Sportscard Grading: Condition is no Longer in the Eye of the Beholder

By Jonathan Berohn

It used to be that when it came to buying collectible sportscards, you’d spend most of your time trying to determine if the card you were looking at was really near mint to mint or just near mint.

Then the real fun began of trying to convince the seller that your assessment was better than his. Naturally, some enterprising folks came along and decided that impartial grading was the best way to surmount this problem (and make a buck at the same time). Today, if you pick up and sportcard magazine, visit a web site, or attend a show, all the best cards are sealed in little plastic holders and graded for you in advance to help eliminate guesswork.

PSA

The best-known and most respected of these graders is PSA. PSA, short for Professional Sport Authenticators, is the standard grade you will come across when you encounter graded cards. There are several other competitors who are trying to cash in on the market, but most serious dealers and collectors use PSA for grading.

Grading Basics

Card grading essentially makes cards much easier to sell. In general, 1 is bad and 10 is good. PSA reserves 10 for gem mint, so 10 is naturally the most coveted grade. You know that if you buy a PSA 9 card, you will be able to sell it as a PSA 9 card. This makes resale—especially mail order and Internet resale much easier than it was in the past. It also makes it much harder to find a bargain. Every serious collector knows that high graded cards command a premium. Every dealer knows this, too. In an ideal world you would want to buy top condition ungraded cards, and sell graded cards. In the real world, it is becoming very hard to find any good quality ungraded cards form the earlier than the 70’s. Even the best recent cards like rookies and inserts—find their way to the graders more often than not these days.

Grading Your Collection

One problem with grading is cost. You can easily spend $10 per card and more to get it graded. While PSA and others offer ways to register graded full sets, in reality you will only want to grade your best cards—and then only if you plan to sell or insure them. You can get your cards graded directly through PSA or find a local dealer through their web site that can process the cards for you.

One thing to keep in kind—even though they claim to be impartial—the grades you get from PSA and other services are only as good as the graders. Dealers typically have a grade in mind when they submit a card, and they will resubmit cards (sometimes several times) in order to get the grade they want. For a really valuable card you might want to do that, too.