Does PSA acknowledge that a qualifier "lowers" a grade by 2?

lightningboy

Wondering what would happen in this situaton: you send in a card that is a PSA 9 in all respects other than being noticeably off center. If you put a minimum desired grade of PSA 8, would they grade it, or send it back as not meeting minimum grade? Thanks from anyone who has dealt with this, Tom

digicat

For registry purposes, it lowers the grade by 2. However, it's non-qualified numerical grade would depend on how bad the centering is. A card that's in mint physical condition, but OC by 90/10, is not going to be a straight PSA 7, it'll be a PSA 4, as that's the highest non-qualified grade that allows for centering that bad.

lightningboy

What I'm asking though, is if the card would be a PSA 9, but the centering makes it an 8 and they want to grade it out as a PSA 9 o/c, would that meet minimum grade if I requested minimum PSA 8?

digicat

It should get an 8 then.

Mickey71

Almost no cards that are 9o/c are good enough for a straight 8. I've probably only seen a couple. PSA doesn't put qualifiers on the card unless absolutely necessary.

JoeBanzai

You are going to have to be more specific when you say "significantly off center". I have attached PSA's grading standards that gives you the centering breakdowns.

Grading standards

If your "Significantly off center" means 90/10 on the front, going by the standards it should get a 3, but if everything else about the card is mint, I'll bet it scores higher, a 6 or 7 is more likely. PSA knows qualifiers reduce the score a card has by two, so I am sure they take that into account.

I will also say that trying to predict what grade you will get is very tough, especially when there is any major problem with it.

Do you have a scan of the card in question?

Joe

Edited to add; Any card that PSA gets with a minimum grade on it will be returned ungraded if they don't think the card rates the requested grade. I doubt that a "sigificantly off center" 9 would get an 8.