PSA Grades Relevant? Use Your Eyes!

Hi, my name is Brian and I'm the HIPPOP professor and today I would like to talk about how the grades of cards are becoming less and less relevant as the days go by thanks to the eye appeal movement. And that eye appeal movement, which of course started with pre-war and vintage cards because, well, if you have a grade of one and a half or a two, there's all sorts of different condition issues that could cause that card to become a very low grade. But as you get higher grades up toward the sevens and the eights and the nines, well, the condition of those cards in theory should start to look more and more consistent until ultimately when you get to a 10, you have basically a flawless card. Of course, it's not actually flawless. It has tolerances like anything else. But the point is just recently this eye appeal movement, I have noticed something interesting happened with PSA in their grades very recently since we've had the ninth digit for the certain numbers. I have noticed a suspicious number of really greatlooking PSA 6s hitting the market. I mean really sharp looking. We're talking they look like nines or tens, but they're sixes. What's going on here? I understand sometimes damage can be hidden. I get that. And usually I, you know, I look over my cards very carefully. Every time I do a pregrading analysis video, I get the lights all over it and I'm looking at every angle of it. I I look at, you know, turn it all over. And I guess that struck me in two ways. Number one, it provides an opportunity to pick up these amazing cards, bigger cards maybe, at a great deal if they're going to sell for six prices, but you're getting a card that looks like a nine or a 10. That's amazing. And second, it actually provides a very interesting sort of arbitrage opportunity. The prevailing wisdom, conventional arbitrage opportunity is sort of, oh, you buy an ungraded card. You analyze it, you realize it has a shot at a nine or a 10, you send it in, get it graded, comes back highrade, you sell it, and you make money. And sure, that that's I I that's a game that I play certainly, but this offers kind of an alternative idea. And and the idea being you could potentially buy a lowgraded card that looks amazing like a PSA 5 or PSA 6, crack it out and sell it ungraded and the ungraded price might be significantly higher than it would have with a low to mid-grade number. It's interesting. It's very interesting. And so what I would like to do is I would like to give you an eye test. And see, I know that if I'm watching a video and someone, you know, claims to do this, I'm going to roll my eyes a little bit and be like, "Okay, look, if we're going to cover up the grade and try to guess what the grade is, yeah, you know, you can't see everything. You can't hold the card." And of course, just because it's centered well and you can see the corners and the edges, it's always a surface, right? It always is the surface where things you hide. you can, you know, but I'm going to get every angle on there. We're going to really look very meticulously and we're going to see, can you predict what the grades are? I've got five or six cards pulled out here and we're going to cover the grade up and we're going to really look them over and we're going to take a good time on them and I want you to see how many can you get correct or even within one grade, shall we say. All right, so let's go ahead and turn the camera around and see how good your eyeballs are. We're gonna hopefully leave nothing to chance and see what we can find out and see if we are we going to believe PSA or are we going to believe your own lying eyes. All right, so the first card we're going to look at today is a 96 Ultra Home Run King Gold Medallion, Ken Griffy Jr. Awesome card. This card is the redeemed version, of course, and I would like you to take a look at this card carefully. This card is made of wood. I absolutely love it, but I'd like you to go ahead and check out the corners, check out the edges. We'll we'll look at the surface in just a little bit. We're going to go nice and slowly. Make sure we can get some Let's see here. That's on the That's on the slab. Yeah. Take some nice time with it. Make sure the light can see all the detail. This beautiful card. Now the back has a slight gloss to it that the front doesn't have because the front is you can see that's corner better there. So this one we might have to see the just carefully put the light on there. But anyway, this card I I loved the cards from this set. I always wanted an example of a gold medallion and I was thinking about getting one like like the bonds like my dad has, but um but this came available. So, so yeah. I mean, looking at this, I mean, to me, when I look at this card, I see four like razor sharp corners, and I'm I'm a corners guy, admittedly, and I I just see a beautiful I mean, it to me, this card looks like a 10. Um, the one thing that I guess if I'm really trying to nitpick here, I guess the the the back centering is a little off, but but PSA does that with tolerances that like like the amount of space next to the Griffy and the amount of space next to the J. I guess it's wider on the right, but even their 10 tolerances is like 2575 and that's not bigger than three times the width of that. So, I don't know. I don't I don't I don't see that as an issue. So, what would you give this card if you were grading this card? What would you give it? Would you give it a 10? Would you give it an eight? Would you give it a nine? An 8.5? What would you What would you grade this card? It's a good question, right? Looks pretty sharp. Well, PSA gave this card a 6.5. Wow. Okay. This is um one of, if not maybe the lowest graded. This is it. The lowest graded of all of Griffy's home run king goal medallions in the Pop Report. And so six and a half, that's that's a little bit strange. Now, you can find sales for PSA 9 that sell between $5 and $600. Yep. That's pretty pretty typical. Um, you can also say I can see that uh ungraded, you know, these cards will sell into the 400 to 500 range and historically they've even sold higher than that. they've sold, you know, but because this card was a 6.5 and not a nine or an eight or heaven forbid a 10. Because it was a 6.5, I was able to pick up this card for 250 bucks. But look at it. This thing is gorgeous. And that's a that's a big card for me. But again, I had I had a lot of sales recently and so I was a little bit more flush with cash than I usually am. And and I will I will say, you know, I I kept looking and I and I wanted to see even under close examination if we could really see what was going on here. And in full disclosure, I did find why this card was graded a 65, but it's really subtle. It's really not obvious. So, it wasn't really fair of me to do that to you. Um, and what's funny about this is even here, it's wild. You really can't see it much, but look what happens if I turn the card over and look at exactly this angle. You're going to see it right away. Ready for this? Uh-huh. Look at that. There is it. The top layer is whole and complete, but it's like of the wood. It was like there was a knot hole in the wood of the card that they like when they printed this or shaved the wood shaving off to make the card. And so there's like a little little hole, a little indent right there that's completely invisible from the front. It's also completely invisible from the back. So there's no way in any scan of this card, any image, it's not just an edge issue. It's like an edge of the edge issue. So, go figure that one out. Anyway, wild stuff. Wild stuff. But yeah, I mean, like I And again, I could take this, crack this out, and you know, and all of a sudden now it's it's like a $450 card. I'm not going to do that. But uh but it's fascinating to me that that that's the case with this one because until very recently I didn't see that on the bottom there. Okay, example two for eye test. Here's a fun card I picked up. This is a flare diamond cuts insert from 96 Flare. All right. Beautiful insert. Not not too rare. Maybe one per box type insert. One in 24 packs. It is a a premium product and um anyway, let's take a look. What would you give this card if you are grading it? And we'll just take a quick look here. It's a little wasn't sure there was something on the top edge there, but maybe I was just saying pretty clean. All right. Now, something interesting is here. I can kind of see the whole entire edge all the way down. You can kind of see it's it's it's lit up a little bit and so there's something I don't know the foil is like a little bubbling under that or something. Not we're not losing any of the surface gloss or anything, but there's definitely something bubbling there. Also, I can see there's some kind of a a stain or a shadow right there. Again, it's still shiny. still shimmery. It's just there's something there above his head that is not as bright. And I don't know what kind of surface issue that is, but it's interesting. Let's check the back. I will say in general, Flare has very high production quality. So generally their corners, their edges that's on the slab there. Generally their cards are very well produced, very, you know, amazing condition when you pull them. Let me check the surface now just like we checked over on the front. And just to make sure, nothing crazy going on. I think that's just a little fuzz that got trapped in there. Yeah, that's It's a pretty solid card. So, what would you give this card considering that it does have some kind of a some kind of a weird bubbling thing on the side and some kind of there's definitely some kind of a I don't know what you'd even call that like a don't really want to call it a stain, but it's some kind of a blemish. Some kind of a just a darker area in that shine. It's amazing card. So, yeah. What would you give this? Would you give this a seven? Would you give it a nine? What would you give it? All right. What did PSA give it? Well, PSA gave this card a mid nine. Yeah, mid nine. So, interesting. Very interesting. It's not necessarily not necessarily going to get you. Now, also interesting, I want to point out both of these have certain numbers that are nine digits. So, that's also interesting that these were in the grand scheme of things relatively recently graded. Not uh not necessarily within the last calendar year, but but pretty pretty recently. All right. Now, a handful of these cards I have shown before, and so you may have seen this from a different video, and that's okay. If if so, you know it's coming. And I just love this Shaun Casey Donner's Crusade green. Amazing card. Good centering. At least left to right centering. Looks amazing. Absolutely love that. The things you're seeing right here is actually Newton's rings. I can press on this and they go away. You can kind of see. Same with that one. You can Yeah, it's Newton's Newton's rings. Those aren't actual damage. But yeah, take a look here. And again, just like how stunning does this card look? And it's like, let's check the check the Okay, maybe a little touch maybe a little touch of white on that corner. Maybe. Yep, that one looks better. All right. and so yeah. Yeah. I mean it's it's a great looking card and that's that's I guess the whole point is that when you know the whole eye appeal movement is the whole idea is that we want to pick up amazing looking cards and you know based just on what we're seeing. Um, yeah. What What do you think? Nine, eight, one of those. What would you What would you guess this card would be? If you didn't know, and again, I know some of you may have seen this card. You might know, but yeah, pause the video and make a decision. What did PSA give this card? PSK PSA gave this beautiful looking card a PSA 2. Yeah, this is a Pop One PSA 2. Um now in in full disclosure although that you can see the shine all over um if we start to look yeah there are a wrinkle a vertical wrinkle that goes all throughout that card. But it's amazing that it disappears entirely unless you have a light shining directly on it. Invisible visible invisible. So you're looking at this card, you see the shine and it just disappears. It just disappears and it disappears in person. So, it doesn't look any worse in person. Um, and I guess does it go through to the back? Hard to say. Like the entire card had been sort of effectively bent vertically in half, but it doesn't really show. I guess you can see a part where the card sticks to the holder, but that's not really damage itself. It didn't like I I classify it more as a as a wrinkle than a a full crease because if it would have been bent in half, you'd see it from the back. But anyway, fascinating, right? And almost almost nine digits. Yeah. Okay. All right. How about this card? What do you think about this one? Card number four. This is a 96 studio. And this is a silver press proof. And already we can see that this uh this top edge is uh whoops is not the cleanest. We can see there's quite a significant amount of just edge chipping going all the way to the corner. Now, I guess the good news is that aside from that, the rest of this card is quite clean. So, we're not going to find much. That's just debris. There we go. So, so for 96, this was one of the rarest cards made. One of 100. The silver press proof was not serial numbered, but it was labeled and stamped as a print run. And the silver is far rarer than the gold out of 500 or the bronze out of 2,000. So, that's just one of those interesting things. All right. So, let's go ahead and check the surface again. Got to check because as we can tell, unless unless you get the light right on it, you This is This is why I I laugh every time I do roll my eyes really hard. Anytime someone's like, "Oh, there's a new app. You can take a picture of a card and scan it and it will tell you what your grade's going to be." It's like no, no, no, no, no, no, never. Uh because guess what? All those vertical wrinkles just disappear out of the light. And so any card scanner app, I guarantee you if I use my Sean Casey card from the last example, they would tell me that's going to be like a nine. All right. So, what do you think with this particular card? Really, it's just got that top edge that is a little bit more than just a rough cut. That's that's just, you know, that is some edge chipping. Relatively minor, but it's it's you know, it's extensive in that it's across the entire edge. So, what do we think? What would you give this card? PSA 7. We give it a six. What did PSA give it? PSA gave this card an eight. Okay. Now, again, compared to some of the eights I got back in my last grading reveal uh last fall, um those eights look stronger than this one for sure. You know, like that flare card that we just saw with, you know, based on how they're grading this, those cards might be overgraded based on how they are currently applying their standards. So, tough to say. Tough to say. All right. And of course, two more cards. Now, this card I showed a long, long time ago. And the idea here between behind this uh 92 Bowman, Mike Piaza rookie card. Beautiful card. And we're going to take a look and see what we can see. It is a beautiful It is a sharp card. It is well centered. Even the top bottom is well centered and we'll go over the uh surface in just a moment but let's make sure that the corners and edges are there. So, the issue with this card is that this card used to sit Well, I shouldn't even tell you that. It used to be in a different holder, but I'll tell you that after you make a decision. I don't want I don't want that to influence what you might decide about this particular card. But this is just a it's it's a gorgeous specimen. Truly, if we're talking eye appeal, I would ask anyone I would challenge anyone to find a better looking I don't know what that is. That that's on the slab. Yeah. Yeah, that's better. I would challenge anyone to find a better looking 92 Bowman rookie for Piaza. Let's look at the front surface really carefully. Really carefully. Look for any imperfections, any dimples, pock marks. abrasions, blemishes. Yeah. Again, like how are we? And it's a little over to the side there. I can't really see the left edge, but it's There we are. Okay. So, what do you think? I mean, this is about as clean of a card as you're ever going to find. If you want a nice specimen, a nice presenting Mike Piaza rookie card, you couldn't you couldn't ask for a nicer looking card than this. You really couldn't. So, what what grade would you give this card? Would you give it a 10? I mean, even nine seems a little harsh. I mean, there's there there's nothing. It looks like looks like perfection to me. Still does. What did PSA think? So this card um you know a couple years ago when prices were going crazy after the pandemic hit and everything. Uh my brother Iconic Al had this card in a Becket Quad 9. It was an old Becket grade. It had four leading zeros on it and he thought that card looked really good and thought that Becca was overly harsh with it. Cracked it out, sent it in. PSA returned it as a 10. And I happened to also have a Mike Piaza rookie 92 Bowman in an old Beckett Quad 9. And I said, "Oh, so let me let me look at mine." And mine looked pretty good. And I tried to do the same thing. send it into PSA and they gave me a PSA 5. And you can see when this was graded. This was after the pandemic, of course, but um you know, it's been it's been a couple years now. But, uh wow, really? Five. Is this the kind of eye appeal that your typical fives have? Huh. Strange. Um, and the reason for the five that I can best tell, I saw it once I cracked it out of the becket slab, and I wasn't sure what PSA was going to do with that, but and I'm not sure it's even going to come across on the video, but it looked like the edge of some of the corners had become a little toned, like almost a little bit rust colored instead of pure white. which I mean the front of the card itself is an al you know it it it doesn't even like that looks more white this looks more rust colored on the edge of the edge I don't know I mean it wasn't like color added or anything you know it's not like that was the case but on some of the edges of the car they did like almost yellowed a little bit anyway but you can imagine trying to buy a car that looks this nice you're going to have to pay up for, you know, nine prices probably, but you can imagine at a five, no one wants to buy a PSA 5 of that card. You know, you'd be lucky to, you know, get 10 bucks for it. All right. And last but not least, let's take a look. Last one of my big recent editions here, the Epics Emerald Moments from 98 Pinnacle. And this card is a stunner. This is the original, the OG Kaboom. All right. So, you may have just seen this in a recent video of mine. So, yes, if you if you watch my previous videos, you know. Now, to be fair, I have not actually looked over the card all that closely. And so, I I do not really know. I haven't seen any big condition issues. So, this is possibly going to be a first because as it turns out, I don't make a habit of looking my cards under a microscope. Um, you know, once I buy them, it's just not how I typically enjoy my collection. But, uh, hey, if we're if we're seeking out flaws, if we're trying to sort of find reasons why cards get certain numbers, then yeah, we'll we'll give it a we'll give it a close we'll give it a close look. So, I will say this is a fairly conditions sensitive set. This really is. Um, from the front I I really cannot find anything. The corners are razor sharp. The shine is incredible. I I don't even see a surface scratch on there. And so I I I guess it must be the back corners, back edges. We'll take a look. Um centering wise, nothing appears a miss. I mean, seems about right. Okay. I guess just a touch, I guess, of a little edge chipping there, but that's not too bad. Yeah. I mean, just I mean, we're we're talking we're really nitpicking here, but this is really tiny, but dark dark borders. Yeah, I guess. So, it could be slightly cleaner edge, cleaner corner there. Sharp corner. Okay. Definitely a touch in that one. Oh, what's this? Oh, there it is. Is that a wrinkle? A teensy little corner wrinkle right there on the back. That might do it. Wow. I'll tell you what, at arms length, boy, that's a that just looks like a touch on the corner. Wow. All right. So, now what would this card get? What would this card get, do you think? Ah, knowing that give it an eight or a seven or a five or a 6.5. PSA gave this card a six. But of all other sixes, the presentation, how this card presents, how does it look? And I think that this card looks amazing. I think that it looks like a really harsh eight, you know. I think that with with this little touch of white in the back corner and whatever edge wear, if if that wrinkle, if the little tiny corner wrinkle weren't there, I would say that this would be a, you know, what would be a recently graded eight where they're a little overly harsh. But again, this is a six that looks like an eight. So yeah, how are we going to make our adjustments to our collecting if grading companies, namely PSA, if they are grading more harshly? And are we going to allow ourselves to always dictate the cards that we get based on an arbitrary seeming number in the corner? Just because a number is stamped on that corner, that does not have to mean that the eye appeal matches that number. This is why the whole Mike Baker NBA stickers are a thing because I guarantee you these are the kind of cards that would qualify for a sticker like that. And that's kind of I think kind of sums up a lot of people's goals in collecting their their big cards. What they're looking to do is capture that big eye appeal. You're trying to get a card a seven for four prices. And so even in v you know vintage maybe it started out this way but uh it holds true even to the 90s stuff as well. So anyway thank you for coming along for this eye test and I will see you in the next video.