Please Grade My Gretzky Rookie
MartinH
Posts: 29 ✭
Greetings All,
I have been a long time collector of comics and have a fairly complete understanding of the grading process them. That being said, I have limited knowledge of card grading and I am asking for your help and feedback. Recently , I decided to assess my cards and needless to say I have a few big ones.To keep it simple , I will start with a Gretzky Rookie. Would you kindly provide some expertise and experience and assess this card for potential grade? Please see the photos that were taken with an i-Phone in the penny sleeve because I did not want to remove it for fear of damaging it. I hope that they are adequate for viewing and assessing.
The card has some curvature from storage - otherwise it looks perfect to me but what do I know.
Comments
Looks like some centering/tilt issues and a couple "touched" corners, but a beautiful card...PSA-7?
Nice card and what a legend! I see the centering and alignment issues and the dinged corners. Unfortunately, I think those are going to be problematic in the grading. Check out this link to a PSA 4 on EBay...I use this example because the photos are really clear. You can see that the card has overall pretty decent eye-appeal but is off-center and particularly the lower edge and corners are scuffed. I would say yours might get a 4 or 5 but with a chance at a 6.
6
Nice looking card!!! I would guess it would grade PSA 6 because of the OC and couple of soft corners.
Thank you all for the feedback- I really appreciate it. This card does not show soft corners in person. I think that the penny sleeve is somehow obscuring the picture. Can you tell me how much of a hit PSA deems for the off center designation as shown ?
I'm saying 6 as well at best, I see 3 not so minor corner touches and centering is 80/20 at it's worst on the front.
6
Collecting:
post world war II HOF rookie
76 topps gem mint 10 commons 9 stars
Arenado purple refractors(Rockies) Red (Cardinals)
successful deals with Keevan, Grote15, 1954, mbogoman
6
i'm sorry i am backed up right now. your estimated wait time is roughly 13 months.
Very Funny
Just sub it for $150 or $300 depending on how long you want to wait. Then they will upcharge you if it grades"too high"!
Nice card.
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
Its definitely going to be slabbed. The big question is whether I take a flight to PSA to deliver in person.
I have many other key cards that I will ask for help with as well. Larry Bird/Magic Rookie, Montana , LT, Harry Carson just for starters. I have not even investigated my baseball sets. The aggregate of what I have is yet to be determined. Finding the time to pull and document is difficult between job,family etc.. I am being as meticulous as possible.
The pictures of this one is definitely not showing an accurate depiction of the card. I will remove it from the card saver and take better photos tomorrow.
My thoughts are that without grade qualifiers, your ceiling would be about a 7 just based on the centering (even if everything else about the card is perfect).
Then factor in the other card traits to see if they fit within the "7" guidelines or if they might bring the card down from there...
Either way though, it's a nice card
I do not believe PSA accepts in person submissions.
When we say soft corners, we aren't referring to rounded or even fuzzy corners. We are saying that the corners aren't perfect and at one time or another, the corners were touched. Please also realize that a card coming straight out of a pack in the 80's probably grades about an 8. A 9 or 10 is an exceptional card.
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Successful transactions on the BST boards with rtimmer, coincoins, gerard, tincup, tjm965, MMR, mission16, dirtygoldman, AUandAG, deadmunny, thedutymon, leadoff4, Kid4HOF03, BRI2327, colebear, mcholke, rpcolettrane, rockdjrw, publius, quik, kalinefan, Allen, JackWESQ, CON40, Griffeyfan2430, blue227, Tiggs2012, ndleo, CDsNuts, ve3rules, doh, MurphDawg, tennessebanker, and gene1978.
Thank you all for the informative comments.
I am glad that you advised me on the centering. With comic grading companies do not ding grades as hard due to miswrapped covers that are off center . Eye appeal is off but they can obtain the highest grades as long as other factors are good.
Dot Store- How do you physically measure off center cards? Can a novice to card grading do this?
JoeBanzai- I thought PSA had a walk through submission process by appointment? Can anyone advise on this?
Thanks to all - you guys are supremely helpful and I appreciate all the kind comments and advice.
Technically they have a "walk through" service level, but it is not that you actually get to walk it in and through! You just get $10k of declared value for $600. Unless you are subbing cards worth $100k+ or so, you don't get to hand deliver anything to PSA Santa Ana. It is a closed to the public secure facility. Just package your cards properly, add a little insurance if you want, and pray. But you don't have anything in the I'm gonna fly down there worthy department. If you had a 10 or mabye a 9 yes, but 8's and down, no. Now if your other cards are 5 figure cards, then it's a different discussion.
You probably need cards worth $50k plus to drop off in person, maybe even higher with Covid. Walk thru service level is just the name for the $10k declared value level at $600 per card.
I would submit this card at the $150 express level. I wouldn't waste money at the walkthrough level, since paying $600 to grade a card that is worth, at most, $3200 in a PSA 6 is insane. The more that I look at this card, I'd say you're likely to receive a grade of 5 or 5.5
There's Top/Bottom centering, and Left/Right Centering. For this card it's basically the outer-most black lines to the edges of the card.
Taking one of the pictures you provided, and some image-editing you can physically get an idea of your centering. If the Left-right centering were 50-50, then than would mean the amount of BLUE from the outer-most black line to the left and right edge are identical on both sides of the card. The Left-right centering on this card is worse than Top-Bottom, and looks somewhere between 80-20 to 75-25 (Left vs. Right).
With your favorite photo-editing tool, just crop off the "narrower" side, and paste a few. Then see how many it takes to match the "wider" side.
75-25 would mean 3:1 (in other words, you would need 3 of the narrow side to equal the wider side).
80-20 would be 4:1 (4 narrow sides to equal one wider side).
Your card just misses 75-25 (because 3 of the right side did not make up the left side) -- and that's the cutoff for a 7. So maybe this is a 6 at best (or 6.5 at best since centering is just outside the 75-25)
Here is the right-side border pasted in 3 times to illustrate what I mean... Also, looking at the bottom-left corner you can see it appears to flair up a little bit. Not sure if it's just the plastic, but it looks like it's the corner of the card -- which will take away from the corner grading...
For this card the centering is basically the outer most black line to the edge of the card. The Left-Right centering is worse than the Top/Bottom. So if you have photo-editing you can crop the bottom-right border and paste it in a few times to see how many of the narrower right side make up the width of the wider left side.
75-25 centering would be 3:1 (or 3 of the narrow side to make up 1 of the wider side)
80-20 would be 4:1 (4 of the narrow side make up 1 of the wider side).
Here is your card with a section of the bottom-right pasted in -- you can see that 3 of them don't make up the left side. So this card is slightly worse than 75-25. And that is the cutoff for a grade of 7, so maybe the ceiling for this card is 6 or 6.5?
Also, notice the point of the bottom left corner appears to flair up slightly. That could be the plastic, but it looks more like the actual corner of the card -- and that will take away from the grading of the corners.
Thank You - I had no idea that you could determine centering this way. I appreciate your clear depiction. I have to say that I had higher expectations on this card. I knew that a 10 was probably just a fantasy . Realistically I was hoping for a potential 8. I will post better pictures tomorrow.
So I removed this card from the penny sleeve and took new pictures. I was hoping that you guys can take another look and let me know your thoughts. Can you tell me if the potential grade is better, worse or remains the same?
Thanks again for all your advice!
Still looks 6 at best. If it was just OC that would make it a 7. Add in the touched corners and a 6 seems like the "best" outcome.
Still a 6, upper left and lower right corners (from the front) look fine for a higher grade, the other two put you in the EXMT range.
I think a 6 is the best you can get. A nice looking one for sure.
Thanks all. I was hoping to hear that maybe you guys would think it would grade higher.
I am going to submit this.
Con you tell me what tier you would suggest? Also , is it beneficial to check qualifiers?
I would send it express for $150. The next level is $300 and that really is for PSA 7's. So if 6-8 weeks is too long to wait, you can cut it down to 2 weeks for $300.
Thanks- are there benefits to checking the qualifier box or is it best to leave this off??
Kindly advise
I still say 6 as well, maybe 5. I certainly don't see a 7.
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Successful transactions on the BST boards with rtimmer, coincoins, gerard, tincup, tjm965, MMR, mission16, dirtygoldman, AUandAG, deadmunny, thedutymon, leadoff4, Kid4HOF03, BRI2327, colebear, mcholke, rpcolettrane, rockdjrw, publius, quik, kalinefan, Allen, JackWESQ, CON40, Griffeyfan2430, blue227, Tiggs2012, ndleo, CDsNuts, ve3rules, doh, MurphDawg, tennessebanker, and gene1978.
I wouldn't bother worrying about qualifiers.
Very nice card. I agree with most that predict a 6.
Thanks to all. Much appreciated. I’ll let you know how it does.🤞
3/13/21 - your sub has been logged.
Unfortunately, I anticipated delays in submission completions. With my comics, for the past year the average grade time for some submissions has been around 6-7 months. That’s insane- Additionally it sometimes it takes almost a month to mark them received. I used to avoid this by submitting at shows.
Last month I placed my first regular card sub with PSA. It was received and documented within one week . It is at stage one and has not moved since. My expectations are not high for a quick return.
I was hoping to submit my higher end cards at a PSA / Card show but COVID seems to have put an end to that for now. Does anyone know if there is an upcoming show in the NY/NJ/CT area where PSA will be to accept in person subs??
I would think that they would NOT do any shows unless they are sponsoring, for 1.) putting employees at risk of the 'Rona, and 2.) They don't need to work that hard to get submissions, the submissions come to them by delivery in droves!