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Not all PSA 10s are created equal.
That’s a widely held belief in the sports card market that adds to an already overflowing pot of market nuance. While grading adds a remarkable amount of structure and uniformity to a market sorely in need of it, it’s not a perfect science that puts all cards of the same grade on equal footing. Explaining the gaps in market value between a PSA 10 and a PSA 9 to a Hobby outsider already draws looks of incredulity, so imagine explaining that - well, actually - some PSA 9s are vastly more valuable than other PSA 9s because of largely unquantifiable factors like eye appeal.
That’s a lecture sure to be met with an open-mouth, glazed-eye gaze so stupefied that it will make even the lecturer question the merit of what they're saying.
Whether formally or informally, market participants make judgments on the caliber of a card within its graded population, and those judgments can often impact the value at which the card sells relative to comps at auction. Think of it this way: grading companies have done probably ~90% of the heavy lifting by authenticating and assigning their numeric grades, but there are elements of a card’s appeal that fall outside the confines of the grading evaluation. Within that 10% beckons opportunity.
Heritage is the latest house to recognize that opportunity, introducing its Best-In-Class service last week not just for cards, but for the full spectrum of sports memorabilia. In cards, the Best-In-Class evaluation compares the card to other versions of the card in the same grade to determine if it is among the very most visually appealing examples in the grade - meaning there can be Best-In-Class PSA 1s just as there are Best–In-Class PSA 10s.
The objective is simple: unlock value at auction for those cards deemed to be deserving of a premium price relative to peers.
As it’s the auction house itself providing these designations, participants will take them with a grain of salt. Houses are incentivized to achieve high prices, but they should also recognize that the designations will ultimately be worthless if they're overused or seen to be lacking in credibility. In a hobby of astute market observers that are rarely shy with criticisms, credibility is everything.
Notably, the Heritage announcement coincided with last week’s PWCC rebrand to Fanatics Collect, including the rebranding of PWCC’s own eye appeal designations, which have been in effect since 2018. PWCC - now Fanatics - assigns designations for Average (top 30% relative to peers), Exceptional (top 15%), and Superior (top 5%) cards. Since May of 2021, sales of cards with eye appeal designations on the PWCC platform total over $35 million.
One benefit of offering these designations? It makes the cards stickier to the auction house.
Competing houses generally won’t be keen to emphatically advertise the might of another house’s designations, heightening the consignor's inclination to keep the card within the same ecosystem the next time it comes up for sale. However, that’s not to say cross-house sales never happen. At the end of June, Goldin sold a PSA 10 Fleer Jordan rookie with a PWCC-A designation. The lot title artfully dodged the mention of a competitor: “1986-87 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan Rookie Card - PSA GEM MT 10 - Top 30% Eye Appeal.” Goldin has sold just two other cards this year with mention of “Eye Appeal” in the lot title.
But do the designations actually add value when sold at the house that provided them?
Isolating the contribution of the designation is a challenge, particularly in cards that trade infrequently in markets that have moved significantly in both directions over the last four years. Moreover, to what degree can you really isolate the impact of the designation from the premium a bidder might pay without it, just on their own cognizance of the card’s appeal?
We can, however, look at a larger swath of data to begin to consider the impact, comparing those cards that sold with designations in PWCC’s Premier Auctions over the last four years (about 800 cards) to those that sold with no designation. Cards with appeal designations generated a significant premium in average price in 2021 and 2022, but that chasm tightened in 2023 and 2024 to date.
Evaluating the results on an event-by-event basis enables greater isolation of market conditions, but the sample sizes get much smaller in doing so, allowing for some outlier results to have significant impact. Still, in each Premier Auction event over the last four years, cards with designations generated an average premium of 43% over the auction lots without one. In only about a third of events, lots with a designation sold at an average price that was lower than the field.
Then, there’s the anecdotal evidence. Perhaps most notable is the $840,000 sale of a PWCC-S 1986 Fleer Jordan card in July of 2021. That sale, over $500,000 greater than the sales immediately preceding and succeeding it, raised many skepticism-laden eyebrows. But extremes aside, there are myriad examples of a card with an eye appeal designation raising conspicuous bumps on an otherwise languid price chart:
Yet, there are plenty of instances of sales that are decidedly ho-hum. An endless number of variables comprise the result achieved in any one auction sale, but secondary market card purveyors appear to be resolute in their commitment to add another ingredient to the cauldron.
Appeal designations aren’t limited to auction house providers. Mike Baker Authentication has developed a presence in the hobby, particularly at PWCC but also at Goldin. MBA’s diamond-based designations evaluate similar criteria, ultimately seeking to clarify the hierarchy of cards that rest within any given numerical grade. Still, we await the arrival of the eager entrepreneur, currently rubbing his hands together and readying a pitch for another layer of evaluation based on the idea that not all Heritage Best-In-Class or Fanatics-Superior or MBA Gold Diamond cards are equal in quality. Best-of-the-Best Authentication. If your card is of sufficient appeal, they’ll entomb it in a piece of the Aggro Crag from Nickelodeon GUTS.
Move over, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” We’re headed right for “Six Degrees of Authentication.”
The Heritage Best-In-Class service will not focus exclusively on cards, offering evaluation of bats, photos, and jerseys. In some cases, the evaluation will consider the historical significance of the item, a quality that in the past was only informally marketed and passively understood. As with everything in the sports collectibles world: nuance is everything. Understanding that, Heritage will publish analysis accompanying its Best-In-Class designations.
Perhaps the best solution to the evaluation arms race is a tribal council of hobby voices trusted to deliver an impartial deliberation on the merits of a particular item. There’s a free YouTube series pitch sure to garner thousands of views. We give that idea a PWCC-A. In the top 30%, sure, but certainly not in Exceptional or Superior territory.
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