Death Grader is alive and well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
miami3
Posts: 216
Just got back from PSA a 75 card submission that was simply put- CRUCIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been submitting for about 6 years and collecting for over 20 years and kind of think that I know what I am
talking about when it comes to grading.
I have submitted over 18,000 cards in the past and very rarely come back with any 7's, let alone 6's........then yesterday I receive an email from PSA stating that my grades were available and I almost hit the floor when I saw what I got.
On a 75 card vintage common submission, I received only nineteen 8's and almost as many 7's and 6's.
A couple of older cards from 1952 came back as 5's but thats what I expected. The remainder of the cards were from 1960 Topps baseball, 1967 Topps baseball, and 1971 Topps baseball and all were submitted with expectations of getting all 8's and 9's.
I cant wait to receive the cards back today from FEDEX and take another look at them.
I must have forgotten to pray for Satin during Easter Mass this past Sunday, cause Death Grader has re-surfaced at PSA and got a hold of my submission!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have been submitting for about 6 years and collecting for over 20 years and kind of think that I know what I am
talking about when it comes to grading.
I have submitted over 18,000 cards in the past and very rarely come back with any 7's, let alone 6's........then yesterday I receive an email from PSA stating that my grades were available and I almost hit the floor when I saw what I got.
On a 75 card vintage common submission, I received only nineteen 8's and almost as many 7's and 6's.
A couple of older cards from 1952 came back as 5's but thats what I expected. The remainder of the cards were from 1960 Topps baseball, 1967 Topps baseball, and 1971 Topps baseball and all were submitted with expectations of getting all 8's and 9's.
I cant wait to receive the cards back today from FEDEX and take another look at them.
I must have forgotten to pray for Satin during Easter Mass this past Sunday, cause Death Grader has re-surfaced at PSA and got a hold of my submission!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Buyer and Seller of PSA graded Baseball Cards from 1900-1980.
Check out my ebay auctions listed under seller ID: jeej
Check out my ebay auctions listed under seller ID: jeej
0
Comments
<< <i>
I must have forgotten to pray for Satin during Easter Mass this past Sunday, cause Death Grader has re-surfaced at PSA and got a hold of my submission!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >>
Check out my ebay auctions listed under seller ID: jeej
This is what we all fear....sending in some sweet cards and finding the 'grader of death'. I think that it is wise to only send in 50-75 at a time instead of several hundred for commons. If anyone sends in 200-300 and gets these results, they probably would have a heart attack.
Do you mind sharing your invoice number and zip code with us?
Collect primarily 1959-1963 Topps Baseball
set registry id Don Johnson Collection
ebay id truecollector14
Thanks for the reply.
The invoice # is 554686.
My zip code is 06850.
I recently submitted 600 cards in March 2004, but this invoice was only for 75 cards that were classified as vintage commons.
The two 1965 Charlie Smith cards that got 6 and 7's really bothers me as I know that one of them is as good if not better than two other 8's that I have owned in the past. The other one that got a 6 should be a 7.
Most of the 1960's that I submitted were what I thought to be "locks" for straight 8's.
Its funny because I have already gotten back 250 other cards from this entire submission and got 95% 8's or 9's yet this particular invoice was just the opposite.
Have you ever had any experience with cracking out cards and then re-submitting them to PSA?????
Regards,
Jim
Check out my ebay auctions listed under seller ID: jeej
Any of us who have been submitting for very long know exactly what you mean. That doesn't help unless misery loves company. But maybe this will help: Don't submit cards for grading in Feb-Mar-Apr. Only submit cards for grading in late Dec/early Jan or right before the National.
Don't ask me why, because I don't know why. All I know is from personal experience.
Thats quite an interesting theory.
I will try that and send in a large batch just prior to the National this summer.
The thing that drives me the most crazy is how they have been very unreliable with the grades.
I have been collecting and dealing cards long enough to know what is and what isn't near mint to mint or mint, but I guess some of their graders don't know the difference.
If its true about the large volume of cards they are grading then that could explain the off the wall grades as they are only given a "certain" amount of time to look over each card.
Have you ever cracked any PSA cards out and re-submitted them with any success???
Thanks for your input.
Jim
Check out my ebay auctions listed under seller ID: jeej
i've had invoices that i got a lot of 7's when i thought most would be 8's (71's) and invoices with alot of 8's when i thought most would be 9's.
18,000 cards is alot , so this is obviously not a rookie error or a case of looking at YOUR cards with the proverbial rose colored glasses. there are WAY too many 5's and 6's for an invoice that was expected to yield mostly 8's and 9's.
cracking them and sending them back all at once is dicey because your setting yourself up for another beating. if your sure they will grade higher just throw a couple in at a time on your new submissions , if only to test the waters.
in any event, i'd be willing to pay a nice premium for that 71 lonborg, even though i suspect you may send that one back for a second look. the value of a 7 as opposed to an 8 for that card is markedly higher
Too many people submit to psa with out properly packaging their cards.
I'm not saying this is the case here though.
A person opening the package can also damaged a card (doesn't happen often,
but does occasionally). I would highly recommend using rubberbands around hard
cardboard to protect your cards. Do not use tape to seal the cardboard. This
makes it difficult for the person opening the submission, and they can possibly
damage your cards.
Anyway, sorry about your results. I got the grader of death once in my lifetime.
Hopefully, never again. But I guess everyone should expect him after submitting a lot of orders.
marc
I got an order of '52 bowman smalls, '55 aa's and '54 hockey posted yesterday.
I was disappointed.
most of these were crack-outs from undergrades I put aside, as I have slowly been building these sets.
I inspected them up and down, with blacklight, halogens, magnifiers and a weegee board...
......and all compared favorably to the next higher graded cards in my sets.
results:
2 sgc 8's = 1 psa 8, 1 psa7
1 GAI 7 = psa 5
16 psa 6's= 3 psa 5's, 9 psa 6's, 3 psa 7's, 1 evidence of trimming
3 psa 7's = 3 psa 7's
9 raw cards= 6 recieved the grade I expected, 3 were 1 grade lower.
I guess I'm lucky they didn't use half grades on me
This is exactly what turned me off on 66 Baseball that we used to bump heads on a few years ago.
I had a 200 card submission of all 66 T BB. A few were cards that were the "best copy available" to round my first set up to 100%. The rest were hand picked from 12 raw sets that I had that were NM and better. I thought all would 8 and many if not most would 9. I my case I had the weaker cards first. Nightmare of nightmares. The weak cards got 6's and 7's which were believable and then everything else basically got the same grade. It was mostly 7's, maybe 25 % 8's and one........ count 'em one 9 which was the last card graded. Over a thousand shot to heck.
I have never put these cards in my sets, in fact they are still in the original shipment boxes nearly three years later. That cost me the award that year and I haven't tried for one on that set since. I have had good luck with other crack outs going up in grade but have never tried these. I keep them aside swearing that I will try again someday, but have never gotten around to it.
Take a sample after you look at them and give it a try. I found a few that I had missed something but most I still think I was right on.
Good Luck,
Fuzz
Absolutely. When you get them back, get out your loupe and look them over with a fine tooth comb. Organize them into stacks by grade, then sequence them best-to-worst by stack. Pick out your best ones at the top of each stack and crack 'em.
I remember sending in a 1963 Cepeda #520 three of four times before getting an 8. Overall my 1963s have been graded pretty fairly, but for some reason, 1961 and 1965 get "short shrifted" more often than not.
The way I figure it, I've got some dang nice high end 7's in those years. It may be time to crack a few myself. So, don't despair, it's only money.
Currently collecting.....your guess is as good as mine.
<< <i>A person opening the package can also damaged a card (doesn't happen often,
but does occasionally). I would highly recommend using rubberbands around hard
cardboard to protect your cards. Do not use tape to seal the cardboard. This
makes it difficult for the person opening the submission, and they can possibly
damage your cards.
>>
Interesting point. I usually tape around the cardboard (a lot) in the hopes that it will protect the cards better. But, I bet it is a pain to cut through all of that taping to get to the cards, and maybe cause some accidental damage to them. Will bands be sufficient enough to keep the cards from moving in the box?
I agree with you. Cert numbers starting with 11 seem to be the harshest graded?
Used to working on HOF SS Baseballs--Now just '67 Sox Stickers and anything Boston related.
yikes
ED
3 psa 8's, 8 psa 7's, 1 psa 6.
It really burns me up when I buy these sad looking psa 8's on e-bay from the likes of DSL to round off my set........and when I get the card, my psa 7 is nicer card (usually on more than one factor).
oh well...I guess I'll take Toppsgun's advice and wait 'til Christmas to send Darth any more of my cards.
I just received another email stating that my grades are available for 37 Star cards that we also submitted with the same bunch that came back from Death (Darth) Grader.
However, these cards came back as 8's and 9's and were graded two days after Darth tore them apart.
All of the certification numbers on both batches start out with 11's so I guess that throws that theory out the window.
All of the cards were submitted with my two eyes using the same grading techniques that I have used all of my collecting life, so I know that its them and not me mis-grading them.
All I can say is that lately PSA has been terribly in-consistant and it seems that your percentage of getting good grades all depends on who the grader is at that very moment.
Check out my ebay auctions listed under seller ID: jeej
<< <i>Jeej,
This is exactly what turned me off on 66 Baseball that we used to bump heads on a few years ago.
I had a 200 card submission of all 66 T BB. Fuzz >>
Jim and Dave
i need a nicer #216
It's not the grading scale that's an issue, it's the people enforcing it. As far as I'm concerned, the ten point scale already splits too many hairs. The half point system-- as employed by SGC, etc.-- is just a frickin' joke.
But....has anyone had GOOD success with a submission with the 11...certification?
But if you try this yourself more often then not insteed of raining nines it just hails 7,s and 8, ;(
Joe responded that they (he and the graders) did not all sit down together in a meeting and decide to "get tougher" on grading. And "tougher" would certainly be seen between the grades of 7 and 8 moreso than anywhere else. However, the evidence is becoming indisputable. A 7 should be graded a 7 and an 8 should be graded an 8. A card should not have to be "almost a 9" in order to get a grade of 8.
Perhaps -- and this is pure conjecture on my part -- some of PSA's graders have become a little lazy in their grading. Perhaps some of them simply figure its "quicker and safer" to give an 8-ish card a 7 and move on to the next card -- and look for the "perfect card" in order to give a 9. That too is wrong, and if that's been going on, Joe should take whatever steps necessary to eliminate it. Tough is one thing. Unfair undergrading is another -- for both the collectors who are seeking 8's and the dealers who are trying to provide them.
On the other hand, the current PSA grading trend would seem to elevate the status of the PSA 7 from "unwanted" to "valuable." That may be a good thing in the long run, but could be a disaster in the short run.
Scott
On that first invoice, you got hammered! I noticed that it had a lot of super low pop really tough commons. It appears that the grader decided that you weren't going to get 8's on anything that was tough. Keep those low pops low!
On cracking and resubmitting, here is my experience. I have cracked out about 30 cards over time to resubmit. They, of course, were the cream of the crop 7's that I thought for sure should be 8's. Out of that, I got upgraded to 8 on about 30% of them. That sounds good but one has to realize that I really thought all of them should be 8's. I was happy about some though.....resubmitted cards that were 7's that I got back as 8's included 1959 Topps Bob Shaw, 1960 Topps McCovey AS, 1963 Topps Lou Brock, 1959 Topps Minoso, 1959 Topps Bill White, etc.
There might be something to the damage theory. Knowing your experience and expertise as a collector, I can not believe that those cards came back with those grades without something happening to them.
Collect primarily 1959-1963 Topps Baseball
set registry id Don Johnson Collection
ebay id truecollector14
This is the Rookie again, who the heck is DSL??? and why have I heard on these boards
more than once the inference that they seem to get the benefit of the doubt on PSA grading??
What is the deal??
From what I know, DSL is a high volume submitter and e-bay only dealer of baseball cards. They seem to have a remarkable supply/resource of cards that grade high.
DSL is a top notch seller and for the most part i have been more then happy with the cards i bought from them and i have bought many.
Collect primarily 1959-1963 Topps Baseball
set registry id Don Johnson Collection
ebay id truecollector14
To offer anecdotal evidence, I submit the following stats from my sets of all certs beginning with 11:
1961 (4) PSA 5, (3) PSA 6, (29) PSA 7, (50) PSA 8 = 58% PSA 8 of the "11" sample, while my set has a much lower percentage of 8's.
1965 (77) PSA 7, (176) PSA 8 = 70% PSA 8 of the "11" sample, although my set runs close to 90% 8's.
1967 (0) PSA 7, (113) PSA 8, (12) PSA 9.
1st time caller, long time listener............
I figured I'd share my 1st submission (since 1998 anyway). Hoped for a few more 10's, but overall I think the group was graded appropriately.
My Submission
Certainly not a rip on GAI, just an exercise for my curiousity. I also have to wonder if the results would have been the same had I cracked them first ????
GAI 9.5 Crossover Submission