When and how do you decide to have photos PSA-certified?

[Lucas00]

Simply put, the international news service (service that provided/took the photo and had the negative) created a type 2 in the 1940s with the added name for national sports photos to use to make reproductions.

I think you're getting confused thinking that national sports photos had anything to do with any original negatives or photos, they had no part of that. Only making reproductions. Therefore every single national sports photo issued is a type 4.

So translating that into value if you were to send say jackie to psa and it gets a type 4.
Type 4=Almost valueless. And you probably lose money on the submission price.

While on the other hand if it was labeled as: National Sports photo ca 1950s and added to Jackie robinsons set registry, you would be talking thousands easily.