PSA 1st time submission

[jdeitrich]

Does PSA track and grade cards better for clients with an established history of submissions?? IE you have submitted 10-20 times with PSA VS 1st time submission??

I just received my first submission back and was disappointed. It was a 400 card submission and I received 38 10's and 227 9's. They were mostly late 80's and 90's basketball and football. I also noticed the 10's I got back were on the lesser valued cards while the 9's and 8's I received were on the higher value cards. To me it seemed almost like population control more than anything. If this post is somewhere else I am sorry in advance as I just joined the board and just getting back into the hobby.

[JustRachel]

In short, no.

Graders themselves don't keep track of submitters (although some may hook up a couple who hook them up, if you know what I mean). There are too many to remember, and the big boys in the game are group submissions anyway.

Over time you'll get better at understanding why they grade the way they do.

Older cards are wayyyyy harder to get gems. Surface gloss wears thin, etc.

[towerymt]

No.

Some people like to break up submissions into smaller groups. The thought is that not all graders are the same, and some will be less strict than others. If you had four 100-card orders, they might have gone to different graders, and maybe you hit a grader who gives more 10s. All speculation, as far as I'm concerned.

Results like yours are more aligned to the cards being sent rather than who is submitting them. Those 80s/90s are tough to gem.

I let my PSA membership lapse a while back, and my friend got a membership for the first time, so we've switched who is sending cards to PSA, and now a few of my cards go through his account. I've had some extremely good results on modern/ultra-modern through his relatively new account that has fewer than 10 submissions total.

I also submit through PC Sportscards when I want to use their grading-to-consignment service and my results have been as-expected through them as well.

[towerymt]

I haven't graded any 80s/90s stuff, outside of a few '98 or '99 cards, but modern-ish card stock, or chrome, but no paper like '80s Topps.

[Cracktoast]

I break subs up into multiple submissions if I have several of the same type card for instance say 10 2018 Topps Update Juan Soto Rc's just to break them up so hopefully different graders get them and even if it's the same grader maybe they are only looking at 5 of the same card at one time instead of 10. General thought is if they find a flaw in one they will automatically look for flaws in the others and thus grade them harder or at least look them over longer. But in the end most cards get 30 sec or less then they move on to the next one so who knows if it helps or not.

With the price increase to $149 I will just let my membership end in August and if I sub in the future it will be with SGC for $15/card or I'll just do 1 or 2 cards at the regular price. The specials haven't been that great since I renewed last year so I don't feel like I'll be missing out on much. I'll be interested to see next year how many subscribers they lose with their 50% increase in price once all of the current year subscriptions expire. My guess is a lot more than people think.

[learning]

Agree with the last post, split up cards into multiple submissions to spread out the risk of a tougher grader. It doesn't matter who's sends it in, just luck of the draw on which grader you get

[MavsRChamps]

I got crushed similarity on a 100+ card submission. My theory is they grade those tougher because may get overly scrutinized if too many 10’s. Annoying to pay multiple shipping but I’d try to keep orders under 60 cards in the future. Sorry for your bad grades, prob was tough grader

[Dragonman]

What am I missing....You killed it...You received 265 cards at Mint or better.

[oddstuff]

It's a tough first lesson but most people on here probably have similar story with their first submission. As others have said already, breaking into smaller submissions will help avoid results like this. 80s/90s cards also are not made/cut well like the modern cards and often have some sort of surface imperfections...so not getting a lot of 10s for those years is common.

[Onepocketj]

Originally Posted by MavsRChamps

I got crushed similarity on a 100+ card submission. My theory is they grade those tougher because may get overly scrutinized if too many 10’s. Annoying to pay multiple shipping but I’d try to keep orders under 60 cards in the future. Sorry for your bad grades, prob was tough grader

I usually do as well because of inconsistent graders.

A friend of mine sent in 40 Mahomes R&S rookies and got 39 10's. I sent in 30 and I think I got 19 10's.

I broke up another sub from 2018 that were all pulled from the same blasters. One sub got 80% 10's and the rest 9's. The other sub got no 10's, mostly 9's and some 8's. All from the same blasters.

[jdeitrich]

my point is. Let me take 1996 fleer ultra. I submitted (2) jordan card #143 and got 10'2 on both. However, I sent in (2) kobe bryant #266 and (2) jordan #16 and both came back as 9's.

In both cases I have roughly 10 of each card and submitted the best after using 20X modification as well as cleaning the cards. In my opinion that Jordan #16 and Kobe #266 were in slightly better shape than the Jordan's that got 10's.

I did split the order into (4) orders of 100 cards each. I am thinking I need to send orders of 20-30 cards each and put the higher value cards into 1 order and lower value cards in the other. In addition, the most expensive cards I sent came back as NR6 min size. In my mind they just did not want to grade them.

Thank you all for the feedback. I will get this figured out.

[kluke84]

Originally Posted by jdeitrich

my point is. Let me take 1996 fleer ultra. I submitted (2) jordan card #143 and got 10'2 on both. However, I sent in (2) kobe bryant #266 and (2) jordan #16 and both came back as 9's.

In both cases I have roughly 10 of each card and submitted the best after using 20X modification as well as cleaning the cards. In my opinion that Jordan #16 and Kobe #266 were in slightly better shape than the Jordan's that got 10's.

I did split the order into (4) orders of 100 cards each. I am thinking I need to send orders of 20-30 cards each and put the higher value cards into 1 order and lower value cards in the other. In addition, the most expensive cards I sent came back as NR6 min size. In my mind they just did not want to grade them.

Thank you all for the feedback. I will get this figured out.

You cleaned the cards with Kurt's juice?

[PLB9eight]

Originally Posted by kluke84

You cleaned the cards with Kurt's juice?

That’s the 20x modification. Jk. It definitely happens op.

[discodanman45]

Originally Posted by kluke84

You cleaned the cards with Kurt's juice?

The second thread the OP will start is "why did PSA decertify my entire order?"