We are placing our company’s brand alongside the High End Certification so rest assured there will be no shortage of discipline applied to the assessment and oversight of the program. I don’t ask anyone to take this on faith, but I do ask that you give us the opportunity to prove our consistency and steadfastness over time before rendering a presumptive negative verdict.
Why certify cards as ”High End”?
As the hobby matures, the value of eye appeal has taken center stage. 15 years ago most collectors were content simply buying the holder. While the technical grade is still the single most important factor determining value, the eye appeal of a card relative to that technical grade is a close 2nd with truly special examples often bringing 25-50% premiums (sometimes more) than other examples with the same technical grade but lower quality eye appeal. We certify cards as “‘High End” to highlight their extremely special eye appeal for the grade. We feel we are able to make this determination because we are the largest broker of investment-calibur (caliber… just kidding) cards in the country and subsequently have handled more copies of more cards that most collectors. For those who consider themselves experts on a particular issue, I suspect our Certification will factor less into your value assessment of a card we sell.
Why use a Sticker & COA?
Over the last 36 months we have seen a growing epidemic of various other sellers copying our original ”High End”’ model and referring to many of the cards they sell in similar ways. This flood of “High End” labeled cards has confused our original goals, so the new High End Certification aims to formalize the designation and hopefully give those rare deserving cards the proper stage. The other impetus for including a sticker stems from countless past buyers who’ve complained about having purchased one of our “High End” designated cards (and paying a premium) but then losing some of the value as soon as the card sells. The sticker aims to provide buyers with an assessment that can be kept with the card, and then leveraged again if the card should ever be resold.
What’s the criteria for which cards are Certified?
The determination for which cards receive the High End Certification is obviously subjective, but generally applies to cards which we feel show eye appeal of a full grade (or more) higher than the assigned technical grade. For lower graded cards (i.e. 1-5s) the eye appeal may need to be closer to 2 grades higher (in some cases) for that card to be considered. In grades of 8-10 may we may assign “High End” if we feel the card shows eye appeal 0.5 grade higher (i.e. 8s that show like strong 8.5s, or 8.5s that appear like 9s) simply because the value difference is extreme in these high grades. As a general rule the market value on a card needs to be >$250 to qualify for consideration. Really important point is that we are only trying to highlight those cards which show eye appeal of a much higher grade; not simply for strong qualities within the assigned grade. This is exactly why the certification is so rarely applied… more often than not, if a card truly looks NM-MT then it’s already in a PSA 8 holder. However, 1% of the time that NM-MT card receives a NRMT 7 (probably for a good technical reason) but we feel it fair that we highlight that card as being special, because it absolutely is special.
Other comments worth mentioning:
i) Yes, we absolutely will remove the sticker for any buyer that requests it. Once removed and cleaned the sticker DOES NOT leave any residue.
ii) Yes, a full database is maintained (starting with this auction #5) for all High End Certified cards. If the high bidder or a future owner wishes to remove the sticker or have a card reholdered we can reapply the certification at a later date, free of charge (only need to pay return shipping).
iii) We will be reprinting the COAs to fix the spelling error, and we may expand on the language on the card to further clarify our intent and limit confusion (we are not second guessing the 3rd party graders).
iv) For those coin collectors familiar with the CAC sticker, our High End Certification has zero overlap. The CAC sticker is largely a validation of a coin’s technical grade (essentially a second review of the coin’s assessment). Again, our High End Certification is strictly commenting on the superior eye appeal of the card, not the accuracy of its technical grade (which is accurate and justified in most instances).
v) The PWCC High End designation is very rare (only 41 cards out of 12,700 items in our #5 auction). There are literally thousands of the cards in our #5 auction which we feel are strong and impressive cards for their respective grade, and many of these are worthy of a premium. The High End Certificate is strictly for cards which appear far beyond the assigned grade, not simply a strong example within the grade.
We very much appreciate the members who have chosen to be constructive in their comments on this board (some are more than constructive than others
). We will never shy away from constructive criticism and encourage any Net54 member who has feedback on this program to email me directly:
brent@pwccauctions.com.
Thanks to all who follow our auctions.
Brent Huigens
PWCC Auctions, LLC