bought a loupe/ afraid to submit/scan added

sometimes you won't know until you submit some cards and see how PSA grades them.

Every card has flaws. The larger you magnify, the more obvious they are. What mag. level are you looking at? 5x, 7x, 10x? At any rate -- you can post cards here and we can all give you our objective opinion, too.

What grades would you be happy with?

Even nearly all of my PSA 10s have flaws under certain magnification levels. I typically don't use a loupe for submission purposes -- I judge centering, print marks, and then closely examine each corner with my eye. And I do pretty well at getting only 8s and above, when that's what I'm looking for....

~ms

I agree with MS. It does depend on what level of magnification you are using. I have a 5x / 10x loupe that I use. But to be honest, 99% of the cards I disqualify from my submissions are removed via the naked eye using a halogen lamp. It is important that it is halogen. I use a 50w desklamp I got at Target for $10. You will find surface wrinkles, dents, pits, potmarks, roller marks, odd surface coloring recoloring in some cases, and other general surface flaws.

I first do a quick once over separating solely on centering. Once I have that pile, I do a quick once over looking at the corners, removing any obviously poor ones. Once they've made it to round three, I run them under the halogen lamp where I am primarily looking for surface wrinkles and dents or roller marks/creases/bends etc. If they pass that round and go to round four, I pull out the loupe and give a quick once over with the "big eye" (5x) then move on to the "small eye" 10x. I usually allow for a small amount of visible chipping under the 10x but try to avoid cards with obvious corner wear and chipping visible under 5x. It seems that most things that are caught at the 5x but not to the naked eye, find their way into PSA 7 holders and usually look more like 8's to the naked eye.

Once that is done, I put them in card saver I's and wait a day or two. I then make another pass through them, comparing them to any peers. (duplicates or other cards from the same year & brand) and I usually end up pulling out a couple of others that don't look as good as I first thought. I tend to do quite well with my submissions, but there are still times I miss things but it's pretty rare.

I always pre-grade my cards too. I print off two copies of the submission form and I write the grade I think the card should get on my sheet. Once I get the grades, I compare. I am about 70%+ being dead on. The other 30% I am wrong on, I usually under-graded as opposed to over-graded. So if I could treat my grade as a "this or better", I'm closer to 90%. It's taken me a LOT of submissions to get to that point though.

Wow, that became a lot more writing than I intended.

Anyways, hope that helps.

-Josh

good thing you didn't look at them under a 40X microscope

The Grove is a TOUGH card to find in that condition. It's historcally off center so at least you've got that taken care of. I would guess it's an 8 with a slim chance at a 9. I've certainly had cards come back with that kind of chipping as 9's.

The Cobb, not so much due to the tilt.

The only thing wrong with Halle Berry is her current absence from my lap.

Your Cobb looks like a 7 due to the l-r centering near the bottom.
Don't trust psa's published guidelines for centering. They're actually tighter than that. You need 35-65 or better to get an 8. If a card is 70-30 like your Cobb, it's almost certainly a 7. Trust me, I've spent hundreds of dollars in grading fee's finding this out.

It's the 'eye appeal' loophole in the grading guidelines which I feel is a way to get more submissions. PSA often doesn't adhere to their own published grading parameters with regard to centering ranges.

In sending cards into psa for grading, I would certainly be conservative in your centering measurements.

You're L. Grove card looks like a solid 8 with a shot at a 9 depending on the grader's opinion.