Jan23rd

New PSA Half-Grades Unleashes Controversy

By Adam McFarland | Posted at 11:20 am | Filed Under Cards, Grading

Last week PSA announced that graded cards would now be judged on a half-point scale. So instead of the integer values 1-10 as potential grades, we now have 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, etc with one exception - no 9.5 grade. The move has sparked quite a bit of controversy in the collecting community, but overall they handled it pretty well.

Listen, I’ve never been a big PSA fan - particularly PSA-DNA and their autograph authentication - but graded cards are a bit different. I personally do not get cards graded because I have no desire to ever sell them, and the whole stunt would cost me money and time without my cards, but if I were collecting really old stuff with really high values I probably would place a higher value on the graded card…even after reading The Card which makes PSA look like pretty shady.

One of the most important things to note about the move is that the half-grade represents an exceptional card of that grade and not a mid-point. This is what I think collectors are missing. It’s not a move to a 20 point scale. It’s a move so that they can say “we have two grade 7 cards but this one is a little better, now we can give it a half grade and differentiate the two”. They have worked meticulously on their scale, and if they see a need for this half-point it’s probably better for everyone involved.

It might sound ludicrous, but for really old cards a difference in 1 grade point can mean twice the value (there’s something wrong with that, but it is what it is so I’ll leave that alone for now). While half-points might not split the difference in value, they’ll realize a higher sale price for anyone who gets it.

Here’s where they might have gone wrong: they are not offering a reduction in cost for anyone re-submitting cards. So if you paid your $10 or $15 or whatever to get a card graded a PSA 8, you’re now left in a bind: pay extra to have it re-graded to potentially get the extra half-point. If you get it, it’s probably worth it. If you don’t, you wasted your time/money.

At first this seemed absurd, but the more I think about it they made the right call given the situation. If they did offer a reduced price (say 25% off) to anyone re-submitting then people would jump on them and say that the reason they did it was to get everyone to send their cards back in. In that case they would have been reamed out for their greed. Either way, they would have taken crap from people.

One thing I’m unsure of - and hopefully someone can help me out with this - are graded cards dated? I know on the label there isn’t a date, but can you find out the graded date somehow? One would think they’d include this on their verify page, or do they intentionally leave it off because they don’t want to admit to variation between graders over the years?

I’m asking these questions because if you can find out the date, you should be able to judge a card as pre-half-grade and post-half-grade. So when you look at a PSA 8 on eBay, you’ll know if it was on the integer scale or the half-point scale. Even if they auto-incremented their serial numbers you could just determine the cutoff number and everything higher would be post-half-grade.

If there ISN’T a way to tell, that would really really suck and I take back all the nice things I said above.

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Comments

3 Responses to “New PSA Half-Grades Unleashes Controversy”

Joey on January 24th, 2008 8:57 am

They should maintain the old grading scale. Luckily for me I am not a big player in the graded card segment. But if I were I would be very upset about this.
Graham on April 2nd, 2008 3:34 am

PSA have introduced a changed label which indicates whether cards were graded before or after the half grade introduction. Cards graded after now have the number on the third line below the card condition (ie where previously if a card was GEM MT 10, it would have that on the 2nd line of a graded card. If the card is graded after the change, it will have GEM MT on the 2nd line, and 10 on the line below).
Adam McFarland on April 2nd, 2008 7:55 am

Graham -

Thanks for the update. It’s good to know that there is actually a way to differentiate.

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New PSA Half-Grades Unleashes Controversy

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