Curious...when did "7" become the slab "cutoff"?

[JasonL]

Personally, I find that PSA 7 for post-war collecting is where I find the most consistently appealing cards at affordable pricing (relative to what happens at the PSA 8 through 10 levels).

I find the PSA 6-and-under population, in general, to have too much variability in eye appeal (and slightly less grading consistency if I had to generalize).

I find the eye appeal and card quality found in PSA 8 thru 10 to be consistently high, although (usually) not materially different enough from a PSA 7 for me to warrant the drastically increased prices.

After all, when I started collecting, there was NM and then Mint. So I find the PSA 8 to be a bit of a bastard child of the 9 and the PSA 10 to be, well, just marketing. Hence, I like 7s and 9s. Which is really weird, because my favorite number and my uniform number has always been....8