How to Keep Winning Even When Grading Gets Tougher

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:02]PSA just made grading a lot harder by temporarily pausing the four cheapest service levels. And while most people are going to look at this as a bad thing, I actually think it creates a major opportunity for card investors who are willing to adapt and get more strategic. So in this video, I want to walk through the exact adjustments I think savvy graders should be making to continue to make money even in a tougher grading environment. Let's dive right in. So I want to start by telling you a quick story. So I've collected cards my whole life, but it was around 2007 when I really made the shift to start trying to intentionally make money with cards.

[00:00:35]And it was in 2008 when I really figured it out and started actually winning.

[00:00:40]Now, do you know what happened in this country in 2008?

[00:00:43]Yeah, it was the Great Recession. So the economy was in the dump, and I figured out how to win anyway. So the thing to keep in mind here is if you can figure out how to win in a tougher environment, imagine when things get easier again, and they will get easier again, but you're going to have all the skills to absolutely crush. And that's what happened to me in 2008 when I was sharpening my skills in a difficult environment, in a difficult economy. I built the skills and I figured out the strategies that would work in a tough environment. So of course they worked when things got easier. And that's exactly what's happening with grading right now. So if you can figure out how to navigate the next few months, you're going to be able to win in any environment. Now before we get into the strategy shifts, I want to be clear. So the first of all, this is not the end of grading. Guys, the sky's not falling.

[00:01:29]You know, social media of course is panicking. People are losing their minds. You know, "F PSA, like I'm quitting the hobby. I'm going to another grading company. I'm selling all my clean cards raw."

[00:01:39]Good. Fine. Like let them quit. Like that just makes it easier for those of us who can stay level-headed. So guys, don't get dragged down by social media.

[00:01:47]Don't ever let someone else tell you how to think. You know, hell, if you don't agree with me, like don't listen to me, right? But social media has a disproportionate amount of just loud negativity, don't let someone else's negativity stop you from winning. Now, I like to make decisions based on truth and data and math and logic, not emotion. So, I want to start with just a few of the things that we know are true.

[00:02:10]So, first of all, demand for PSA 10s is still massive. The market for PSA 10s is stronger than it's ever been before. And my prediction is I actually think that more people are going to move away from grading with this temporary pause and just buy PSA 10s and that'll make the premiums even bigger. The second thing is this is a short-term pause. It's not a permanent removal. So, similar things have happened before, like during the pandemic, grading was closed for a year and when it came back, it was like $100 a card. This is not nearly as big of a deal as that was and guess what? Even then, PSA bounced back. They caught up.

[00:02:44]They brought turnaround times back within reason. They brought prices back within reason. They reopened the bulk submissions. And I expect this will be no different. All right, now that we're clear that the sky's not falling, here are four things that I think that savvy card graders and investors should be considering doing right now. So, number one, don't stop grading. Just get more strategic. And specifically, we want to be targeting higher upside cards. Now, if you've ever heard any of my content before, you've almost certainly heard me talk about this because it's the key to grading. It's the key to going faster in the entire card market and it's even more important now than it's ever been before. So, please listen to this one if you listen to nothing else in this video, just target higher upside cards.

[00:03:28]Now, what I mean by that, let's consider two cards that both sell for $100 ungraded. Card one is worth $200 as a PSA 10. Card two is worth $400 as a PSA 10. Obviously, card two is a much higher upside card. And higher upside cards give us the buffer when things go wrong or when the market shifts, they give us margin to cover the bigger grading fees like what we're seeing right now. They also give us margin for any cards in our grading submission that don't get 10s or any cards that we buy with the intent to grade that we end up having to liquidate raw when the condition isn't as clean as we thought it might have been. High upside cards give us bigger profits when things go right and they just help us go so much faster compared to grading low upside cards. So, don't quit, just get more strategic with your card selection.

[00:04:13]Now, the $80 grading fee being the cheapest turnaround level right now means that we definitely need to level up our card selection. But, the numbers on some of these are extremely strong right now as you can see. So, here are a bunch of cards where even paying an $80 grading fee, these cards have really strong grading metrics and profit potential. And by the way, this is Coin, my grading software that I built to show a ranked list of some of the cards with the strongest grading numbers based on the latest market data. So, effectively, you can do 5 hours of grading research in 5 seconds. And as soon as we heard the news about PSA's update, we immediately went to work to rebuild parts of Coin to account for the new grading environment here. So, a couple of the changes we made, the default view used to look like this where we showed cards across a broader range of grading turnaround levels. So, a lot of lower dollar cards that had big upside. But, now that a lot of these grading service levels aren't available anymore, we added in the $80 grading fee list, which is a brand new list showing a lot of higher upside cards that are going to present us with some really strong grading metrics even assuming an $80 grading fee. The second thing we built is a brand new feature showing grading tier efficiency. So, basically, we're comparing some of the different turnaround times here. So, you can see how each turnaround actually performs across a full year. Now, these upgrades are already live inside of Coin. So, we're ready to help you navigate the next few months and beyond if you're someone who still wants to continue grading and you want to get a little bit of a strategic edge. And if Coin looks like it'd be valuable, I will leave a link in the description where you can grab a free 7-day trial and see what you think. All right, strategic shift number two. So, you got to become more selective. And specifically, I'm talking about condition here. So, your ability to accurately judge a card's condition matters now more than ever before. And here's the thing, your confidence in a card's condition is also the tiebreaker if you're ever on the fence of do I send this, do I not? So, the first step to even consider a card is that we've got to make sure that the upside is there if we're actually trying to make money here. But, assuming that the numbers make sense, now you're risking $80 to grade a card rather than just 30. So, we've got to be pickier. We don't want to pay $80 just to get a nine. So, be more selective, use your skills of evaluating card condition. And personally, I really only want to send cards where I'm pretty confident that they're going to get a 10. The one caveat to this, of course, is that the bigger the upside, usually the more risk I'm okay with taking on a borderline card. But, for the most part, I usually don't want to risk a higher grading fee on a card that I already know is borderline just to have it come back as a nine. All right, number three, and this is a sneaky one. So, stock pile cards strategically. So, reminder here, this is a short-term pause. We already know this based on everything we're hearing from PSA right now. It sounds a lot more like a three to four-month thing and not an ongoing indefinite closure and certainly not a permanent change. And I'm betting that after the National is when we're going to see this open back up, and that's only a few months away here. And lots of people are going to stop looking to buy clean cards in the lower value range. Guys, this is an opportunity. There's less competition. Grading has been increasingly competitive in the past few years with it becoming more and more available, but this is an opportunity where it may be easier to find clean raw cards as more people kind of step away from grading in the short term. And that means it's also going to be easier to sell graded cards when there are going to be fewer copies listed. So, what I'm looking at doing is potentially stockpiling some of the cards that have the strong grading metrics. We still want to target high upside cards, but I'm looking at cards where timing isn't as big of a factor. I'm not looking at unproven prospects or anything like that. I'm looking at the established players, the Hall of Famers, the goat caliber players, even like Pokémon where the timing isn't as important. But, I'm looking at this as an opportunity to buy some of these cards now and then just get ready to submit them in a few months once the lower value submissions are available again. We've got to be able to think a little bit longer term. I know in the moment this feels like a big shock, but really if it's only a short-term pause, man, who cares? Just buy a few of these cards, set them aside and get ready to submit them in a few months and just get back to business as usual. I think this is one of the sneakiest opportunities over these next few months where you can really set yourself up with an incredible grading order just a little further out. All right, number four, I'm looking at buying more low-pop cards that are already graded as PSA 10s. So, consider this, if people can't grade the way they normally do for the next few months and some cards really can't get graded at all based on the value, like it just doesn't make sense to send some cards right now at the $80 grading fee level.

[00:08:41]That's going to create a short-term bubble where PSA 10s of those cards are more valuable because there are fewer of them. And keep in mind, the grading pause is happening right now, but what that really means is that four, maybe five, six, eight months or so from now is when we're really going to start to feel it in the market and we're going to see far fewer of these types of cards hitting the market than usual. And no one's talking about this. Like everyone's so worried about what's happening today that they're not able to kind of look and think about what's going to happen a few months out. So, consider what types of cards you think are going to be hot at that time of year and then you might consider picking up a few PSA 10s in anticipation. So again, it's the same concept here. We've got to be able to just zoom out and think a little bigger here. So, at the end of the day, it's simple, guys. Don't panic.

[00:09:25]Don't let emotional people on social media dictate your strategy and make you change your entire approach. Difficult environments just require a little more strategy. That's all. And the people who continue grading and keep sharpening their skills during times like this are usually the ones that are going to be best positioned when things get back to normal. So, this is not the time to quit. This is the time to level up. If you want my help navigating the current grading environment alongside hundreds of fellow card investors, I want to personally invite you to join us inside my card investing community Ignite. And if Coin looked like it might be helpful, you can try it for free. The upgrades we've made in the last 24 hours are already live and they're designed to help you continue to thrive during the next few months. So, give it a shot and see what you think. Links are in the description below for both of those. But otherwise, guys, don't forget to subscribe. Hope this has been helpful and we will see you on the next video.