Post-War PSA Grading

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by steve B

Another strange thing in all this is that the very high profile cards in prewar often get graded higher than a similarly damaged common would be graded.

I suppose they could have oversight on cards that the grader thinks are 10s, but it seems like a lot of fussing around for little benefit.
They have no direct benefit, unless you think they get kickbacks.
In fact, they have a direct loss on a Henderson that's a 9 instead of 10 because of the difference in grading fee.

Current grading fee on a 10 = 5000
Current grading fee on a 9 = 150

A bit over 33x as much.

The money left on the table if all 2119 9s were actually 10s.
$10,277,150.
even if it was half of them, that's a lot to spend on a "maybe people will send in more of a card they already send in a ton of"

5 Million would buy years worth of more effective advertising.
And considering that some cards would be down graded further into the 8 category it could be much more.

I'm just not seeing it from a business standpoint.

And that people will send in that card without really looking at it... just look at how many there are graded 2 and 3. Who the heck sends in a 1980 anything thats a 2? Apparently 129 people did. and even more, 398 threes.

The total number of 10s divided by the number of cards in the set is a bit over 24, a fairly close match with the 25 population of PSA10 Hendersons.

Again, I don't think you are quite understanding the benefits to PSA for having low pops on gem mint iconic cards. It's more than just "maybe more people will send cards to us." It literally has to do with their being the premier grader in the industry. Having people fight over the set registry for the top spot when so few PSA 10 examples exist is significant. Having absurdly high sales on iconic cards is more advertising than they could ever possibly spend money on. Having so few examples that every time one pops up it is newsworthy is huge. This is no small thing. It's literally everything to the reputation of a company like PSA. And in a business where that reputation is what controls market share, it's priceless. If they balance out the 9 and 10 pop counts to normal ratios, those massive sales that drive the market wouldn't exist. It would literally change the playing field.