Higher Prices for Lower Graded Cards?

[DanP]

Centering?
I personally would pay more for a perfectly centered PSA 4 (especially if for that issue perfectly centered cards are tough to find) than I would for a PSA 5 that is off-center.

A lot of times when I see high price fluctuations in VCP pricing when I look at the scans I see a premium on the centered cards.

Dan

[Mrc32]

You may also consider that many set collectors are having to settle for lower grade cards because many of the higher grade versions have been snatched up.

[T206Collector]

A lot of raw collectors will bid up weak cards/beaters into nearly the SGC 40 range, which I always find a bit odd. Then you can often get a 50 for just a wee bit more than what a 40 would cost. Then there is usually a pretty decent gap to get to 60, because there are a lot of people that won't collect cards with creases, so they start at 60 -- and that's where the "hi grade collector" demand begins, so to speak.

In short, there are different price points at different levels of the grading structure, and you will sometimes see anomalies at the line between two grades based on this, and a variety of other factors that have already been mentioned in this thread (e.g., eye appeal, timing, auction publicity, etc.)

[ls7plus]

I'm with Dan on the eye appeal factor, something of a gray area that can loom large insofar as the price is concerned.

Larry

[Browncow75]

Thanks for the input guys! I too would rather buy a card with nicer eye appeal, that may have a flaw that brings the technical TPG grade down. I just thought it was odd that the same card had lower grades for both companies' identical grade level.