PSA Grading: 5 Steps to Prep Your Cards for PSA in 2021!

Today in Sports Card Investor, the five

steps

you need to take to submit

cards

for

grading

and brought in an expert to give us the inside scoop. Hello sports card investors and welcome to a very special episode. We will

prep

are you with everything you need. I need to know how to

prep

are

your

cards

for psa

grading

and then how to submit them. In fact, this is going to be a two-part series where we're going to dive in and get you ready to do this, and I've brought in a real ratings expert to help give us the inside scoop today joe davis from gotbaseballcards.com welcome joe thanks jeff it's great to be here with you looking forward to helping all of

your

customers absolutely joe's store here in atlanta sends out thousands and thousands of cards to qualify for psa every month so it's great to have him on the program.

Today we will gain a lot of experience. There are two ways you can submit cards to psa for grading. The first is that you can go directly. a psa, you can find information about it on their website. The second is that you can access a mass mailing service and I am very happy to announce that Joe and I have partnered to offer you the mass mailing service of sports card investors for psa grading and through our partnership we often You can get better prices, better results, and a higher level of service than you can through PSA Direct, so if you're considering submitting to PSA for a rating, consider submitting via our bulk submission service to find out everything. . about it and to register your cards, all you have to do is go to sportscardinvestor.com and click on rating in the main menu bar, but regardless of whether you use our mass mailing service or go directly to psa, this episode is for because today we're going to tell you the five things you need to know and do to get your cards ready for grading, let's go ahead and get started, okay Joe, so the first question everyone has when they want to send cards to grading is what cards you choose to get graded, when, when you're actually going to get value from grading a card, so if someone has a bunch of cards and they're trying to figure out what's worth grading, what's not worth grading, how?

They make that decision well, usually the first thing we recommend is to take your cards to eBay and complete them using the marketplace engines. You already know some framework for finding qualified values. They know if they have a Griffy Donris rookie or them. First of all, we have a newbie on the upper deck before we can get involved. You know what the condition is: if the card is perfect or meets the gem, it will be worth investing the grid on it or not, so we always recommend. Do you know what this card is exchanged for right now?

At an 8 or a 9 or a 10 and then they can make a determination. You know it's worth putting the money into downgrading it. That being said, we do have some customers who send us their personal collection and sometimes we go, you know why they're growing this card, but if it's their childhood card or they're their favorite players and they just want to grade each card from, you know, don Sutton or whoever your favorite was, then it's not always like that. only about resale value, sometimes they just want it appraised on the condition that it is worth it.

You know they want to have eights or better in their collection, regardless of value, but if you're just talking about investing, reselling, you know, see what the market is. is on that card in different conditions, then make that determination and maybe there's a general rule of thumb. I'll tell you personally. I will often look to see if the card in psa 10 is selling for at least 100 or more if it is selling. for under 100 on a psa 10 personally i will often choose not to submit it for grading and just sell it raw if i am going to sell the card, but is that a good rule of thumb or what do you advise our rule?

Generally speaking, about half is okay, but because my son and I buy a lot of modern rookie prospects for a lot of young guys and we'll tell them you know if this is a 50 10 and we'll buy them for four or five. dollars per card you know there's some margin there and we think you know this rate could continue to go up over time so that's our rule of thumb we think if you can get 50 dollars out of 10 and you're buying the card for less than 10, you can still let him know that you can get a good return, that's a fair point for sure, so I guess part of it depends on the spread between the raw price and the graded price because, like you said, 50. times 10 is a good return if you buy those cards for four or five dollars, whereas if the raw cards are 20 dollars, obviously you want to see a little bit more multiplier there, okay, very, very.

Well, any other factors that people need to consider, obviously the condition which we'll talk about in a minute and let people evaluate the condition, but other than value or whether it's a worthy personal collection for them, anything other than a person wants to consider. Well, be careful with the trends at the moment because you have to keep in mind that you will be waiting, if you are paying, you know the modern service or the ultra-modern, the slower services will be. Wait a while to get them back, so just because a guy hit a home run in the world series and you know he got a lot of status that day doesn't mean six months later he'll still be hot, so I have to think long term if it's going to be worth the investment. money in money within six months, not just in the next month.

Yes, that is a very, very good point. On the contrary, I suppose the same is also true if a player Maybe he is not as well known today, his cards are not highly valued today, but you think that two years from now he has the opportunity to see his cards improve, so maybe you would like to get them rated today so that when it becomes attractive, you. Maybe you are one of the few who have already graded cards from that player and can put them on the market. Yeah, I mean, Michael Porter Jr. is a good example from last year, we had people rating him not based on what he was doing. the moment, but what they expected him to do this season as he played more on time, you know, so yeah, someone is predicting where those players will be in the future and I want to give everyone a big recommendation to look for those values.

To determine how much cards are worth, there is a great free way to do it and that is to use our sports card investor app. In fact, it's the easiest way to look up your card values ​​in psa 10 condition, psa 9 condition, as well as raw condition so you know what that spread is, you can get the sports card investor app by going to app store on your phone and looking for sports card investor, it's totally free, okay, let's talk about the evaluation of the condition of the cards because I know. that has such a big impact on value so psa will look at your cards based on four factors and those four factors will determine the grades and of course you want to get the best grade possible because the psa 10 is always going to sell for a large multiplier over what a psa 9 would sell for and that will sell for a multiplier over what a lower grade will sell for, so what are those factors that matter when it comes to grading and more importantly, How can someone who is reviewing your cards tell you if your card has the four really important factors and has the potential to get a PSA 10 rating.

First, I would start by focusing whenever I evaluate cards for purchase or grading. my own collection, the first thing I look at is centering and that was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn. We started shipping psa cards in 1998 and I remember my first batch, I bought a big stack of tony win rookies and it was like what 80c is, you know? I had no idea that you know centering was so critical, but when you start getting a lot of off-center grades, you learn it very quickly because it becomes very painful financially, so I brought up a couple of examples, uh, I'll just start with the most extreme, which is that I have a 72 top hank aaron in action, which is completely, oh yeah, you can say it, I mean, there's no doubt that focusing on that card is wrong, yeah, and so on.

You often know this card is almost miscut, it's so far away but it's blatantly off center from left to right. Centering we measure things in numbers, and clients often ask what do you focus on, which this is about 99 one right because you. You have and what I'm saying by that is you have approximately if you add it from the left edge to the right edge and that equals 100, what percentage is on each side and then you do the same thing? with the top edge and the bottom edge so this one is blatantly off center i wouldn't rate well because of that they get more subtle this card has been all the rage lately david robinson rookie 89 hoops this one is more like 70 30. you know you got i have a little edge on the other side but still off center enough that it has no chance of being a psa 10. yeah yeah 75 nolan ryan yeah same thing yeah this one is like 90 10 Ya you know it again and then he brought up an example of a graded card from my abraham lincoln 72 tops collection, which has nice 80c corners and edges, but too much edge on the top, etc., and that's an interesting point because a lot of people , when they look at centering, they look left and they look right and that's important, but so is the top and bottom and sometimes you can end up with a card that's actually well centered left and right, but not in the upper center and I saw it especially with many of the older ones. cards like when you talk about cards from the 80s and 70s you see it moves a lot up or down on the card yeah so I brought a perfectly centered Mickey Mouse look this is a 57 Barrett uh Mickey Mouse Nine , yes with Almost Perfect, it's a mini card with almost perfect edges in every way, perfect centering, yes you can notice the centering on that for sure, so that's the first thing, and psa allows you a little bit of variation, no it has to be like that. dead 50 50 to get a 10.

They give you a little bit of wiggle room on both sides, but not much, sure, yeah, I mean, normally, if you're 55 45, you have a chance, I mean, I've seen dozens. that's what I thought it was 60 40 but it's weird it's weird usually they have to be for the visual eye you need to feel it I mean I say I use the field test like you know this feels pretty good to you. knowing that I have a chance and that's the first thing I start with when we shortlist cards for clients and they say, hey, we're really aiming for nines and tens, that's the first thing because, uh, the prism is perfect.

For example, in the prison, in the last two years there has been a lot of decentering and often immediately, when we review a customer's order, we say no, no, no, and we don't have to look at the corners and edges because we know. Right off the bat the centering is too far away to get a high rating, that's fine but it's not just the centering it's the corners too, I know that's a big deal tell us about that. Yes, I bring you a couple of examples here. This is a classic 74 Nolan Run Ryan card. uh, but what do you see immediately?

Yeah, one corner on the top left is definitely some kind of chip, yeah, so we often use them, that's a pretty obvious example. We often use, we sell these magnifiers and we recommend that it be a 10 power loop. Other cards you need to magnify more, so we'll put the card literally right up against the corner and look at it and like the top right corner looks pretty good to the naked eye. view, you put it under here and you can see that there are also many. There is a lot of fluff on it so you know their psa is not doing this by eye, they are using professional equipment to examine the cards so you need to check all four corners especially on older cards like on a white border, a white card like that. with a white border the magnification helps enormously, you know, if you have a 71 top card, you know that with the black borders it stands out much more, it is much more noticeable to the naked eye here, here is an example of a 93 jeter auto that It's been a very popular Trend, you know, and from me to you, it looks pretty good, yeah, from here it looks good and I was actually going to grade this card this week and then I took a closer look at it and as you can see in the top right corner, oh yeah, it is. a little bit, yeah, it's a little bit pushed back in the top right corner, I see what you're saying there, yeah, sure, so it's a card at a glance that looks pretty good, uh, when you look at it more than close and certainly with magnification, this would probably be a rating of six.

Wow, that's a big difference just because that corner is dented because it's a bad dent, it's not just a touch, it's almost like a minor crease in that corner, so you have to do it and like I tell people. Since there are such small variations when you get to 7 8 9 10, smaller factors can change that rating, so we receiveclients all the time calling us like, oh, all my cards are gems, they're all gems, you know? so we thought you know there are a lot of factors that maybe you're not thinking about so you know the corners are very important you have to pay attention to each one of them and then talk to me about the edges and You know, the edges around the card, I know that also influences, yes, it normally does, that's the order.

I start by centering and then the corners, that's the next most obvious thing. Edges sometimes require a little more attention and detail. For uh, I brought here a very bonus 86.uh, another very attractive card, we just sold one today for almost eight hundred dollars for a 10. This one looks pretty clean, the centering is a little off, but if you look at the edge top, oh yeah, you can see there's a little bit of kind of You know, the edge wear there is not a clean edge on the top and you have to be very aware that on cards with a black border, you know that the bottom edge , of course, it's white, the top edges are black, so I call white chip.

I know there are white chips on the top and you have to be careful because you basically have a seven or eight in your hand here, although the rest of the card is pretty clean, but the top edge is chipped and then I also brought a 92 jeter . classic, which unfortunately I have a stack of these and they all have the same problem you can probably spot pretty quickly there, yeah, it's not a black board, yeah, but right at the top, once again, you see it's not a border clean. the edge looks a little frayed you see a little bit of white through that edge at the top yeah so you know you go you go from the corners excuse me center the corner edges each one of them is of critical importance and then you get to probably the Sometimes the hardest thing to grasp, which of course is the surface, and these are the problems of the surface, it's what has gotten me in the previous grades, when I sent cards and thought: "Oh, this card is perfect, this card is going to be a 10 and it comes back as an eight and I think what the hell happened and I'll look at it, you know, really close at the case and I'll turn it under the light and then all of a sudden, I will see a small defect on the surface a little print line or some kind of small scratch on the surface, particularly with modern chrome cards, your prisms, those types of cards can happen frequently and it's often hard to tell unless you look at it closely, right?

We'll start with a classic example here, this is a 62 strikeout leaders with cofax again to the naked eye it looks pretty good it looks good from here oh yeah, yeah, I can see there's some marks there. , yes, some kind of residue, you can almost feel it. the surface is like oh yeah sure you can, yeah there's just a little bit of almost transparent residue, but there's something there on the card, so you know this with that grade, you're probably a five at best, you can knock it down. very quickly, that is why it is important to observe all these factors.

Yeah, I got one too. In fact, I was going to rate this one here in Atlanta. We love Chipper Jones. We got a 91 chipper on the top and on the bottom you can see just a small spot on the bottom edge. there yes, yes, it has yes, a little bit of stain, yes, so again you know you probably have a seven here just with that little stain, so while you were talking about what we see more of today with Service problems are cards modern prismatics, chrome prism, so that's one of the things because the prismatic and chrome cards come out of the package.

Phoenix Cards. You know, optical cards. Typically your corners will be sharp. Your edges will be great. Your centered. They certainly vary, but surface area is often a problem even right out of the package. This is a 2012 prismatic cabin that I was actually prepared to ship today and I took a closer look at it and you can see on the top right that there is a little bit small. small scratch, it seems so, you only detect it if you look at it in a certain light and the conclusion is that you can't really expect a mint, not even a grid of nine mints on a card, it doesn't mean there is a surface problem, it's minimal , You know? and I've had clients come in, you know, and I'll point out things that, seriously, they're going to get downgraded because of it.

Seriously, they'll know, so even the smallest thing like that, so that's one thing. Always encourage customers before they send us their prism and their trading cards and their best stuff. Any of those things, you know, look at the surface very closely because your edges are probably fine, your corners are probably fine if your centering is perfect, that's the one thing that will help you, so now you know to look for all of those factors: corners, edges, centering and surface. Let's say you've already done that and found some cards that look perfect in every way. Let's talk about what's next.

If you've identified cards that you think meet all the criteria for a Gem Mint grade, don't be too quick because something as small as a fingerprint you place on that card while you're preparing it to send it off for grading can cost you a Gem Mint. degree Joe, tell me about card cleaning and what people might want to do before sending out their cards. Yes, we always recommend to customers, of course, we are mainly talking about the modern chrome prism, the best, etc., so we always recommend to customers to take a look. look at the surface, we recommend using like a microfiber cloth and then check the card closely because they can do it easily.

This is not altering the card in any way, it just knows that a fingerprint is left on the top so you know they want to rub the card carefully. and don't add another fingerprint in the process and make sure it's clean, hold the edges, yeah, don't touch the surface of the card again once you've cleaned it, kind of defeated the purpose, slide it back into a soft case and then semi-rigid and send it so these are cheap. I recommend it to everyone. We do not clean in any way. We do not modify a cart in any way.

We always tell customers who know to prepare their car. We review them previously. You know, we check the surface, we check the edges of the corners, but there's a liability issue if I tell people, oh yeah, I'm going to do things with your card, you know, so we don't do it at all, we pre-check it. , but we do it. I recommend that customers, if they have chrome cards, look at them very closely and use a microfiber cloth to clean them because yes, I have had cards returned to me for customers, you know, and this is now a thing of the past since we learned this process and They'd say, "Oh man, my fingerprint is on there.

I have a Derek Jeter SP rookie card that's visible inside the PSA case. There's a fingerprint on the card, so what could I have rated higher?" "I probably would have rated higher." It may now be a card that needs to be torn up, cleaned, and resubmitted because that kind of thing can inadvertently cost you a grade. What kind of cloth? Joe. That's just a. It almost looks like the type of cloth you would use to clean. The sunglasses are like that, yeah, they're just a little microfiber, they actually come, this particular one that I have here comes with our magnifying glasses, okay, and because it's used to clean the surface of the glass, but it also cleans the chrome well , uh, so you don't have to spend, you don't have to break the budget, just something small and useful, you know, get some of them, you know, and clean those cards so the surface is nice and clean, awesome, yes, good things, good things, and you sell them. magnifying glasses and I guess those cloths come with them on gotbaseballcards.com, right, yeah, we'll have to put a link to that on our sports card investor site as well, in fact, we'll post it if you go to sportscardinvestor.com for our rating. page, we'll make sure to link to the magnifying glasses from there as well, okay, we've got our cards clean, we're ready to go we think, but now let's talk about the next step in the process, so if you send your cards directly to psa or through a bulk submission service like ours here at Sports Card Investor.

You have to create a list of the cards you are going to send. This is a process requirement and has to be a detailed list. So Joe, tell us about this process of creating this list. We have made it very easy for all its users. You can download the form directly at sportscardinvestor.com. You can download the simple Excel sheet. They can complete the information. Upload it. Right there, as soon as they're loaded, we capture all that information, so before the cards get to us, we already know they're on the way, we know what to expect, we have an online version of the form that we can use to verify their order, so basically we ask you to know that we have columns for quantity, brand, year, card number, player serial number, estimated value and then what level of service they are choosing, because we have some customers who, you know, they may just be grading a five dollar card but they want it back real quick so we need to know because you know we don't want to make assumptions about what level they want Joe let's also talk about the value of the cards because you said it's something you have to put in the spreadsheet is the value and that also affects the price you're going to pay to qualify.

You know, I mentioned that the sports card investor app is a great way for people to look up the value of many different types of cards, obviously, on the market. Moving companies are also for people who have a larger collection and are more serious about it from an investment point of view. Are they taking the raw value of the card? That's what they do when they put it in the spreadsheet. Yes, that has to be it. One of the most confusing parts of this process is that we send cards to psa based on the raw value of the card;

However, depending on the card ratings, let's say you have a card and the raw value of the card is 75, so you can send it. the basic service but then it has a rating of 10 and now it is worth 300. There is a good chance that psa will charge us more and therefore we have to charge the customer for the next level. Sometimes I think the best example is that I had a client before. Last year I sent a Jordan rookie who sent him for the first time. He was a Jordan that I'd had forever and I had to call him, you know, after he got a nine and I said, "You owe me $575." Great, and he told me to do whatever he wanted.

It was like you know, no, no, it's supposed to be like 250. I was like no, it's a nine, it's like, and then he and I were like, well, you know it shouldn't be more and I was like, I'm sorry. , that's the way. It works, we basically call it value based pricing, yeah you know that already, and that's common in other industries, cgc does it in the comics industry, so shippers need to be aware of that, so We try to save you as much money as possible. at the cheapest level we can, however there is a chance those charges will increase now, from what I've seen psa usually only do that if it's pretty cheeky, although it's true they won't, they often won't like it a type of micro gaze. like every card, it's a little bit over the top, if it's like the Jordan rookie case where the rating really catapulted the value of the card, there are cases that are a little more obvious where that could happen well and there's a a lot of bills we go back to where we are like, oh you know, they could have charged here, but they didn't, uh, when you know it's a 150 card and it was sent on the less than 100 service, you know that, so no You don't have to feel like you're going to be changed every time, yes, but it happens and it's at your discretion.

This is, by the way, one of my least favorite parts about how PSA sets its prices. well, no, I don't condone this, of course we are big fans and supporters of psa in general because we love the grading service and obviously Joe's, you know, is a big psa distributor and the bulk shipping service is working very good. Hopefully. would change this practice, maybe they will with the arrival of some of the new leaders, who knows, but as someone who sends in their cards to be graded, it is something to keep in mind, the good news is that the only time they would charge you like this It's if you got a really good rating that's causing the value of your card to potentially multiply many times over, so the pain of knowing, for example, that person has to pay a couple hundred dollars more to get their newbie in Jordan get a rating, hey buddy, you just got a Jordan Nine, that card is currently worth a hundred thousand dollars, probably at that time, you know, depending on when you're watching this video.

Oh yeah, yeah, I think he's the only one who's ever complained about being in church because everyone I've ever met. In fact, some clients even said boy, I hope I owe you a lot of money, that's right, because they expect some additional charges, that means they got a lot of high marks, yeah, great, so he already filled out his spreadsheet. you gave it back to himto Joe or sent it to PSA. The final step then I guess is to get your cards into the sleeves and pack them up and get them ready to use, so let's talk about that next, so it's time to send them out.

Go in to grade them, but first you have to holster them, you have to pack them. Joe, take us through this process. Yes, this is where we have problems when we receive them, so we love educating viewers about this process. We highly recommend first. Of all the uses for card protectors, this is what psa asks us to send them to, so we might as well start with that minor card handling and that's not a normal rigid top loader, but kind of a semi-rigid one. These are special products called card protectors. You have to buy a pack of those on Amazon or eBay or you can buy them directly through Joe.

I have baseball cards. Yes, graders prefer not to receive them in higher loads. We prefer not to see them and not receive them. higher loads, but when we do, we receive them for customers, but we prefer to receive everything in card protectors. Also here is our recommendation. If you send vintage, if you send 50 60, you can put the card directly into the card protector if we are sending modern chrome and prism. We highly recommend using a soft case, first put it in a penny case and we also recommend not just a standard penny case but an oversized one.

Interesting penny, the thick one, so the thick sleeve has problems with the new brand Beckett Shield that we sell. There is a thicker and wider 130 point penny sleeve, it is much easier to get the card in and out, you can literally damage a card. while you're holstering it, if you're not careful, these are a little bit wider, we went through thousands of these, you put them in the penny holster, then you put them in your RIB and once you've got them all packed up. in the order, hopefully, in the order that they were written on the shipping form, so we generally recommend using a small box that you know, you want it snug so the cards don't move around during shipping.

We generally recommend a small box inside a larger box and at the post office you get, you can get free priority mail boxes from the post office. um you know we sell cardboard boxes and you know something you have at home will probably work, but we pack them well so it doesn't change, put some peanuts or bubble wrap around the inside box and then use it as a mailbox big priority. We highly recommend shipping depending on the value you ship. We recommend adding insurance. We certainly recommend adding the required signature. We received dozens and dozens. of packages per day and we like the customer to be assured that it is worth, you know, five dollars or whatever the cost is right now, to have proof of delivery, you know, so that they can be assured that arrived here or if they will send it directly. to psa so they have proof that it got there so we highly recommend adding that extra step because you know we've had customers send us without a signature or insurance and then it floated around in the postal system for a few days and then they're panicking because it didn't they had coverage, yes, absolutely, yes, that is very good advice and of course when you send the cards through our mass mailing service at Sports Card Investor, you are actually sending the cards directly to Joe's card. buy here in atlanta joe's has a great card store and he has a team here every day to receive the cards immediately, put them in your review and grading queue and then send them out and then send them to psa, yes we have a very precise system, As much as we've been doing, sometimes we're processing, I think on New Year's Eve we said we made 2200 cards that day we wrote 2200 cards in one day, but we usually process about a thousand a day for clients and so on.

It's a constant process of shipments coming in, being reviewed, pre-screened, broken down by category and whether you know vintage, modern, ultra-modern and then expedited, etc., and then you know how to ship it, we ship the psa. several times a week they don't sit here, so we're going to do another video in a week where we'll talk about exactly what happens once your cards are sent and what that process looks like and what the

steps

are. If you are passing by and you need to know, don't forget to get the free sports card investor app in the app store so you can check the prices of the cards and if you really want to send a lot of cards and understand the value of your collection, then You'll want market drivers and you can find out all about market drivers by going to sportscardinvestor.com and clicking on market drivers in the main menu bar.

Joe, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for this, oh thank you for having me and we'll be back in a week with Joe again for the next part of our series on psa scoring, thank you.