Interesting topic! I was able to do this with the ES Umbreon V alt art. I bought the card from my local card store so I was able to thoroughly review it. Buying cards online may be a bit of a fools errand though. Sellers often have terrible pictures, send you worse cards that don’t match the listing’s pictures, etc. And good luck seeing surface issues from any pictures. Plus the cats out of the bag on grading. Sellers could grade the cards too. I like the example at the end!
Great vid with a ton of useful info. I have several I am considering sending in including the zard from Padean Fates. Definitely going to keep an eye out for some of those cards you mentioned too though.
One of the best videos I’ve seen yet. Let’s do a video trying it out ? Or keep doing these videos with a 2 week span update on other cards you could do this with?
A good way of doing this for most of the community might be a fun video on popular $4-10 cards, illustration rares and what not. A lot of the popular TG or GG cards from sword & shield cost somewhere around that range, but have better PSA 9/10 payouts making it worth grading. Just a thought :)
honestly using excel as a way to graph out profits and loss is an ingenious idea and while watching i had a ridiculous thought but just imagine mass buying magikarps where u have let’s say 20 where you can be looking at some crazy profits if you only hit like 1/4 for 10s
Grading is such a giant gamble. Just selling the card in a raw condition is good enough as it is. Here is a risky investment - selling graded packs because that’s a thing for some reason. You should do a market watch on sword and shield tins at some point as well
I've taken my first foray into this, perhaps my only, we'll see. I sent off 27 cards, 20 newer(2017-2023) and 7 older (2013-1999). I get my grades in the next few days online, gonna be very tempting to not check until they get back to me in person!!!
So I have a question; Is it better to use PSA or CGC or does it come down to personal preference? I do enjoy the look of the new CGC 10 Pristine grades over the PSA but have heard PSA is the gold standard for cards specifically. Thanks!
if you want to sell them, it definitely seems like PSA is the gold standard. If it's for your personal collection, go with whichever one you like best!
Awesome video! I've been slowly making these types of plays myself (somewhat by accident). My Lugia alt art and giratina alt art both look like psa 10's, when I really just wanted them for my collection. Something else to consider is whether you think the raw card value will rise in price, and if you do you can mitigate some risk. If you buy the obsidian flames charizard and it's not a psa 10 contender, then you can either sit on the card and watch it lose value (since obsidian flames isn't even a year old I think this is a safe bet) or you can sell and lose out due to fees. However, you can make the argument that the alt arts will rise in value and so even if the raw card isn't a psa 10 contender, you aren't forced to sell the card and can hold it as an investment.
It’s nice to think of it as getting a good profit margin but there r other reasons to get your cards graded , great display for your shelf ,protection of your card and others
I've been doing this for just over a year and graded about 250 cards and got my psa 10 rate to 85%. You soon learn how to pre-grade effectively and know what has a good chance when you send it to avoid PSA 9's although it not all doom and gloom, you'll loose money on your 9's but aslong as your getting more 10's your in the money. The PSA 10 premuim for S&V is alot higher as the print quality is alot worse than SWSH - alot of pack fresh cards have nics and whitening and therefore PSA 10 population is lower at the moment
I think it is also worth including the PSA 9 value as well. If you get a card back at a 9, do you LOSE money. If you break even between your grading costs and the raw card, it's worth it at the chance at a 10. but if you get an 8 or below.... crack it and resell it raw? I dunno. thanks for the video!
Yea I probably should have explained this better but I was basically working on the assumption that if it comes back as a psa 9, then it’s typically worth approx the same as raw
May have to consider picking up some Magikarps as well now lol. Will you do a follow-up going over how you examine cards to be graded and what you look for? How you differentiate between a 9 and a 10, etc? Could be super informative- thanks!
I think the biggest risk or question for me is how many people are willing to buy graded cards after you go through all that work? Obviously the population of people buying goes down because the price is much higher and may not be willing to drop that much money. Like how many people struggle to sell graded cards and are just sitting on these? Also I feel like most people around me are trending towards completing master sets and just putting raw cards in binders.
There's too much risk for me to do this, but if people like gambling and they can afford the potential loss, more power to em! Just seems like a lot of work and a lot of risk for relatively minimal margin of payoff. With something like the Obsidian Flames charizard, another thing to bear in mind is the price of the psa 10 is prob higher because the print quality of English SV is horrendous, so there won't be that many 10's which inflates the price but on the flip side your chance of getting a 10 is very very low
I just had this idea recently. to Purchase 9's and 9.5's and submit for regrading and pray for that 10 and profit. or even buy 10s of less reputable grading companies that will sell for low, crack, then regrade and a more reputable company and profit.
@@ThePokeOffice yea I suppose usually insured shipping there is like $20-30 and back probably $30-40. So add $70 to that. $14x20= $280 plus shipping both ways an extra $70, $350/20 is only $17.50 a card all in.
1. I estimated high. 2. I live in Canada so shipping, duties, and what not is more expensive that what you quoted 3. Depending on the cards, PSA might upcharge because it doesn’t fall under the $200 bulk value limit.
I personally haven’t graded any of my cards yet, I think the price to grade them and the chance of them being anything less than a 10 is too much for me to bare 😂 Great video as always!
The PSA population guide says 1,999 Magikarps IR were graded. 427 got a 10 and 1,140 got a 9. Charizard Ex SIR has 8,415 grades, 2,315 with a 10 and 4,692 with a 9. I think thats a good indicator for the odds.
I needed a Starmie V Trainer Gallery for my private Collection, so i graded three raw cards and 2 came back as a PSA 10 😍 good Work Bro! I really enjoy your videos 🙌🏻
The risk of not getting a 10 and also a buyer is a recipe for bad investment. Most platforms (eBay etc ) will take fees for every sale as well. Lowering your margin even more. Not worth it imo
I like the idea of grading while the price for cards is low, knowing that price will increase over time for more popular cards. But everything’s a gamble in the end. I tend to take more risks with lower valued cards, I see a lot more positive return than negative so far in investing off buying singles of specific $4-10 cards. Rather than these massive pulls.
Quite a few honestly. I’m very picky - ask for lots of pictures and up close pics of the card edges. I also buy off of fb groups from verified sellers - not from eBay and tcgplayer so that might changes things a bit too
Can you explain how one is risking the cost of the buying the card? Wouldn’t the risk just be whatever shipping fees you spent buying/shipping for grading plus the cost of grading? At the end of the process you still have a card you can try reselling raw if the grades are low.
I see what you're saying, but you're still outputting money for a card, spending money on the grading process, and if it doesn't grade a 10, you are losing a bit of money there. Yes, you still have the card, but it's using up that money for a period of months for no gains.
Why would people sell theses raw if they can get them graded and make that profit themselves? I’m scared to buy em if they ppl selling them think they can’t get a psa 10
It's either 10 or bust tho. too big of a risk, for the reward. I also don't trust people selling raw. anyone that has a gem candidate card is going to grade it themselves
This is not a great explanation of how this trade actually works. First of all, buying raw cards like this means your gem rate is not going to be the same as PSA 10 population/PSA number graded. It’s going to be more like 5-10%, because most sellers already screened these high dollar cards and sent off for grading the ones they thought were good for 10s. Second, you shouldn’t be thinking about only 1 card. This is the type of operation that scales with $$. Because the chance of buying a raw 10 is low, you should be buying 20-30 raw cards in the hope that you get a handful of 10 candidates to grade. Lastly, it’s not as if you either get a 10 or lose the entire investment. If a raw card comes in that will obviously not get a 10, turn around and sell that card as near mint same way you bought it. You will lose on shipping, taxes, and seller fees so just take a 20-30% loss for that and call it a day. Next will be your 10 candidates that come back 9s… For top end chases like this you should be able to break even including your grading costs and price of raw card. So really you need to estimate multiple numbers to do this successfully: chance to buy raw 10, defect rate (10 candidate grades lower than 10), how many you can actually sell in whatever needed timeframe raw 9s and 10s
It seems like you’re missing the point of the video. I’m presenting the data for you to make an informed decision, so looking at a bunch of different cards that could be good to look for raw and send in for grading. Second, I disagree with you. I’ve bought plenty of raw cards that have graded as a 10. And third, at the end I talk about buying 5 Magikarps at the end to show how this could work. I’m giving an overview, not a detailed structure of exactly what to do. It’s for everyone to make their own choices.
@@ThePokeOfficeYep, I made this comment before I got to the point in the video where you talked about buying from Facebook groups. That's definitely a better way to do this strategy than trying to buy "near mint" off TCGPlayer or another site without pictures of the actual card you will receive. Personally, I like PSA 10 price >= 4x raw price to attempt this trade. Magikarp wasn't on my radar previously though, I didn't realize raw was that cheap, so I'll have to keep tabs on that now.
@@ThePokeOfficeYep I made this comment before I got to the part where you said buying cards from Facebook groups. That's a much better idea than trying to buy raw "near mint" off TCGPlayer or somewhere else that doesn't include pictures. That way you can save a lot of time on the "this will never grade a 10" step. Personally, I prefer PSA 10 price >= 4x raw price as that will typically have the best margins and can accept a decently high non-10 rate.
Raw Cards = more defective card than the perfect card, the owers have intension to sell their defect cards, you are not going to get good cards from the market, why would the owner sell their perfect card at market lower price, they know what on their hand, to conclude your theory not going to work that easily
maybe starting filming yourself just opening packs everytime you decide to open packs so if you get a hit you can show it if you do not get a good hit then just delete video not like it costs you to film ya self opening lol
Interesting topic! I was able to do this with the ES Umbreon V alt art. I bought the card from my local card store so I was able to thoroughly review it. Buying cards online may be a bit of a fools errand though. Sellers often have terrible pictures, send you worse cards that don’t match the listing’s pictures, etc. And good luck seeing surface issues from any pictures. Plus the cats out of the bag on grading. Sellers could grade the cards too. I like the example at the end!
Great vid with a ton of useful info. I have several I am considering sending in including the zard from Padean Fates. Definitely going to keep an eye out for some of those cards you mentioned too though.
One of the best videos I’ve seen yet. Let’s do a video trying it out ? Or keep doing these videos with a 2 week span update on other cards you could do this with?
Did this with a few eeveelution promo alts and am sitting on a good profit. $25-$30 cards with returns in the $150-$200 range in psa 10s
I’m looking at sending in my cards, but nervous will lose money haha thank you for the great info in regards to grading!
Going to send some cards in for grading this weekend at collect-a-con Dallas! Thanks for the info!
Been meaning to grade but yeah, I'm not there yet in my abilities to feel confident in evaluating cards for grading.
A good way of doing this for most of the community might be a fun video on popular $4-10 cards, illustration rares and what not.
A lot of the popular TG or GG cards from sword & shield cost somewhere around that range, but have better PSA 9/10 payouts making it worth grading. Just a thought :)
honestly using excel as a way to graph out profits and loss is an ingenious idea and while watching i had a ridiculous thought but just imagine mass buying magikarps where u have let’s say 20 where you can be looking at some crazy profits if you only hit like 1/4 for 10s
Grading is such a giant gamble. Just selling the card in a raw condition is good enough as it is. Here is a risky investment - selling graded packs because that’s a thing for some reason. You should do a market watch on sword and shield tins at some point as well
Solid idea to look into. Especially for people who don’t normally grade. Love to see some decent returns
I've taken my first foray into this, perhaps my only, we'll see. I sent off 27 cards, 20 newer(2017-2023) and 7 older (2013-1999). I get my grades in the next few days online, gonna be very tempting to not check until they get back to me in person!!!
So I have a question; Is it better to use PSA or CGC or does it come down to personal preference? I do enjoy the look of the new CGC 10 Pristine grades over the PSA but have heard PSA is the gold standard for cards specifically. Thanks!
if you want to sell them, it definitely seems like PSA is the gold standard. If it's for your personal collection, go with whichever one you like best!
So i sent my Roaring Moon Ex to SGC and now im hearing that not to use them but to use PSA and BECKETT. Now im like dang it.
Awesome video! I've been slowly making these types of plays myself (somewhat by accident). My Lugia alt art and giratina alt art both look like psa 10's, when I really just wanted them for my collection.
Something else to consider is whether you think the raw card value will rise in price, and if you do you can mitigate some risk. If you buy the obsidian flames charizard and it's not a psa 10 contender, then you can either sit on the card and watch it lose value (since obsidian flames isn't even a year old I think this is a safe bet) or you can sell and lose out due to fees. However, you can make the argument that the alt arts will rise in value and so even if the raw card isn't a psa 10 contender, you aren't forced to sell the card and can hold it as an investment.
It’s nice to think of it as getting a good profit margin but there r other reasons to get your cards graded , great display for your shelf ,protection of your card and others
Completely agree, tho this video was more geared towards buying raw cards and selling them once they are graded
I've been doing this for just over a year and graded about 250 cards and got my psa 10 rate to 85%. You soon learn how to pre-grade effectively and know what has a good chance when you send it to avoid PSA 9's although it not all doom and gloom, you'll loose money on your 9's but aslong as your getting more 10's your in the money.
The PSA 10 premuim for S&V is alot higher as the print quality is alot worse than SWSH - alot of pack fresh cards have nics and whitening and therefore PSA 10 population is lower at the moment
Yea I’ve had good success so far too. I’m quite careful with which cards to send in.
I think it is also worth including the PSA 9 value as well. If you get a card back at a 9, do you LOSE money. If you break even between your grading costs and the raw card, it's worth it at the chance at a 10. but if you get an 8 or below.... crack it and resell it raw? I dunno. thanks for the video!
Yea I probably should have explained this better but I was basically working on the assumption that if it comes back as a psa 9, then it’s typically worth approx the same as raw
I have never sent cards into grade and I have a backlog but I’m nervous to do it
Hey I haven’t had time to watch this vid today but I bet it’s a banger
This vid also gave me a good way to think about what cards are good to send in. Thanks!
May have to consider picking up some Magikarps as well now lol. Will you do a follow-up going over how you examine cards to be graded and what you look for? How you differentiate between a 9 and a 10, etc? Could be super informative- thanks!
Yea that sounds like a good idea
I think the biggest risk or question for me is how many people are willing to buy graded cards after you go through all that work? Obviously the population of people buying goes down because the price is much higher and may not be willing to drop that much money. Like how many people struggle to sell graded cards and are just sitting on these? Also I feel like most people around me are trending towards completing master sets and just putting raw cards in binders.
The banger cards, I’ve never had a problem selling them. Lesser desired cards can sometimes be a hard sell.
Great video. I did an energy break and I'm trying to figure out how to sell them for profit but I didn't know exactly how to math it
There's too much risk for me to do this, but if people like gambling and they can afford the potential loss, more power to em! Just seems like a lot of work and a lot of risk for relatively minimal margin of payoff.
With something like the Obsidian Flames charizard, another thing to bear in mind is the price of the psa 10 is prob higher because the print quality of English SV is horrendous, so there won't be that many 10's which inflates the price but on the flip side your chance of getting a 10 is very very low
I was lucky to buy 1x 151 zard ex and 2x Van Gogh, all three came back as PSA 10s
Love this
came back to watch this I hope you made that magikarp play!
I do have that charizard from obsidian flames and I am wondering the same thing!
I think it's a risky investment. Should just buy collections and hope for the best with condition haha
Yea it’s definitely not for everyone
I would want to hold the card in my hand and really inspect it. Otherwise this is a good idea. I thought about it too.
I just had this idea recently. to Purchase 9's and 9.5's and submit for regrading and pray for that 10 and profit. or even buy 10s of less reputable grading companies that will sell for low, crack, then regrade and a more reputable company and profit.
I like that idea actually
Bulk at PSA now is $14 for cards under $199 this month, might be a play sticking to cards under $200 value and sending in 20 of those. Good luck
Except you still have to pay shipping both ways so it’s actually more expensive than that
@@ThePokeOffice yea I suppose usually insured shipping there is like $20-30 and back probably $30-40. So add $70 to that. $14x20= $280 plus shipping both ways an extra $70, $350/20 is only $17.50 a card all in.
1. I estimated high.
2. I live in Canada so shipping, duties, and what not is more expensive that what you quoted
3. Depending on the cards, PSA might upcharge because it doesn’t fall under the $200 bulk value limit.
Really interesting info. Thanks for posting!
I personally haven’t graded any of my cards yet, I think the price to grade them and the chance of them being anything less than a 10 is too much for me to bare 😂
Great video as always!
Kinda new at this can you explain how to tell if you have a card worth grading
The PSA population guide says 1,999 Magikarps IR were graded. 427 got a 10 and 1,140 got a 9. Charizard Ex SIR has 8,415 grades, 2,315 with a 10 and 4,692 with a 9. I think thats a good indicator for the odds.
I needed a Starmie V Trainer Gallery for my private Collection, so i graded three raw cards and 2 came back as a PSA 10 😍 good Work Bro! I really enjoy your videos 🙌🏻
Very nice!
Interesting cards and ideas. To be safe, a PSA 9 should cover your costs I think...
AWESOME Zard! Thanks for effort on the video!
Awesome content my dude!
The risk of not getting a 10 and also a buyer is a recipe for bad investment. Most platforms (eBay etc ) will take fees for every sale as well. Lowering your margin even more. Not worth it imo
I like the idea of grading while the price for cards is low, knowing that price will increase over time for more popular cards. But everything’s a gamble in the end.
I tend to take more risks with lower valued cards, I see a lot more positive return than negative so far in investing off buying singles of specific $4-10 cards. Rather than these massive pulls.
I rarely sell on eBay etc. only fb groups to avoid fees
love the magicarp artwork, the cards you brought up are def fire
great video! really appreciate all the information!
Japanese Magikarp is $50-60 in a PSA 10, Such a steal for a card with artwork like that.
Great data ánd opening packs 🎉
Great video again man, good luck with your collection of 10's.
Appreciate it!
Risk and reward! Love the topic
Just graded my first. It’s fun to have graded cards you pulled
Yep I agree 100%
love watching your videos, always lots of useful info and very entertaining as well
I think its a fun thing to do if you have spare investment but for sure risky
Great video have tried a bit of grading myself but i have never had a great experience! Can’t wait for the giveaway!
For the most part i should be a good investment but depends on market and rarity of cadd
These videos are always so interesting. Thanks for putting in the work.
Great info, thank you!
How many cards have you bought online that you sent in graded 10’s? I feel like the % chance of a 10 from an online card is low. (Even after dyod)
Quite a few honestly. I’m very picky - ask for lots of pictures and up close pics of the card edges.
I also buy off of fb groups from verified sellers - not from eBay and tcgplayer so that might changes things a bit too
Let's go 9k...!!!
would love more pack opening vids :)
Isn’t that based on Ebay sold averages? Should subtract cost eBay commission cost, average shipping price. That’s the true profit.
I don’t sell on eBay - I sell in fb groups
Can you explain how one is risking the cost of the buying the card? Wouldn’t the risk just be whatever shipping fees you spent buying/shipping for grading plus the cost of grading? At the end of the process you still have a card you can try reselling raw if the grades are low.
I see what you're saying, but you're still outputting money for a card, spending money on the grading process, and if it doesn't grade a 10, you are losing a bit of money there. Yes, you still have the card, but it's using up that money for a period of months for no gains.
Im always so scared to get the cards graded incase they get lost.
I think its risky but if you have money to spend i think its worth it great video i like all the info about the cost and profit
I think this would have been better if you included PSA 9 too
I was working under the assumption that psa 9 is going to be worth roughly the same as raw
This sounds like a long process and risky
I love this idea!
nice vid! 👍
Why would people not grade it already if it's a ten?
I would need double all of that. Bc I would wanna keep one of each for myself 😂
lol yea that’s the problem with also being a collector
Why would people sell theses raw if they can get them graded and make that profit themselves? I’m scared to buy em if they ppl selling them think they can’t get a psa 10
Right at release, people are looking for quick $$ so that’s when it’s possible to buy a psa 10 contender
@@ThePokeOffice what’s your thought on buying vintage cards for a few bucks and grading those
Great video!
You won't believe me if I say that I was just wondering about profits from grading. 😮
This is perfect content! Thanks man!
Glad you liked it!
It's a good video but it's not a true profit. You have auction fees/seller fees and shipping costs as well
I really like the take on this video
Thanks!
Love the risk because the reward can pay off
Yep definitely
I wonder what someone would pay for a psa1 moonbreon 😂
Might be a really hot card 10 years from now lol!
This assumes that you’re not selling on eBay correct?
Yes I rarely sell on eBay. I’ve had much more success in fb groups
It's either 10 or bust tho. too big of a risk, for the reward. I also don't trust people selling raw. anyone that has a gem candidate card is going to grade it themselves
Awesome 👍
great content!
thanks for the info
I want that blaziken so bad!
This is not a great explanation of how this trade actually works.
First of all, buying raw cards like this means your gem rate is not going to be the same as PSA 10 population/PSA number graded. It’s going to be more like 5-10%, because most sellers already screened these high dollar cards and sent off for grading the ones they thought were good for 10s.
Second, you shouldn’t be thinking about only 1 card. This is the type of operation that scales with $$. Because the chance of buying a raw 10 is low, you should be buying 20-30 raw cards in the hope that you get a handful of 10 candidates to grade.
Lastly, it’s not as if you either get a 10 or lose the entire investment. If a raw card comes in that will obviously not get a 10, turn around and sell that card as near mint same way you bought it. You will lose on shipping, taxes, and seller fees so just take a 20-30% loss for that and call it a day. Next will be your 10 candidates that come back 9s… For top end chases like this you should be able to break even including your grading costs and price of raw card.
So really you need to estimate multiple numbers to do this successfully: chance to buy raw 10, defect rate (10 candidate grades lower than 10), how many you can actually sell in whatever needed timeframe raw 9s and 10s
It seems like you’re missing the point of the video.
I’m presenting the data for you to make an informed decision, so looking at a bunch of different cards that could be good to look for raw and send in for grading.
Second, I disagree with you. I’ve bought plenty of raw cards that have graded as a 10.
And third, at the end I talk about buying 5 Magikarps at the end to show how this could work.
I’m giving an overview, not a detailed structure of exactly what to do. It’s for everyone to make their own choices.
@@ThePokeOfficeYep, I made this comment before I got to the point in the video where you talked about buying from Facebook groups. That's definitely a better way to do this strategy than trying to buy "near mint" off TCGPlayer or another site without pictures of the actual card you will receive. Personally, I like PSA 10 price >= 4x raw price to attempt this trade. Magikarp wasn't on my radar previously though, I didn't realize raw was that cheap, so I'll have to keep tabs on that now.
@@ThePokeOfficeYep I made this comment before I got to the part where you said buying cards from Facebook groups. That's a much better idea than trying to buy raw "near mint" off TCGPlayer or somewhere else that doesn't include pictures. That way you can save a lot of time on the "this will never grade a 10" step. Personally, I prefer PSA 10 price >= 4x raw price as that will typically have the best margins and can accept a decently high non-10 rate.
Yea I would definitely not recommend buying off of tcgplayer in hopes of grading as a 10
Came for advice
Stayed for giveaway
Love it
Plus ev decisions
Awesome sauce!
full art zardddd
Let's goooo
beautiful char
Big risk
Definitely not for everyone
Raw Cards = more defective card than the perfect card, the owers have intension to sell their defect cards, you are not going to get good cards from the market, why would the owner sell their perfect card at market lower price, they know what on their hand, to conclude your theory not going to work that easily
maybe starting filming yourself just opening packs everytime you decide to open packs so if you get a hit you can show it if you do not get a good hit then just delete video not like it costs you to film ya self opening lol
lol I rarely open packs by myself anymore so I’m not too concerned
💲💲💲💸💸💸
Bump
Great video!