4 years ago when grading was cheap I regraded the holo charizard from evolutions 3 times. The first 2 times it got a 7, the 3rd time it received a 9... That proved the randomness of grading for me and after that I stopped sending them to PSA completely. I'm keeping them all raw in my collection now.
I had a bunch of cards I was considering grading, but having seen this, I'm probably just going to sit on them a while longer. My friend and I have a whole binder of older set cards including most of the base set starters. We're only missing Charmeleon and Venusaur. Probably worth more to me not knowing how much they value at than having them lost or stolen by some dude who doesn't know what he's looking at anyway.
Perfect answer. IN MY OPINION (legal disclaimer) the grading services were created to scam people. There are way too many cards that had been graded in the early days that were either altered by trimming edges, touching up color, or flat out grading fake cards. Of course that was made public knowledge, the CIA and FBI got involved, they stopped the scam (for all we know). Again, IN MY OPINION they're no longer paying attention to grades, only whether the cards are authentic or had been altered in any way. Makes me wary now about eBay's new program.
Same deal, I've gotten 10's on cards that shouldn't have gotten more than a 7 at best and many 5's/6's that were flawless. I have seen some videos of returns that people have gotten with dozens of 10's that shouldn't have even been more than a 2 or a 3. The 2 big ones I saw got taken down after a few days. I think PSA reached out to them somehow and bribed them to remove the video.
You can also just regrade an Illustrator card multiply times until you get a PSA 9 and than hype up the card with private sales for $900.000. PSA is a big scam
I think this perfectly demonstrates what an arbitrary, dogshit scam grading has become. And I believe it goes both ways. The 5's and 6's aren't that bad and the 9's and 10's aren't that nice. It makes me think of grading like fast food chains. Initially they were great ideas but fast forward to the future and now you spend money to get absolute garbage in return (with the prices climbing higher and quality nosediving).
Paying a random under-compensated person to slap a number on a plastic case by following some vague guidelines with zero accountability and almost zero oversight or quality control was always a bit sus.
Sports Card Investor has a round table discussion and one of the guys figures PSA spends about 1 minute on each card. I dont remember the exact amount of time he calculated based on how many cards they grade per day vs the amount of employees on staff but it was not a lot of time per card.
Another important thing to consider. PSA/Collector's Universe is practically hiring anyone 24/7 as much as they can to fill back-orders. Leaves a lot of room for inexperienced people to enter the industry, failing to do basic tasks such as data entry can easily explain all the order issues and questionably graded products. Go ahead to their website and see for yourself. Practically every role in the company has had open positions for the past 2 years, constantly hiring.
They also might need to raise the prices on getting things graded. Clearly the demand for quality grading is much higher than the people qualified to do so. Raise prices will lower the workload, and give them more time and less stress to grade all the cards.
they need to get people that actually know what there looking at and pay them well, money talks and quality graders will come if they pay the right price
This happened with a Metazoo Red Ink, the owner sent in 2, one came back a 9 the other a 5 damaged grade. Owner broke it out and sent it to becket, graded a 9. Bklyntoychasers on whatnot. Unfortunately it seems that PSA has been slacking, the cards were sent in on the highest tier as well. This occurred 2 months ago
I'm sure the crusade had nothing to do with anything when he sent them all in. he should have sent the cards that didn't trigger the snlowflakes first. people are such straight up babies today and maybe an n-ending isn't such a bad thing after all..
They have to know that there is a meta to crack cases and get cards regraded. So you could argue that by intentionally undergrading select items they can get a boost to sales.
You would have to prove they intentionally did it, or if it was an error it affected a large portion of the cards graded. You should also contact them to resolve the issue first
The EXACT same thing happened to me several times, so now I use BGS for $400+ cards and CGC for all the others. I don't trust PSA at all anymore, and they know it. I told them we were done and I'd never do business with them again.
@@youtubeshadowbannedmylasta2629 when the swing in value is literally hundreds of dollars, I'd say it was warranted. Unless you're totally chill with people setting your money on fire, maybe keep it to yourself. And read the room, troll. You're watching a video on a channel that focuses on said cards and their financial value.
PSA Blows! Same happened to me. Disturbingly under-graded. They even included dust/debris in their return packaging/casing; PSA debris showed up in every pic. Highest fees. Worst customer service. Would never, ever use them again. Hope no one else does either.
People have speculated for a long time that there may be quotas i.e. only a set number of 8.5-10 then there have to be some 4-8 to balance it out, regardless of condition. Also there is the known wild variance between which human you get and how they interpret things that particular day. People have been recracking to send in for a long time now, even Rudester himself has mentioned it in other videos. If the prices / times come down I bet we'll see it even more.
Also keep in mind that "certain people" get back over 80% of their cards as BGS 9.5 or PSA 10. You can search some of the Pokemon channels for the stats on it. The whole thing is a racket.
It's as if people trust the grade better than their own eyes 👀. It's almost funny.. I stick to raw cards especially since I wanna be able to play em in some cases
This is where it would really help if they also provided a list with each card of the flaws they identified, to at least justify the grade. At least if you grade BGS with sub-grades, you get that additional info.
That’s good to know. Having never graded cards before myself, I was unaware of the benefit of the different tiers Rudy alluded to. So BGS has an option for written description of the condition but PSA does not?
@@joe.5103 with bgs I think u can pay extra to have the sub grades added to the grade on the front. So instead of just saying 10 it would say 10 and then sub grades to show you how they came up to that grade for example. centering-9.5 surface-10 corners-10 edges-9.5
@@joe.5103 I don't believe BGS really gives much feedback, except you do get subgrades, so that can give you a bit of an idea what the main problem was for a card. For example, if a card gets an overall grade of 7.5 and you see subgrades of Corners: 7, Edges 9, Surface 9, Centering: 9, then it's obvious that the Corners were the problem. For PSA, you have no clue... If a card is ungradable, BGS gives more feedback than PSA. I sent an Unlimited dual land to be graded by BGS, and they gave me the card back ungraded and called out that it was touched up on the edges and which edges had been touched up. For PSA, I sent in an Alt 4th Ed Armageddon Clock to be graded, and all I got back from them was the card with a sticker that basically said "? AUTHTCY", which I guess means they could not authenticate the card. If they disagreed with me for some crazy reason that the card was not alt 4th ed, but was instead 4th ed, they should still have graded the card. But it sure looks like Alt 4th Ed to me, with the A in Magic on the back colored slightly differently, and if you zoom in on the back, it has a different printing schema than normal magic cards. Anyway, don't see myself using PSA again anytime soon, unless I want to get some packs graded...
The final straw for me is the not grading "Crusade". If they are going to pretend the sets no longer include the cards WotC banned for being "objectionable" in some form or another, then they are not worth my time nor money. Do they refuse to grade sports cards depicting various convicted felons? Or of individuals banned from their sport? I somehow doubt this.
Indeed. And those big companies are hypocrites. They show "support" for many groups and communities, like the LBGTQ+ and black communities with banners and such, but if you go inside those companies you will see lots of abuse, discrimination, racism and so much more. And suddeny we got "racist" and "offensive" cards, because suddenly everything is racist and offensive, especially for Twitter.
@@jarrodhust in my opinion theres nothing wrong with either. Im just saying that following wizards logic on crusade being “rACisT” honor of the pure is functionally identical and has a name that could be implied to be more “objectionable”. To be clear the only card that made sense being objectionable was the one richard garfield himself said my bad didnt realize that name was derogatory, being stone throwing devils. I play magic to escape the politica bullshit and dont appreciate that wizards tried to make a political statement about cards in a fantasy game
Happened to me. Sent in about 300 cards. Only ever had maybe 1 or 2 random 6s come back in a submission for some random missed nick. Half of my submission came back 5s and 6s after sitting at PSA for a year
This video is a perfect example of why you DON'T GET CARDS GRADED. People need to stop throwing money at these scam artists. Been on this soapbox in the TCG and Sports card world for well over a decade... glad to see that some people are actually starting to see the light.
They way they make those boxes is through ultrasonic welding it turns two pieces of plastic into one piece. I used to work in a factory where we used that equipment and it was never possible to undo it without breaking the product we were making.
Don’t forget, PSA bought Genamint so soon you won’t be able to send the same card in and expect a different grade. Genamint’s AI will leave a digital fingerprint on a card so if it’s sent back in it will bring up the previous service it received.
Yeah the wolves do too at the top, super visible on the back side when he tilts it and gets indirect light on it. Be careful though I tried explaining this and everyone flipped out, they don't want to use their eyes on the cards.
I agree, I don't think they will grade higher if resubmitted. Everyone prefers conspiracies as to why they didn't get the grades they wanted. Obviously people disagree as to whether or not creases, dents, and bends should be graded so harshly but PSA has always graded this way.
omgggggggg you're telling me they grade cards completely incorrectly especially when they're under a heavy workload? nooooooo wayyyyyy. /s totally some bullshit tbh. grading cards costs way too much for them not to do a good job and be accurate.
Got my first Psa card a few months ago. Was very disappointed that they slab cards without soft sleeve protection. The card had plenty of wiggle room in the slab ultimately causing whitening in the long haul the more the card slides around. If you actually care about the long term protection of the card you wouldn’t store cards like this. I think the best way to protect cards is in a tight fit soft sleeve coming over the top of the card, and then slide it in a top loader. Then display how you want!
PSA is particularly hard on Surface. If there’s a crease on the card, which isn’t at the very corner, it’ll likely get bumped down to a PSA4 (or lower). For this kind of card, one option is to send them to BGS. Note: I’m not saying that PSA is harsher than BGS in every way. For example, PSA is (in my opinion) way too loose on Centering.
I can actually understand this, coming from an inventory management background. It looks like they are using a combination of simple barcodes and/or QR codes. It's not a perfect system, misreads are possible. And when they do misread, you are counting on a human to catch to error (that the number scanned doesn't match the number printed), and good luck with that when that human is overworked or pressured to get through a huge backlog. In better times they may have safeguards in place, but these may have gone out the window due to the pandemic and expansion.
4:08 you can see the bottom right corner of the card is slightly bent where the "2/2" is. The card isn't perfectly straight. From my experience, even slight bends and dents automatically bring a card down to the lower grades regardless of how clean the rest of the card is. The other cards might be in a similar boat. There needs to be more transparency in card grading. It's understandable why a company wouldn't reveal every little thing, but there needs to be healthier balance. When CGC grades comics, the grader creates notes about the comic's condition to better explain why it got the grade that it did. And anyone, not just person who submitted, can purchase those notes. I'd love it if PSA, BGS, CGC, etc. did that for trading cards.
There's also what looks to me like a dent or a depression above and to the left of the "T" on the face of the card right around where the black border starts, visible around 3:12, still, don't know that the card is a 5, I don't know enough about grading.
@@Just_Pele I believe it matches a 4 or 5 by their standards. Personally, I would also consider bends (not to be confused with natural warping) and dents to be an automatic 4 or 5 regardless of how clean the rest of the card is.
@@russell4781 With natural warping, they don't seem to dock too much as long as it isn't too severe. But with a bend like that where it looks like someone grabbed the corner and dog-eared it slightly, its grade doesn't seem inconsistent from what I've seen in the past.
Holy shit! Are you serious!?!?!? They won't even grade banned cards!? Does this mean they won't grade a A/B Unholy Strength!? I bet they would. This era of censorship is just insane. What's weird to me is I got a Becket 9 Invoke the P. Somehow it's a 9 but the four grades are 10, 9.5, 9, 9. You average those out and it ain't a fuckin' 9. But somehow.....
The only thing I can think of for the first two cards is they are considering those corner lips damage when corner lips for these particular cards are normal and how they were cut that way back in the day. Inexperienced graders.
turned on the closed captioning and saw that rudy is expanding his channel content?: "welcome back folks, my name is rudy, you're watching elephant investments"🤔
I had this happen to me. The last box of graded cards I finally got back after waiting forever was the most random scores I've ever seen. Solid 9s were all 5s and 6s. A few random betas I've had forever were solid 6s they all came back at 8s to 9s. It's almost like they swapped all the scores from the stack and said screw it and sent it back.
I've bought some pokemon psa 10s and they just didn't look like 10s. Centering was off by a bit on a few and it still got a 10 when I honestly think an 8 or a 9 was warranted. Not complaining but any collector that is worth his salt would take one look at it and immediately know it's not a 10. They're legit cards too btw just psa not grading right
@@capo4ever334 exactly. I actually broke open the cards that were graded too high because I feel anyone I would show them too would get scammer vibes from them / me.
Not only that, but since people are gonna constantly grade more modern cards, CGC will have definitely an edge when it comes down to pristine 10 and perfect 10 population, PSA 10 modern cards are just way too high in population
@Mark Brown I'm across to buy theirs as I'm not up on their reputation but i might start looking into them as I'm just not happy with the quality of psa
PSA is aware they have pretty much cornered the market when it comes to grading cards. As long as people can sell beat up PSA 10's in slabs it won't change.
Yeah I've bought 2 zards that are off center a little bit but got psa 10. Nothing I can do as I bought it off ebay so I wouldn't be able to get a return. I basically have to hope whoever buys it off of me in the future doesn't realize it's not a 10 but closer to a 9 but pays the price of a 10 like I did(pic quality of the cards were at an angle to hide the centering and I knew better if I'm being honest but really wanted the these 2 cards)
PSA and SGC's main purpose was to prove if a Vintage card was authentic and grade Vintage cards. This was helpful for cards from the cardboard age : apprx. 1991 and older before cardboard was replaced with man made materials and chemical compounds and fillers. I dont understand why they would accept cards newer than 1990's to be graded except for making money. Modern cards were made to be perfect from the packs and sets. So I would suggest for cards from 1991 to today and beyond that they just Authenticate cards as 'real' or 'fake', and give them maybe 3 or 4 grades, like 'poor - good - better and best' and this would make more sense than grading on a number scale of 1-10.
A dented corner often immediately leads to a 6 or lower. I can imagine the grader has never seen an alpha card and thought the weird corners are damage.
i would never deal with grading cards, unless it was in person at one of those conventions that they do it at, ive heard to many times where pack refresh cards get sent back and they end up coming back heavily damaged. i use to watch a lot of card breaks for sports card and seen low numbers auto rookie cards get pulled and then sent into grading and when they get the card bad the card has major damage a card that ungraded s worth 500-1000 dollars to if it was a 10 could be worth 4-5000 dollars but it can back practically bent and it was a 4. i saw it happen with a 1st ed head of exodia that was literally bent in half while the card outside of the damage was easily a 9.5 to possible 10
PSA has been slipping badly in their grading standards. It could be due to the backlog, lack of workers, bribery, maintaining control of higher grades, or just newly hired staff with no experience. With the prices they are charging now, I would stay away from their service until things improve.
The worst part about this, is most people are so terrified of Grading their first card Be it Fear of Cost after grade, Fear of Mishandling during shipping, Fear of not packaging it properly for shipping, Fear of a million things... but for the Company that kinda has a monopoly on a system like this... its absolutely disgraceful.
I think it would be very interesting to get a different range of already graded cards, across the spectrum, and then break them out and send them in to be graded again. See how they compare to PSA's own prior grading.
My theory is they have so many cards to grade that they bring in more people to do grading but these new people either don't don't care or don't know how to grade properly.
first card, you can barely notice a few white marks on the upper edge, when card is viewed from behind 3:15, or when you zoom in on the the boarder 4:12 but it's far below what's on timber wolves
I've seen some low grade cards get higher grades and I think what is happening is they are printing a bunch of these labels at once and just matching the label to the cards sent in. With given the amount of submissions they are behind, the pandemic, the lack of wanting to work after getting paid to stay home, this company is bound to make a ton of mistakes right now and hold off on grading anything until the dust settles.
Looking at the Animate Artifact card at 9:27, the second sticker may have the wrong name but if you look at the barcode on each, they do look like they perfectly match up so it may be printed for the same card but for whatever reason they didn't put the correct name, makes no sense either way really. It does seem like they are just assigning random grades to cards to try to clear the backlog though
Cgc has been doing the same with comics. Anything I have sent to them in the last year hasn't received a 9.8 but books that I see dulled and white edges recieved 9.8. I am staying away from all grading for the time being
I know first hand of the corrupt and shady things that go on in PSA. Beginning with.a handful of graders who actually steal cards. They replace a nice card sent in with a slightly less nice card and keep the nicer card. I also know of the same group of graders who open up vintage packs that have been sent in to be graded and then tell the sender it was already opened. Basically, there is level of graders at PSA and only a handful of veteran graders are allowed to touch the top tier cards and products worth the most money. Nobody else sees those cards. All the lower bottom tier cards goes to the typical grunt worker to grade. The handful of graders who are allowed to touch the top tier products have a side hustle going and selling graded cards and products under aliases and through other people at auctions and other places like eBay to make a ton of money on cards they take and switch. But no matter what, nobody will believe this and everyone still pays a ridiculous amount to get their cards graded and get scammed. PSA is one of the biggest scams and has a bunch of thieves working there. I honestly can't believe the FBI hasn't sent someone in to investigate this place. They spend a lot of time on criminals who sell fake sports autographs but don't investigate the PSA.
I'm going to send in an Archelos lagoon mystic, ultimate commander flex lol. Solid video man. Sometimes grading is like completely subjective, had a buddy who got a 5 cracked resubmitted the next day got an 7.5
With todays technology, no reason why grading can’t be computer controlled. A scan of the card and the scanner would find all flaws on the front and back and through an algorithm, a grade is determined.
This is why I won't get my cards graded. Maybe one day when companies are held accountable for properly grading. It's become such a scam. Too high a price for too long a wait and too much inconsistency.
first card, minor crush on the mid right side halfway up. Card is not pristine with that bend. Not sure if I'd call it a 5... Second card is also bent at the top across
had a friend with a 9 worthy card get set back for being 'recolored,' we looked it over like crazy, couldn't figure out why, so we sent it back and they graded it the second time. still charged us for both times even though the first time was just stealing money from us :))))
From my experience my Psa 5s that I thought were NM/M after a lot of checking I found very small indents which I’ll send to BGS who’ll only smack surface to prob 6-9 range depending how they view it.
Favoritism is very real if you know people on the inside and when it comes to grading, they can tell you that there is guidelines they follow but at the end is just their opinion on a number. I seen cards with very similar defects get 2 different grades and the one with a worst ding get the higher grade.
sent a bunch of mint cards, everything came back 9 and some 8 but there was one random 6 . the cards is MINT should have been at least a 9 but somehow it got a 6 . did I mention it was a charizard ....
So F'n scandalous. These people at psa give their insider sweetheart deals to people they "know" and trust. It's a huge criminal scam and they think their clever in getting away with it cause its all subjective. They need to be sued into the ground.
Set up a rouse, pull cards previoysly graded, see what they come back as, do it again, do it again, and do it again. Document it and have a lawyer know about it.
Man I got some at PSA and now I'm terrified this is going to happen to me! I've graded cards with SGC and they were fantastic, a bit harsh on centering but otherwise really nice company to deal with. I also got cards and BGS but still haven't got them back. Those Alpha cards you have there looked amazing!
I've used SGC a lot since PSA backed up. They grade fairly. I've never had a complaint on their grading and I am a fan of their slabs. I'll likely make SGC my go to now.
@@joshuas3212 I wish they had a QR code on the back of the slab and maybe sub-grades. My favourite slab is BGS but they seem the most archaic compared to SGC and PSA.
I have a lot of OG cards from back in the day, I'm talking Mishra's Workshop, Moat etc. I refuse to get them graded even though they're in great condition. I don't want anyone deciding for me the actual value via the condition that they apply to them, besides paying them to do it...
4 years ago when grading was cheap I regraded the holo charizard from evolutions 3 times. The first 2 times it got a 7, the 3rd time it received a 9... That proved the randomness of grading for me and after that I stopped sending them to PSA completely. I'm keeping them all raw in my collection now.
I had a bunch of cards I was considering grading, but having seen this, I'm probably just going to sit on them a while longer. My friend and I have a whole binder of older set cards including most of the base set starters. We're only missing Charmeleon and Venusaur. Probably worth more to me not knowing how much they value at than having them lost or stolen by some dude who doesn't know what he's looking at anyway.
Perfect answer. IN MY OPINION (legal disclaimer) the grading services were created to scam people. There are way too many cards that had been graded in the early days that were either altered by trimming edges, touching up color, or flat out grading fake cards. Of course that was made public knowledge, the CIA and FBI got involved, they stopped the scam (for all we know). Again, IN MY OPINION they're no longer paying attention to grades, only whether the cards are authentic or had been altered in any way. Makes me wary now about eBay's new program.
Same deal, I've gotten 10's on cards that shouldn't have gotten more than a 7 at best and many 5's/6's that were flawless.
I have seen some videos of returns that people have gotten with dozens of 10's that shouldn't have even been more than a 2 or a 3. The 2 big ones I saw got taken down after a few days. I think PSA reached out to them somehow and bribed them to remove the video.
You can also just regrade an Illustrator card multiply times until you get a PSA 9 and than hype up the card with private sales for $900.000.
PSA is a big scam
What about becket?
I think this perfectly demonstrates what an arbitrary, dogshit scam grading has become. And I believe it goes both ways. The 5's and 6's aren't that bad and the 9's and 10's aren't that nice.
It makes me think of grading like fast food chains. Initially they were great ideas but fast forward to the future and now you spend money to get absolute garbage in return (with the prices climbing higher and quality nosediving).
Paying a random under-compensated person to slap a number on a plastic case by following some vague guidelines with zero accountability and almost zero oversight or quality control was always a bit sus.
Especially with them being able to upcharge you depending on the grade and card value, yeah they definitely can benefit for giving you "higher grades"
Both of these cards have noticeable bends. Cards with bends are not NM
I think you're right with how PSA is slacking off on their grading.
Sports Card Investor has a round table discussion and one of the guys figures PSA spends about 1 minute on each card.
I dont remember the exact amount of time he calculated based on how many cards they grade per day vs the amount of employees on staff but it was not a lot of time per card.
Another important thing to consider. PSA/Collector's Universe is practically hiring anyone 24/7 as much as they can to fill back-orders. Leaves a lot of room for inexperienced people to enter the industry, failing to do basic tasks such as data entry can easily explain all the order issues and questionably graded products.
Go ahead to their website and see for yourself. Practically every role in the company has had open positions for the past 2 years, constantly hiring.
They also might need to raise the prices on getting things graded.
Clearly the demand for quality grading is much higher than the people qualified to do so.
Raise prices will lower the workload, and give them more time and less stress to grade all the cards.
@@VaSoapman Wait prices are already high if I am not mistaken basic grading sevice is now 100USd per cards is it not?
they need to get people that actually know what there looking at and pay them well, money talks and quality graders will come if they pay the right price
This happened with a Metazoo Red Ink, the owner sent in 2, one came back a 9 the other a 5 damaged grade. Owner broke it out and sent it to becket, graded a 9. Bklyntoychasers on whatnot. Unfortunately it seems that PSA has been slacking, the cards were sent in on the highest tier as well. This occurred 2 months ago
The grand conspiracy of making sure there isn't too many highly graded cards
I'm sure the crusade had nothing to do with anything when he sent them all in.
he should have sent the cards that didn't trigger the snlowflakes first.
people are such straight up babies today and maybe an n-ending isn't such a bad thing after all..
@@youtubeshadowbannedmylasta2629 You ain't kidding. People are so fuckin' emotionally weak today I don't even know how they get through the day.
Not a conspiracy... a reality.
@@NeoN-PeoN maybe they belittle other people on the internet to make themselves feel a bit better like you do.
You make zero sense. The other guy is right, the world is becoming pussyfied
Time to crack some cases!
it'd be super cool to see you do a video cracking some grades you thought could be better, if you had any you'd resubmit!
@@DamonDesade i have actually had some luck doing that throughout the years. I may do it again one day
Lol! Yes😂
@@Ruxin34 awesome to see you watch alpha as well.
Binder dents instantly drops the grade of a mint card from a 9 to a 5
This reminds me of your older content. Keep up the awesome content man 😎
They have to know that there is a meta to crack cases and get cards regraded.
So you could argue that by intentionally undergrading select items they can get a boost to sales.
There needs to be a class action law suit over this. this is absurd.
This
problem is your paying for an opinion you cant sue them
That sounds like a hard lawsuit to argue, and an easy one to defend.
You would have to prove they intentionally did it, or if it was an error it affected a large portion of the cards graded. You should also contact them to resolve the issue first
@@CelebritySigning It's america. You can always sue. You can sue because you think the sky is purple.
The EXACT same thing happened to me several times, so now I use BGS for $400+ cards and CGC for all the others. I don't trust PSA at all anymore, and they know it. I told them we were done and I'd never do business with them again.
@@youtubeshadowbannedmylasta2629 when the swing in value is literally hundreds of dollars, I'd say it was warranted. Unless you're totally chill with people setting your money on fire, maybe keep it to yourself. And read the room, troll. You're watching a video on a channel that focuses on said cards and their financial value.
@@youtubeshadowbannedmylasta2629 Those cards are a multi-billion dollar business. Let that one sink in.
@@youtubeshadowbannedmylasta2629 troll
@@youtubeshadowbannedmylasta2629 I think you're in the wrong channel, kiddo.
@@oldbordergeek Very rarely have I ever had any issue with their grading, though.
PSA Blows! Same happened to me. Disturbingly under-graded. They even included dust/debris in their return packaging/casing; PSA debris showed up in every pic. Highest fees. Worst customer service. Would never, ever use them again. Hope no one else does either.
PSA stands for “please submit again” you didn’t known
People have speculated for a long time that there may be quotas i.e. only a set number of 8.5-10 then there have to be some 4-8 to balance it out, regardless of condition. Also there is the known wild variance between which human you get and how they interpret things that particular day. People have been recracking to send in for a long time now, even Rudester himself has mentioned it in other videos. If the prices / times come down I bet we'll see it even more.
Also keep in mind that "certain people" get back over 80% of their cards as BGS 9.5 or PSA 10. You can search some of the Pokemon channels for the stats on it. The whole thing is a racket.
It's as if people trust the grade better than their own eyes 👀. It's almost funny.. I stick to raw cards especially since I wanna be able to play em in some cases
Cool it with the antisemitism.
@@TeemoTemosson The who?
Tuknir has a slight bend, bottom right corner running vertically. Wolves has a slight bend at the top right corner, running horizontally.
I was going to say the same thing
This is where it would really help if they also provided a list with each card of the flaws they identified, to at least justify the grade. At least if you grade BGS with sub-grades, you get that additional info.
That’s good to know. Having never graded cards before myself, I was unaware of the benefit of the different tiers Rudy alluded to. So BGS has an option for written description of the condition but PSA does not?
This first card has a bend down the whole side on the back. The second card had a bend in the top corner
@@joe.5103 with bgs I think u can pay extra to have the sub grades added to the grade on the front. So instead of just saying 10 it would say 10 and then sub grades to show you how they came up to that grade for example. centering-9.5 surface-10 corners-10 edges-9.5
@@joe.5103 I don't believe BGS really gives much feedback, except you do get subgrades, so that can give you a bit of an idea what the main problem was for a card. For example, if a card gets an overall grade of 7.5 and you see subgrades of Corners: 7, Edges 9, Surface 9, Centering: 9, then it's obvious that the Corners were the problem. For PSA, you have no clue...
If a card is ungradable, BGS gives more feedback than PSA. I sent an Unlimited dual land to be graded by BGS, and they gave me the card back ungraded and called out that it was touched up on the edges and which edges had been touched up. For PSA, I sent in an Alt 4th Ed Armageddon Clock to be graded, and all I got back from them was the card with a sticker that basically said "? AUTHTCY", which I guess means they could not authenticate the card. If they disagreed with me for some crazy reason that the card was not alt 4th ed, but was instead 4th ed, they should still have graded the card. But it sure looks like Alt 4th Ed to me, with the A in Magic on the back colored slightly differently, and if you zoom in on the back, it has a different printing schema than normal magic cards. Anyway, don't see myself using PSA again anytime soon, unless I want to get some packs graded...
Gee, you can tell Rudy has cracked ALOT of cases in his time
His technique is flawless bro
The final straw for me is the not grading "Crusade". If they are going to pretend the sets no longer include the cards WotC banned for being "objectionable" in some form or another, then they are not worth my time nor money. Do they refuse to grade sports cards depicting various convicted felons? Or of individuals banned from their sport? I somehow doubt this.
Indeed. And those big companies are hypocrites. They show "support" for many groups and communities, like the LBGTQ+ and black communities with banners and such, but if you go inside those companies you will see lots of abuse, discrimination, racism and so much more. And suddeny we got "racist" and "offensive" cards, because suddenly everything is racist and offensive, especially for Twitter.
The happily grade your OJ cards
I still find it hilarious that crusade is a “problem”, but honor of the pure is acceptable.
@@TheChayxxx What's the issue with Honor of the Pure?
@@jarrodhust in my opinion theres nothing wrong with either. Im just saying that following wizards logic on crusade being “rACisT” honor of the pure is functionally identical and has a name that could be implied to be more “objectionable”. To be clear the only card that made sense being objectionable was the one richard garfield himself said my bad didnt realize that name was derogatory, being stone throwing devils. I play magic to escape the politica bullshit and dont appreciate that wizards tried to make a political statement about cards in a fantasy game
Happened to me. Sent in about 300 cards. Only ever had maybe 1 or 2 random 6s come back in a submission for some random missed nick. Half of my submission came back 5s and 6s after sitting at PSA for a year
A year, I'd already ordered them back at that point and do not pay a single cent
This video is a perfect example of why you DON'T GET CARDS GRADED. People need to stop throwing money at these scam artists. Been on this soapbox in the TCG and Sports card world for well over a decade... glad to see that some people are actually starting to see the light.
We need AI grading for all major grading companies. ASAP... I still have orders sitting there from last spring.
AGS bro. All cpu grading
I was thinking the same thing. Electronic grading where you put it in the machine and it comes out assessed byt computations, not stnky human fucks.
Rudy should collaborate with the Lock Picking Lawyer to see it he can get into the plastic without destroying it.
Heh LPL probably could figure a way if anyone.(or Bonsai Bill, even though he's 'retired'. ).
They way they make those boxes is through ultrasonic welding it turns two pieces of plastic into one piece. I used to work in a factory where we used that equipment and it was never possible to undo it without breaking the product we were making.
@@utopiaoflove I would still like to see him try
Don’t forget, PSA bought Genamint so soon you won’t be able to send the same card in and expect a different grade. Genamint’s AI will leave a digital fingerprint on a card so if it’s sent back in it will bring up the previous service it received.
The tucknir has a bend along the back left side of the card. You can see it when the light hits it.
Yeah the wolves do too at the top, super visible on the back side when he tilts it and gets indirect light on it. Be careful though I tried explaining this and everyone flipped out, they don't want to use their eyes on the cards.
To me it looks like the back top left edge of the Timber Wolves has the same kind of very light bend.
Yeah it definitely does, it looks super obvious on the timberwolves to me I'm shocked so few people see it.
I agree, I don't think they will grade higher if resubmitted. Everyone prefers conspiracies as to why they didn't get the grades they wanted. Obviously people disagree as to whether or not creases, dents, and bends should be graded so harshly but PSA has always graded this way.
Can you time stamp the bend on the first card. I can see it on the 4, but not the 5. I believe its there though.
omgggggggg you're telling me they grade cards completely incorrectly especially when they're under a heavy workload? nooooooo wayyyyyy. /s
totally some bullshit tbh. grading cards costs way too much for them not to do a good job and be accurate.
Sometimes I wonder if Rudy smells like a Cherry Blossom.
Rudy smells like tacos! 🌮
More like an ash blossom
No I could have swear I smelled lotus petals
6:45 That one is for sure no 9^^. Surface scatches, whitening at corners and also the edges... more like a 7
Got my first Psa card a few months ago. Was very disappointed that they slab cards without soft sleeve protection. The card had plenty of wiggle room in the slab ultimately causing whitening in the long haul the more the card slides around. If you actually care about the long term protection of the card you wouldn’t store cards like this. I think the best way to protect cards is in a tight fit soft sleeve coming over the top of the card, and then slide it in a top loader. Then display how you want!
Timber wolves card is surface bended under the top left corner, look closely at 6:07 / 6:08
PSA is particularly hard on Surface. If there’s a crease on the card, which isn’t at the very corner, it’ll likely get bumped down to a PSA4 (or lower). For this kind of card, one option is to send them to BGS.
Note: I’m not saying that PSA is harsher than BGS in every way. For example, PSA is (in my opinion) way too loose on Centering.
Yeah for PSA 10 they do centering as 60/40 to 55/45 range. Still not too loose but I agree the Beckett seems to be much stricter for centering.
I can actually understand this, coming from an inventory management background. It looks like they are using a combination of simple barcodes and/or QR codes. It's not a perfect system, misreads are possible. And when they do misread, you are counting on a human to catch to error (that the number scanned doesn't match the number printed), and good luck with that when that human is overworked or pressured to get through a huge backlog. In better times they may have safeguards in place, but these may have gone out the window due to the pandemic and expansion.
Love watching rudy play with his tool.
hehe
Dang. I had thought about sending some cards in, but now I don't know if I can trust the grading system. They need to do some quality control.
4:08 you can see the bottom right corner of the card is slightly bent where the "2/2" is. The card isn't perfectly straight. From my experience, even slight bends and dents automatically bring a card down to the lower grades regardless of how clean the rest of the card is. The other cards might be in a similar boat.
There needs to be more transparency in card grading. It's understandable why a company wouldn't reveal every little thing, but there needs to be healthier balance.
When CGC grades comics, the grader creates notes about the comic's condition to better explain why it got the grade that it did. And anyone, not just person who submitted, can purchase those notes. I'd love it if PSA, BGS, CGC, etc. did that for trading cards.
There's also what looks to me like a dent or a depression above and to the left of the "T" on the face of the card right around where the black border starts, visible around 3:12, still, don't know that the card is a 5, I don't know enough about grading.
Still not even close to being a 4 or 5.
I see it.. but wouldn't think they dock that hard for bending or warping as long it's not creased
@@Just_Pele I believe it matches a 4 or 5 by their standards. Personally, I would also consider bends (not to be confused with natural warping) and dents to be an automatic 4 or 5 regardless of how clean the rest of the card is.
@@russell4781 With natural warping, they don't seem to dock too much as long as it isn't too severe. But with a bend like that where it looks like someone grabbed the corner and dog-eared it slightly, its grade doesn't seem inconsistent from what I've seen in the past.
Rudy should start his own grading service
69%
RGS - Rudy Grading Services 2022! Bring it on!
Never realised that the 2020 ban also impacted grading. You learn something new about this game every day.
Rudy, time to start RBGS. "Rudy's Basement Grading Services."
People associated with Ken Griffen’s Citadel Hedge Fund, now own PSA…It’s going to be scam town now.
That all sounds super sus.
Like more than the fact that the mob owns all mattress firms and the storefront is the 'new' place to launder money.
@@djdrack4681 Google Steve Cohen PSA. Then Google Steve Cohen Citadel.
I just picture Dustin Hoffmans face on the slab sayin "whatr ya gonna believe me or your own lying eyes?!?"
Holy shit! Are you serious!?!?!? They won't even grade banned cards!? Does this mean they won't grade a A/B Unholy Strength!? I bet they would. This era of censorship is just insane.
What's weird to me is I got a Becket 9 Invoke the P. Somehow it's a 9 but the four grades are 10, 9.5, 9, 9. You average those out and it ain't a fuckin' 9. But somehow.....
I have a PSA 9 Kobe Bryant rookie card and on the back the centering is so bad its like 85% on the left and 15% on the right. It boggles my mind.
The only thing I can think of for the first two cards is they are considering those corner lips damage when corner lips for these particular cards are normal and how they were cut that way back in the day. Inexperienced graders.
turned on the closed captioning and saw that rudy is expanding his channel content?: "welcome back folks, my name is rudy, you're watching elephant investments"🤔
I had this happen to me. The last box of graded cards I finally got back after waiting forever was the most random scores I've ever seen. Solid 9s were all 5s and 6s. A few random betas I've had forever were solid 6s they all came back at 8s to 9s. It's almost like they swapped all the scores from the stack and said screw it and sent it back.
I've bought some pokemon psa 10s and they just didn't look like 10s. Centering was off by a bit on a few and it still got a 10 when I honestly think an 8 or a 9 was warranted. Not complaining but any collector that is worth his salt would take one look at it and immediately know it's not a 10. They're legit cards too btw just psa not grading right
@@capo4ever334 exactly. I actually broke open the cards that were graded too high because I feel anyone I would show them too would get scammer vibes from them / me.
If PSA keeps up this quality of service SCG, CGC or another company is going to overtake them due to the poor QC.
Not only that, but since people are gonna constantly grade more modern cards, CGC will have definitely an edge when it comes down to pristine 10 and perfect 10 population, PSA 10 modern cards are just way too high in population
Sgc is already a far superior service imo
@Mark Brown I'm across to buy theirs as I'm not up on their reputation but i might start looking into them as I'm just not happy with the quality of psa
PSA is aware they have pretty much cornered the market when it comes to grading cards. As long as people can sell beat up PSA 10's in slabs it won't change.
Yeah I've bought 2 zards that are off center a little bit but got psa 10. Nothing I can do as I bought it off ebay so I wouldn't be able to get a return. I basically have to hope whoever buys it off of me in the future doesn't realize it's not a 10 but closer to a 9 but pays the price of a 10 like I did(pic quality of the cards were at an angle to hide the centering and I knew better if I'm being honest but really wanted the these 2 cards)
You kidding me look that first card ..the right corner was like warped..also that ain't a slight off center that's massive lol
PSA and SGC's main purpose was to prove if a Vintage card was authentic and grade Vintage cards. This was helpful for cards from the cardboard age : apprx. 1991 and older before cardboard was replaced with man made materials and chemical compounds and fillers. I dont understand why they would accept cards newer than 1990's to be graded except for making money. Modern cards were made to be perfect from the packs and sets. So I would suggest for cards from 1991 to today and beyond that they just Authenticate cards as 'real' or 'fake', and give them maybe 3 or 4 grades, like 'poor - good - better and best' and this would make more sense than grading on a number scale of 1-10.
Rudy should have his own grade company :)
Psa 1-5 are like very loved/damaged cards. Those examples he cracked open are not even close to that spectrum
A dented corner often immediately leads to a 6 or lower. I can imagine the grader has never seen an alpha card and thought the weird corners are damage.
@@spaceglide This sounds extremely plausible.
Both cards had noticeable bends
@@XO_HighIights Dude a card can have a bend in it…..it’s only an issue if it’s a crease…….which neither had
@@wasgaming7932 lol, bends are NOT NM smh
i would never deal with grading cards, unless it was in person at one of those conventions that they do it at, ive heard to many times where pack refresh cards get sent back and they end up coming back heavily damaged. i use to watch a lot of card breaks for sports card and seen low numbers auto rookie cards get pulled and then sent into grading and when they get the card bad the card has major damage a card that ungraded s worth 500-1000 dollars to if it was a 10 could be worth 4-5000 dollars but it can back practically bent and it was a 4. i saw it happen with a 1st ed head of exodia that was literally bent in half while the card outside of the damage was easily a 9.5 to possible 10
PSA has been slipping badly in their grading standards. It could be due to the backlog, lack of workers, bribery, maintaining control of higher grades, or just newly hired staff with no experience. With the prices they are charging now, I would stay away from their service until things improve.
Gaurantee it's bribary. Anywhere there is money, corruption lay just around the corner
@@philosuhrapptorh1284 Yes. If there is money involved, there is a scam or twenty close by.
Or all of what you listed, combined
On the Alpha Timber Wolves, there is Clearly a few scratches on my cell phone cover that give this card a lower surface grade!
The fact that PSA wont grade the “sensitivity” cards to me says they are a piece of shit company just on those grounds alone
How does that say that to you, exactly? 🤡
Good observations Rudy. There is something wrong with some of those grades.
There might be hairline scratches on the card that the natural sunlight doesn't show. You'll have to shine a flashlight on it for it to be visible.
The worst part about this, is most people are so terrified of Grading their first card Be it Fear of Cost after grade, Fear of Mishandling during shipping, Fear of not packaging it properly for shipping, Fear of a million things... but for the Company that kinda has a monopoly on a system like this... its absolutely disgraceful.
You mean I can just slap random number on cards and get paid? Count me in!
PSA grades insanely harsh on Dents and surface damage.
I think it would be very interesting to get a different range of already graded cards, across the spectrum, and then break them out and send them in to be graded again. See how they compare to PSA's own prior grading.
My theory is they have so many cards to grade that they bring in more people to do grading but these new people either don't don't care or don't know how to grade properly.
Wow, at the time this video was released, Nikachu's channel released a video showing the grading process.
PSA grades cards the same way I did my multiple choice pencil in the answer stoned out of my mind in Highschool tests.
first card, you can barely notice a few white marks on the upper edge, when card is viewed from behind 3:15, or when you zoom in on the the boarder 4:12 but it's far below what's on timber wolves
VGA Grading actually does favor high-end spenders. They always end up with a point higher.
I've seen some low grade cards get higher grades and I think what is happening is they are printing a bunch of these labels at once and just matching the label to the cards sent in. With given the amount of submissions they are behind, the pandemic, the lack of wanting to work after getting paid to stay home, this company is bound to make a ton of mistakes right now and hold off on grading anything until the dust settles.
Sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen. This is theft.
There's a reason I switched to CGC. Sent thousands of cards and never had one that was obnoxiously off.
Looking at the Animate Artifact card at 9:27, the second sticker may have the wrong name but if you look at the barcode on each, they do look like they perfectly match up so it may be printed for the same card but for whatever reason they didn't put the correct name, makes no sense either way really.
It does seem like they are just assigning random grades to cards to try to clear the backlog though
It was actually meant for the Wandering Artifact. Or Animate Lust, whichever you prefer.
Someone with a stack of cards and labels sneezed and they flew everyone. Thjis was their best attempt to pmatch the card to a label.
time to start timmy's grading emporium
Cgc has been doing the same with comics. Anything I have sent to them in the last year hasn't received a 9.8 but books that I see dulled and white edges recieved 9.8. I am staying away from all grading for the time being
3:45 there is a bit of whitening at the top but… that’s about it… after only slight off centering
Love ya Rudy, haven’t checked in awhile
RUDDY MAKE YOUR OWN GRADING COMPANY!!!! TIMMY'S EMPORIUM GRADING! LET'S GOOOO
Haven’t watched your stuff since 2017 it’s good to be baxk
I know first hand of the corrupt and shady things that go on in PSA. Beginning with.a handful of graders who actually steal cards. They replace a nice card sent in with a slightly less nice card and keep the nicer card. I also know of the same group of graders who open up vintage packs that have been sent in to be graded and then tell the sender it was already opened. Basically, there is level of graders at PSA and only a handful of veteran graders are allowed to touch the top tier cards and products worth the most money. Nobody else sees those cards. All the lower bottom tier cards goes to the typical grunt worker to grade. The handful of graders who are allowed to touch the top tier products have a side hustle going and selling graded cards and products under aliases and through other people at auctions and other places like eBay to make a ton of money on cards they take and switch. But no matter what, nobody will believe this and everyone still pays a ridiculous amount to get their cards graded and get scammed. PSA is one of the biggest scams and has a bunch of thieves working there. I honestly can't believe the FBI hasn't sent someone in to investigate this place. They spend a lot of time on criminals who sell fake sports autographs but don't investigate the PSA.
I'm going to send in an Archelos lagoon mystic, ultimate commander flex lol. Solid video man. Sometimes grading is like completely subjective, had a buddy who got a 5 cracked resubmitted the next day got an 7.5
With todays technology, no reason why grading can’t be computer controlled. A scan of the card and the scanner would find all flaws on the front and back and through an algorithm, a grade is determined.
Scanners can’t cut my card in half to prove its real
@@samnater he’s got a point
Purplemana is working on grading/authentication algorithm/software. They mention it on their ytube channel.
I have yet to see a good scan of a foil card.
This is why I won't get my cards graded. Maybe one day when companies are held accountable for properly grading. It's become such a scam. Too high a price for too long a wait and too much inconsistency.
first card, minor crush on the mid right side halfway up. Card is not pristine with that bend. Not sure if I'd call it a 5...
Second card is also bent at the top across
I keep my cards raw. Who knows when PSA scandal articles might come out and lower the prices of cards.
had a friend with a 9 worthy card get set back for being 'recolored,' we looked it over like crazy, couldn't figure out why, so we sent it back and they graded it the second time. still charged us for both times even though the first time was just stealing money from us :))))
I freaking love case breaking videos
From my experience my Psa 5s that I thought were NM/M after a lot of checking I found very small indents which I’ll send to BGS who’ll only smack surface to prob 6-9 range depending how they view it.
Yeah, I could see the indents and nicks all over that 2nd card he cracked. 5 was probably about right
Yay! No 20 mins bookshelf talk!
Favoritism is very real if you know people on the inside and when it comes to grading, they can tell you that there is guidelines they follow but at the end is just their opinion on a number. I seen cards with very similar defects get 2 different grades and the one with a worst ding get the higher grade.
Turkin Deathlock has what looks like pen marks on the back by the T in Deckmaster... that will do it...
At 3:50 you I can see a slight bend that goes down the whole left side
sent a bunch of mint cards, everything came back 9 and some 8 but there was one random 6 .
the cards is MINT should have been at least a 9 but somehow it got a 6 . did I mention it was a charizard ....
They are not grading banned cards?
That is just insane. I think they are extremely overwhelmed with work.
thats the whole world now bud, wrongthink = bye bye.
I sent 3 unlimited charizards in right before the Logan Paul frenzy had to wait a year and got a 4/5/6. One was easily a 7 or 8.
So F'n scandalous. These people at psa give their insider sweetheart deals to people they "know" and trust. It's a huge criminal scam and they think their clever in getting away with it cause its all subjective. They need to be sued into the ground.
Set up a rouse, pull cards previoysly graded, see what they come back as, do it again, do it again, and do it again. Document it and have a lawyer know about it.
Psa is very strict with vintage cards
3:52 - 1st card has a vertical bend all the way down the left quarter part of card
Man I got some at PSA and now I'm terrified this is going to happen to me! I've graded cards with SGC and they were fantastic, a bit harsh on centering but otherwise really nice company to deal with. I also got cards and BGS but still haven't got them back.
Those Alpha cards you have there looked amazing!
I've used SGC a lot since PSA backed up. They grade fairly. I've never had a complaint on their grading and I am a fan of their slabs. I'll likely make SGC my go to now.
@@joshuas3212 I wish they had a QR code on the back of the slab and maybe sub-grades. My favourite slab is BGS but they seem the most archaic compared to SGC and PSA.
Wow... That definitely an eye opener. What do you do in this situation?
I have a lot of OG cards from back in the day, I'm talking Mishra's Workshop, Moat etc. I refuse to get them graded even though they're in great condition. I don't want anyone deciding for me the actual value via the condition that they apply to them, besides paying them to do it...
It may not be the best use of money, but PSA can slab the card and write "Authentic" instead of a grade.
@@charlesluo3114 Why would anybody want to do that? Slabs don't actually protect the cards any better than toploaders and card savers do.