PSA 10's

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by seanofjapan

I think this is true but also not quite on point.

I doubt that PSA ever deliberately punishes small fry. Like you say, they have no incentive to actively piss submitters off.

The real issue is whether they give gifts to big fish.

The biggest opportunity for them to give gifts to favored customers without pissing off less important ones lies entirely with the PSA 10 versus PSA 9 distinction for big value cards. The distinction between these two is so arbitrary that its almost impossible to dispute a call between them. Yet the difference can be worth thousands of dollars to someone who gets a 10 instead of a 9.

In order to maintain the value of that 10, they can't give away too many of them. So they've got a limited number of these gifts to give, and basically complete discretion in deciding when they are going to give them out. Its not hard to figure out how they'll dole them out based on the incentives they have.

I don't disagree with you, but I was specifically responding to someone who was saying that small submitters don't get 10's. Do they get them at the same rate as whales? Probably not, but I got 10's on my first submission and have gotten them on cards as old as 1968 and I am no whale, never been to a PSA invitational etc.