Grading Signals
When buying raw and grading yourself nets more than buying the slab on the open market.
What “Return” takes into account
It’s the expected value of submitting one card — not a guaranteed flip. It weighs together:
- Raw price + your grading fee — what the attempt costs.
- PSA-10 market price — the payoff if it grades a 10.
- Gem rate — how often this card actually grades a 10, so the payoff is weighted by your real odds, not the best case.
- Turnaround — a haircut for PSA-10 prices drifting while you wait (larger on fresh sets).
The gem rate is the part that surprises people: you only hit a 10 a fraction of the time, so the return is well below “PSA-10 minus your cost.” It also leans conservative — a miss still leaves you a graded card worth roughly raw, and we don’t count PSA 9s that sell above raw as upside.
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How to read this board
This isn't model fair-value math — it's observed-market arithmetic. For every Tier A card we compute the expected acquisition cost of a PSA-10 via grading: (raw + fee) / gem_rate, and compare against the live slab market. If the slab trades above that number, the gap is the signal.
Gem rate is the dominant variable. A card with a 60% gem rate is half as risky as one at 30%, even if the per-card math looks identical — low-gem-rate cards have noisier estimates, and the dollar outcomes vary more per submission. Pair the margin with the liquidity tier and your own thesis on set momentum before pulling the trigger.
Longer turnaround means a larger PSA-10 price haircut on the expected sale: fresh sets see more 10s flood in and raw hype fade while PSA holds your cards, so a 16-week wait is discounted harder than a 4-week one (mature sets converge to roughly no haircut). Use the turnaround toggle to model Bulk vs Regular vs Express; the fee input lets you plug in current PSA pricing.
Strong = margin ≥ 50% and gem rate ≥ 20% · Watch = margin ≥ 25% and gem rate ≥ 15% · Lean = margin ≥ 10%. Tier thresholds use the build-time $80 default fee; the displayed margin updates live with your fee input.