PSA 8 in an old slab versus a newly graded PSA 7?

[MACollector]

And the reveal!

Top is 8 $300k at HA.
Middle is 7.5 $132k at HA.
Bottom is 8 $372k at REA.

The 7.5 is newly graded. A $240k difference vs the bottom 8! I will take that trade all day long.

[bk400]

Speechless

[GasHouseGang]

Whoever bought that 7.5 is probably feeling pretty good about his purchase.

[G1911]

Unless it’s a scan thing and the damage is not actually on the card, I would get a 3 on both of those 8’s if I submitted them today lol.

[MACollector]

Any other pricey examples you can think of like this Mantle one?

[raulus]

Originally Posted by MACollector

Any other pricey examples you can think of like this Mantle one?

My experience is that most of the time, it’s very difficult to distinguish between 8s, 9s, and 10s with the naked eye, and extra so if you’re looking at scans on a computer screen. And sometimes you might even find that the lower grades look better than the higher grades. To add to the fun, grading standards have shifted over the years.

As luck would have it, for just about every major star or HOF player, and even a lot of lesser known players, the jump in price at the higher grades starts to get pretty dramatic, particularly when you get to the highest grade, and extra so when there are only a handful in the pop report. Certainly this is the case with PSA grades cards, and is largely a function of the set registry competition driving the pricing in ways that don’t seem very rational just based on a strict eyeball comparison of the quality of the cards.

So my guess is that you could pick just about any card and start to play this game with the highest grades. And invariably you would find that the quality differences are small or imperceptible (particularly just looking at scans), yet the pricing spread is often gigantic.

Having said that, the Mantle example is particularly striking because we’re dealing with a swing of 6 figures. But I suspect while the raw dollars might be smaller for other players, the percentage swing will be similarly dramatic as you climb to higher grades.