Quote:
Originally Posted by Smarti5051
I definitely think the standard should have been different. For a 2019 card, 95% of the cards fall into the PSA 8-10 range. So, a grader needs to split hairs to find something to distinguish an 8 from a 9 or 10.
By contrast, less than 5% of pre-war cards fall into the PSA 8-10 range. As a result, most cards are bunched into the PSA 1-4 range. Worse, a couple creases and soft corners quickly has those cards filling up the ranks of the dreaded "PSA 1" label, which offers no insight into its condition relative to other cards with the same grade, since there is an insanely WIDE gap between the best and worst PSA 1 cards for any issue.
With that said, I don't know how you can revamp the standard at this point. Most of the higher value cards are already in holders and there is a market expectation for what the grade represents. Becoming far more lenient now on older cards would drastically reduce the value of cards graded when standards were stricter and lead to a new wave of regrading cards, making the population reports even less accurate.
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I started this thread because dealers are complaining that PSA has gotten much tougher in the last several years and that vintage cards are now grading 1-2 grades lower than when they first started. They either overgraded back then, or undergrade now. Things need to be graded in the middleground to be accurate.