Why are ungraded cards starting to sell for more than cards graded in mint condition?

New York Times

4 hours ago

Trading card collectors and dealers largely view grading as the ultimate arbiter of the condition and value of the card. In other words, if a company like leading card grader PSA says your card is a Mint 9 (on a 1-10 scale) even though you can't perceive any flaw, it's stuck there, encased for eternity like a prehistoric insect in amber. It's frozen in time in that eternal state.
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It's at the point now that a modern card with a 'mint' grade (a 9) is often worth less than a card not graded at all. That's because the ungraded ('raw' in the parlance of the hobby) card holds the possibility of being a 10 if it gets graded. But a 9 will always just be a 9, the thinking goes. But what if the arbiter is arbitrary? A recent YouTube video by a Pokemon collector who believed many of his 9s deserved gem-mint 10s seems to prove that grading is quite subjective. Minor flaws that prevent a perfect grade initially can be overlooked when the card is cracked out of its plastic tomb and resubmitted. It's as if the flaw(s) were never there at all.
YouTube creator 'Pokemon Steven' sent 189 cards that he thought were perfect but were graded a notch below by PSA back for regrading after cracking them out of their slabs. Most were regraded the same way. But a couple were graded as altered/trimmed upon second look and others were graded lower/worse than a 9, sometimes by multiple grades. But 81 came back perfect 10s. That's 43 percent deemed worthy of a higher grade upon another look unbeknownst to PSA, of course.
And if you think that was some fluke, PokeTCGivaways showed on its X account a resubmission, with labels as proof, of 15 mostly 9s but two graded an 8 ('near mint-mint'). Of those, 11 came back with new grades — 10 upgraded to a 10 and one of the 8s downgraded to a 7.
When asked whether differences between a 9 and 10 are so minor that cards just teeter between them, the account responded, 'Maybe. I also think a lot of graders will have different opinions and it all depends on who you get grading your cards.'
If you're wondering why these examples are trading card game (TCG) cards and not sports, a big reason is the majority of the 100,000 cards graded daily (all graders, not just PSA) are TCG (most of those being Pokemon, according to GemRate, which tracks grading trends). But cardboard is cardboard, and if TCG grades are changing at such a high rate, there's no reason to think sports cards would not follow the same pattern.
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This does not necessarily mean you should crack your 9s and resubmit, though.
'Under no circumstances, do not follow in my footsteps,' Pokemon Steven said on his video. 'This is reckless and a waste of money. Two grading fees. Shipping fees. (I paid) $40 per card. Some cards (I resubmitted) are not even worth $40.' He said he did it because he specifically collects 10s and felt those cards deserved the perfect grade; it had nothing to do with money.
But this admittedly crazy experiment that executor says should not be repeated shows that there may be a market inefficiency in dismissing cards graded less than gem mint as lower in value than ungraded ones. Sure, the raw card may be a 10; for Topps 2025 Baseball about 21 percent of submissions get the perfect grade. But that's less than half the rate of Mint 9s that get turned into a 10 on resubmission, according to these Pokemon collectors. So why not take the steep discount that's often 50 percent or more on a graded 9? If the market for the player explodes, the owner can release it from its slab and try again for a 10. If the card was bought graded, the resubmission is not a second grading expense for that owner. (Dealers told The Athletic that the cost of grading is not factored into the value of a card.)
PSA President Ryan Hoge questioned the validity of these types of experiments, though.
'We understand the allure of videos showing cracked PSA 9s coming back as 10s, but these often lack key context—and in some cases, accuracy,' he told The Athletic. 'We often see examples where entirely different cards are resubmitted under the guise of being the same. Our Brand Protection team monitors this kind of content carefully and handles those on a case-by-case basis.
'Every card that enters our facility is evaluated by multiple professional graders. When differences arise, our process ensures consensus before a final grade is issued. No grading company in the world holds itself to a higher or more consistent standard than PSA.'
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While many modern mint cards do sell for more than raw, the difference is getting smaller and often does not justify the cost of grading. It's not difficult to find examples of inverted pricing, meaning the ungraded card goes for more money than Mint 9s.
For example, according to CardLadder, a 2013 Panini Select Giannis Antetokounmpo #178 sells for $100 in PSA 9 and $124 ungraded. Of course, it's an ungraded one with no obvious flaws but a PSA 9 can have no obvious flaws, too. There have been no recent sales of a PSA 10, according to CardLadder, but assume it would sell for at about twice as much as a PSA 9.
A 2018 Topps Chrome Sapphire Shohei Ohtani #700 rookie card sold for $2,075.50 in a PSA 9 grade on March 17, which was less than the last raw sale of $2,336. A PSA 10 last sold for $4,200.
The Topps Chrome Ohtani #150 Refractor sold for $466 ungraded in June, a week before it sold for $355 in PSA 9. The raw buyer was hoping for a PSA 10 that last sold for $820; but the PSA 9 could potentially have at least as good a chance at grading a 10 if it was cracked and resubmitted.
Rob DeMay, creator of the NEO Cards & Comics YouTube channel which regularly produces videos on grading and the card industry, advocated buying 9s for the value before these regrading results were made public.
'They're the ultimate collector card. It's not perfect. (The PSA 9) has an issue. But you're getting a steep discount. If you're keeping it, it limits the downside risk because the card is less expensive.'
But now those 9s could end up being 10s.
'I'm not surprised by (these results),' he recently told The Athletic. 'We're paying a human for an opinion, and until they figure out some sort of AI grading, you're going to see things like this. Could you blindly buy all PSA 9s and repeat this result? I don't think so. However, if you were very selective, I could see you having some success with this strategy.'
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