Why would you want to grade your cards at PSA?

Introduction:
On this page, we delve into the details of why card grading at PSA is SO attractive that we have several thousand customers a year who send us several 1000 views of cards every month that we process and send for grading. Why is that really SO popular?

It can be an attractive form of investment:
Grading is incredibly popular, partly because it can greatly increase the value of your trading card. In other words, it can be a very attractive investment method, but grading is about more than just kroner and øre. Many collectors and investors in this hobby maximize the value of their collectibles by having them 3-party appraised. This concept is actually not new! There was a time when stamps were the big thing. At that time, they also checked whether the stamp was in good condition. Condition and price of collector's items are related! Whether it is your special Kahler vase, your beautiful designer sofa, your rare sneakers or whether it is trading cards, the principle is the same. The more "mint" or "gem-mint" your objects are, the more they are worth. Ask yourself if you would pay full price for the Kahler vase if there was a large chip in the vase? Would you pay full price for the couch if there was a big stain on it? The same applies to cards! Within trading cards, the most popular and recognized place to get your objects is the 3-party valuation company PSA. 
LetsGradeCards is an official dealer with PSA, which means that PSA has approved LetsGradeCards to accept cards on behalf of others and submit them to PSA based on their strict guidelines. 

Agreement on the price:
When we get our card graded at PSA, we are typically not the only ones who have had that thought about a given card. This means that in the vast majority of cases there is already a documented valuation on your card in a certain grade. When you once in your life want to sell or exchange your card, it is much easier to agree on the price, as value versus condition is well documented. In contrast to cards that have not been graded, cases can easily arise where the buyer and seller disagree about the condition and therefore also the real value of the card. Be careful that you don't end up in a situation where you pay the price for a "RAW" card equivalent to a PSA 8, 9 or 10 if your card cannot achieve this grade at PSA. In this case, your investment in getting your card graded will not have a positive effect for you. 

Your card is real!
Grading is about more than just adding value!
Grading by PSA is also a blue stamp that your card is genuine! - Especially for older cards or certain coveted cards, it can be important to know that one's card is actually real. As part of the concept of getting your card PSA graded, it is also covered that your card is genuine. You simply cannot encapsulate your card if it is fake. 

Protection:
We spend an incredible amount of money in the hobby to protect our cards. Everything from plastic pockets, simi-rigid holders to folders etc. By having your card encapsulated at PSA, it also helps to give your card the ultimate protection. It takes an extremely long time before a "slack" breaks in such a violent way that it affects the card itself. It can be done, and one should always protect one's "slaps", but you cannot get a better protected card than a graded card from PSA. This means in practice that the condition your card is in when it is graded at PSA, also in theory, if you take care of your slips, it will be the same in 100 years. Your rare card can therefore go for generations without the card's condition deteriorating. 

Your card will become more rare in some cases. 
When you grade your cards, it will also be possible to see a so-called "POP" report. A population report is a status from PSA that shows you how many of your card are graded in each grade in their grading scale. This means that if you have a lot of produced TCG cards, where you do not know the exact origin of the card, then you can directly see through PSA how many cards they have graded in a given grade. When you as a collector have a popular card between your fingers that you have been lucky enough to receive a good grade on, it is easier for us to see how rare our cards have actually become. If, for example, you have a card in a 10 where you know that there are only 500 other copies in the world that have been awarded this grade, then it makes your card much more attractive, which is also the reason why there can be a large increase in value on certain cards. The hobby and for that matter all kinds of collections are very much about supply and demand. So if you have something that many people want to get hold of, but there are not many copies, this has an incredible value advantage for you as a collector. Grading can help you make your cards more desirable than if you hadn't graded your cards. 

There is sport in it!
When you first experience the joy and sense of success of achieving a PSA 10, it can make you completely "high" and full of joy. Getting 10 on a card isn't easy, and it shouldn't be! However, it quickly becomes a sport to be able to spot cards that have a high chance of achieving a high grade. Grading is always a "sure thing", especially since PSA's X-Factor concerns "Eye-appeal" plays a bigger role than realises. That's why it's fun to test yourself and see how sharp you are in your own assessments. 

Tips and Tricks:
It may be useful for you to evaluate your own cards and guess what grade your card can achieve. In our "knowledge center" we have an in-depth guide on PSA's grading scale that you can use to familiarize yourself with it. Knowledge requires time and work, but there is only one person who can do this work for you - it is YOU! 

When you want to send cards for grading, guess your future grades and write them down on a piece of paper. When your cards come back from PSA, you compare your original notes against the purely actual scores. Do you see why your card got an 8 and not a 9? examine your slabs and familiarize yourself with the difference between 2 grades. In the long run you will become a true grading master, but you must be prepared that, like everything else, there is a certain kind of learning curve in becoming a master in the field. 

The right things in your toolbox:
The absolute must-have tool in your toolbox when you want to guess your future grade is a "magnifying lamp". A magnifying lamp is a lamp with powerful light that contains a magnifying glass. When you CAREFULLY inspect your map using a magnifying glass you have the opportunity (especially on the surface) to be able to see things that we tend to overlook with the naked eye. You can Google your way to a magnifying lamp according to your taste. A lamp can be bought for less than DKK 500 and is therefore an incredibly good investment. When you have de-selected 3 cards that you do not want to send in anyway because the condition cannot be justified, you have saved more than what your lamp has cost you in grading fees. 

It is possible to purchase a "centering tool" that can help you see/measure the exact centering on a map. These tools can be purchased in several places on the Internet. It must be said for this tool that with experience and an eye for detail you can easily see centering with the naked eye. However, the tool is useful in situations where you have a card that is right on the border between a PSA 9 and a PSA 10, to measure whether there is a mathematical chance of a PSA 10. However, remember to take "eye-appeal" into account. If you can see with the naked eye that the map is not visually perfect, the chance of PSA 9 is greater than PSA 10, even if your centering is within the accepted limit. 

Research, research and more research!
We have in our knowledge center a complete guide on how to get started more easily and become an expert in researching your cards, so here are just a few highlights. 

Research the value of your card without it being graded! - You can do this, for example, on market platforms such as Cardmarked, eBay, etc. When you have guessed what grade your card can achieve, you do the same exercise again, only where you search for the value in the specific PSA graded condition you think your card will achieve. What is the difference between the value the card has NOW (RAW) and in a PSA graded version in the grade you have guessed? - Is the difference greater or less than it costs you to send your card for grading? - This is an ultimate answer to "does it make sense". You can therefore not give a concrete answer to this question and it is therefore our opinion that you yourself as a collector should do your preparatory work. LetsGradeCards ApS does not "guess" the customers' cards! - We can say that we think it is a good candidate, but we will never come up with a concrete assessment. In fact, this is heralded as an official PSA dealer. Our function in the market is to be as informative in all grading-related areas as possible, and when we process the customers' cards, that we do this with enormous precision and love for the individual cards, so that nothing happens to a card in our care. That is why we at LetsGradeCards place your cards in a secured room and safe when we are not processing your cards. Our "no food, no drink" policy for our internal staff states that we must not eat or drink anything near the customers' cards to ensure we do not waste on your property. Last but not least, it is our position that we never touch your card directly when it can be avoided, and if we absolutely have to touch your card, for example because we have to change the sleeve on your card, that we do this based on a method that continues to protect your card.  

Flow and economy for the more serious collector:
Last but not least, we will come up with some good advice and tips to get the finances together. For the vast majority of people, grading is expensive. Not just a little expensive, but VERY expensive. Since it costs anywhere from DKK 180 to DKK 650 per card to get it graded, one's costs can be unmanageably high by getting one's cards graded, and therefore we will give a little tip in the area, so that it doesn't feel quite so overwhelming. The method we reveal here is a method that several of the internal employees use with great success. However, it must be said that there is a "start-up phase" and that the method requires time and patience for it to be effective. 

Basically, it is about firstly sending regularly for grading. When you choose to send 10 cards for grading, it may be wise for you to send 1-3 cards with which you actually think you will sell when they come back from PSA. In many cases, once you've become a master at picking your cards, there can be such a big increase in value on your cards that these 1-3 cards sponsor costs on the other cards, putting you in a position to submit more cards for grading. Since there can be a long waiting time at PSA (also called turn around time), you may be exposed to having to wait a long time for your card to be returned and therefore it can be a slow process to build up a solid flow, especially for collectors who do not have the opportunity to send in cards for grading every single month. Slowly as time goes by, however, this becomes easier and easier and your "hobby economy" and flow in your own collection can reach heights where you hardly notice that you are spending money on grading. This naturally assumes that you are here "for the long run" and that you can reflect yourself in this strategy. 

Finally, we want to remind everyone why we are here! - We are here because it is fun to collect, and the vast majority started in this hobby as a child and as an adult you have rediscovered the joy in cards. Remember that collecting is first and foremost about having fun, meeting others you can geek out with and watching your collection grow, and although grading is great, you can get a few "hits" once in a while. Take it for what it is. Enjoy your successes when they are there and learn from the times when things didn't go quite as planned. But remember to have fun, it's alpha-omega!