View Single Post
Old 07-15-2025, 09:18 AM   #154
inaka
Member
 
inaka's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2021
Posts: 998
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by bub838 View Post
This doesn't really make any sense. In an upcharge situation it would make more sense to keep the higher grades to collect more money in fees.

I believe pop control (or at the very least some sort of bias) exists, but it wouldn't be at this stage.
It makes perfect sense. That's short-term thinking if PSA was trying to get one extra grading fee, in lieu of the thousands and thousands of cards submitted in the hopes of getting a PSA 10.

PSA has already said that for higher level cards like the 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson rookie, that they need to give these cards extra scrutiny since they are guaranteeing that they are authentic and on the hook for ~$200k if they are wrong. So at the upcharge stage (QA stages as PSA calls it), this is PSA would flag cards over a certain value. They already have to do this to notify the customer. So internally, this would be the time where only a select few graders/people would run a final check to determine the grade, and they'd simply override the original PSA 10 and drop it down to a PSA 9 if pop controlled.

Otherwise when does pop control occur? An edict from the top where even entry-level graders know there are certain cards that they need to grade lower? That would be incredibly difficult to keep under wraps, and also be documented, and easy to expose. The QA stages are literally designed for this "final check" for uncharges, etc.
__________________
Sports Card Organizer Software for Mac & Windows
www.InakaSoftware.com/SportsCardDatabase
inaka is offline   Reply With Quote