Thomas J Beard

Thought I'd revisit this topic after a number of additional submissions to PSA and CSG. I now think theory 1 is the most likely. 1. Since the PSA report goes way back in time, the best cards have already been sent to PSA and have been graded and slabbed (mostly for vintage cards). The pool of high-grade vintage raw cards worthy of sending in for grading is nowhere near what it was 30 years ago when PSA first started up. The vintage or modern cards being graded by all the major card graders tend to be lower grades than they were 5-10 years ago. Ultra-modern seems to be the exception, which is further evidence that theory 1 is probably the closest to reality. I've heard that there are opinions that PSA is using a "population control" approach with older cards. My last couple of submissions have been to PSA and it seems that awarding an "8" has become much tougher than it used to be -- again, that's to be expected based on theory 1 above and the fact that they've almost certainly increased their scrutiny on potentially higher-valued cards not wanting to flood the market and drive down the value and perceived scarcity of a higher grade. I know that's not a very original observation. I still do think that CSG grades harder on centering and surface, while PSA seems to be tougher on edges/corners. PSA also seems to be much more strict at kicking out cards that don't meet their "minimum size" requirements than CSG, especially those that may have been in a screw-down holder for some time. Anyone have anything new to add?

The data methodology is over-simplified, but not invalid -- it's just a straight comparison of lifetime CSG and PSA population reports for a batch of popular cards. You can certainly argue that drawing any conclusions from this data isn't valid, and I agree with that. But I do think it's possible to float some theories to explain it. Why is there a consistent difference between CSG grades and PSA grades, in some cases a huge difference -- with CSG consistently having fewer 9+ cards and more 6 or lower? So far, the theories can be summarized as follows: 1. Since the PSA report goes way back in time, the best cards have already been sent to PSA and have been graded and slabbed (mostly for vintage cards). The pool of high-grade vintage raw cards worthy of sending in for grading is nowhere near what it was 30 years ago when PSA first started up 2. More recently, CSG offers the best pricing & turnaround times which allows for borderline gradable cards to be slabbed and still seem to make financial sense 3. If we looked only at data from 2021-22, the numbers might not be as different since PSA has tightened up some of their grading practices. This could probably be validated if I knew where to find PSA data for only those years (but I haven't tried too hard to find it). 4. CSG was using a different grading scale for their green flips, so it's not an apples-to-apple comparison (similar to Beckett, a 9.5 is a gem mint), although I combined 9, 9.5 and 10's together for both companies to try to eliminate this factor 5. I'll add one from my own personal experience (I'm a collector first, not an investor), collectors like to display their favorite cards so, for $12/card, it's not crazy to send in my 1960's Packers cards, regardless of grade, so I can have a nicer display. And that's exactly what I did. 6. Finally, CSG is just a tougher grader (especially on centering and surface) My original post suggested #6 as a part of the explanation. I can now see that the numbers could be explained by a number of other factors too, some that we probably haven't thought of yet. I do think that it would be interesting to see if someone could find data to make the case that they're the EASIER grader. I'd be intrigued to see that data.

Obviously, my quick data dump isn't a supposed to be a thorough analysis of the question and doesn't quality as a valid study. I would have just kept it to myself, except the numbers were WAY different, especially on some cards. Regardless of the diminishing numbers of raw vintage 9's and 10's out there, and regardless of the recent tendency for PSA to grade more strictly, it doesn't fully explain the differences. I still think that part of the difference has to be that CSG is the tougher grader. I guess the two comments show that there's plenty of room for debate. One the one hand, it's common knowledge that CSG is the tougher grader (I hope that's true, but is it really?), but on the other hand, the comparison is invalid because of two reasons: 1). the best cards are already in PSA slabs, and 2). PSA has gotten tougher over time. Maybe both points are correct to some degree. I may have time to try and do a better job of comparing apples to apples with 2020 data only, although if anyone else wants to update my data with new columns for the PSA percentages for that timeframe, that would be cool.

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I'm especially interested in any comments from CSG on this topic! I think they're doing everything right in my opinion. Very responsive customer service, great turnaround time, beautiful slabs, re-grading cards from other graders, etc. In no way am I suggesting they should ease up on their grading standards, it will pay off in the long run. What happens when it becomes common knowledge that PSA is the easier grader?

I've submitted a couple of batches of vintage cards (mostly) to CSG and my impression is that they're tough graders, but I hadn't really crunched the data to confim this. Now that the CSG population report is starting to get some high enough numbers, it's probably valid to compare how tough CSG is vs. PSA. I picked 10 cards that are amongst the highest population, plus some popular vintage cards. I copied a spreadsheet into the message, so the formatting isn't great but the results are a bit stunning: Year Company Player Set Num CSG Pop PSA Pop CSG < 6 PSA < 6 CSG 9+ PSA 9+ 1989 Topps Griffey Traded 41T 805 78592 1.5% 0.7% 54.9% 74.0% 1989 Upper Deck Griffey Base #1 987 88568 9.3% 5.5% 8.5% 36.0% 1989 Fleer Griffey #548 811 54854 2.2% 0.6% 25.2% 63.4% 1986 Topps Bonds Traded 11T 417 51570 1.0% 1.3% 15.8% 49.4% 1984 Topps Elway #63 265 19982 16.6% 7.0% 2.3% 14.2% 1981 Topps Montana #216 281 20946 27.0% 11.0% 2.5% 10.0% 1986 Topps Rice #161 448 26708 10.7% 6.2% 2.5% 4.1% 2018 Topps Acuna Traded #US250 324 32380 0.3% 0.2% 92.3% 95.4% 2019 Prizm Zion #248 222 39564 0.0% 0.0% 81.1% 96.3% 1970 Topps OJ Simpson #90 108 3310 59.3% 34.2% 0.0% 3.5% Based on these numbers, I can confidently say that CSG is the tougher grader -- in most cases WAY tougher. Check out the '89 Upper Deck Griffey. PSA has given a 9 or better to 36% vs. 8.5% for CSG. Ultra-modern seems closer, but still the scales tip toward CSG. Does anyone have any theories as to why this might be?