Wait, Do PSA 9s Have Better ROI Than PSA 10s?!?

Is the PSA 9 dead? Not so fast. Matt digs into three iconic cards across three sports to test a strange pattern: PSA 9s outperforming PSA 10s.

He indexes every sale against player and sport baskets, then walks the data. 2003 Topps Chrome LeBron. 2014 World Cup Prizm Messi. 1999 Base Set Charizard.

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Slabnomics. The purpose of this channel is to help you make better financial decisions when it comes to sports cards and TCG. So today's episode is going to be something that helps with that. Now, the initial seeds for this inspiration actually came from a post that I made on Instagram about six months ago while PSA 9 is dead. And the gist of that post is that because of modern gem rates, most of the cards in a PSA 9 are not holding any kind of value and people only want the PSA 10s. Now you probably saw this post because it got over a million views, but if you didn't, I'll make sure to link it in the comments. And while you're there, make sure to like this video and subscribe to this channel if you're a person that cares about investing in cards. So that thesis that the PSA 9 is dead in ultra modern cards led me down a lot of different rabbit holes since. I've been looking at things like how was the COVID market different from this bull market, what parallels are going to be the best performers, and even which cards have outperformed the SP. And while diving down those rabbit holes, I've come to some realizations on looking at parallels and looking at different cards that in many cases PSA 9s have outperformed PSA 10s. Now, this is a data focused channel, not vibe. So what I want to be able to look at is how often does that truly hold true? And does it hold true across different sports, players, industries, or is it only a specific subset? And rolling up my nerd sleeves and diving deep into the databases, I set about to answer this question. Now I didn't know if I was going to make a Slabnomics podcast episode about this, but I was leaning towards it when I got this message from a new follower on Instagram. Shout out to Kavaradonna underscore collector. He DM'd me and said, Hey Matt, I enjoy your analysis. Thank you very much. I also work in finance, and it seems we think similarly about the hobby. I've been casually diving into the PSA 10 vs PSA 9 value proposition debate exclusive of pop counts. I haven't run a formalized analysis yet, but I'm finding over long time frames that with respect to the more popular or iconic cards from GOAT and superstar level players, PSA 9s seem to be outpacing the tens in price appreciation. Are you finding the same? And when I'm already thinking about doing an episode and I get this kind of DM, it makes me think that this is fate and that it's time to put this out there. Now instead of just giving you the answer, what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at data from three different players across three different sets and three different sports. And in fact, the last one isn't even a player or a sport. But we got the data, so let's do the dive. The three cards in question that we're going to look at today are classic iconic cards. The first one is the 2003 Top Scrum LeBron James with all of the parallels that go along with that. That's for my basketball guys. The second one is the 2014 World Cup Prism Leonel Messi and those parallels for my soccer fellas. And the third, I haven't forgotten about you, TCG boys. This one is the 1999 Charizard base set, which has three parallels. For the sake of narrowing some stuff down, I'm going to only use PSA data, even though I also have BGS, CGC, and SGC. And the second thing that I want to pull up is that all of these things are going to be indexed to both player index and sport index. Now what that means is a lot of times these sales are going to happen at different times. So if you're comparing a sale in 2018 to a sale in 2022, it's going to be very different in terms of how it's changed, even if both of those were then sold in 2026 for the different cards. Even if both those two cards had sales on the same day in 2026, because they had different starting points, it's going to be all wonky. And they certainly don't have the same ending sales dates either. So how do we solve this problem? We do this through indexing. Indexing takes a broad basket of different cards. This gives us a snapshot of how the overall player market has performed during a long time span. And we can do the same thing with sports in general. We can do it for basketball, we can do it for Pokemon, we can index everything so that we have a measuring stick with which to measure against everything. Now that was a lot of words, so all that really means is when I'm looking at LeBron James tops Chrome, I'm going to be comparing that against how LeBron James has performed as an index with over a thousand cards in that index. Also going to compare those tops chrome cards to how they performed against the basketball card market in general. This then answers not just the question which 2003 LeBron James parallels or grades have performed the best, but also how have these cards and parallels compared to LeBron James in general? And even more generally, how have these cards compared to the overall basketball market during these time frames? So let's take a look at 2003 Topps Chrome for LeBron. This is a relatively short analysis for this iconic set because there are only five parallels. You have base, refractor, x fractor, black refractor, and gold refractor. So the two overarching questions that we can ask are which parallel performed the best out of these cards, and which grade for these parallels performed the best against the other grades along that parallel. So, first question which parallel performed best out of those five? And if you went with your gut and you said a LeBron James gold refractor, you were absolutely correct. A gold PSA 10 in the past 11 years has returned 200x if you held it that time period. This is almost eight times more than the LeBron index itself, and also very notably about 12 times more than the basketball index if you held every card from there. This is truly one of the best cards I've seen in terms of overall performance indexed so far. If you held a PSA 9 of the gold though, it really did just fine. You went two and a half times more than the broad index for LeBron. But there was one parallel in between those two that I found most interesting out of this entire set. The base card and a PSA Authentic return more than a PSA 9 gold in terms of percentage increase. In terms of index returns, comparing it against LeBron, that's absolutely true. Caveat here, much different time frames, 2022 to 2026 for the authentic base, and then the gold refractor went all the way back to 2013. But comparing these against the index is able to show us how much the actual card in parallel itself outperformed that index because it's a measuring stick, like I said before. So this is a real data point, and this isn't just base, which outperformed all other base grades, but the refractor in the authentic also outperformed all other refractor grades. That being said, after the authentic, the PSA 10s for both the base and the refractor were the next ones up for those parallels. And trend alert, the black PSA Authentic also returned more than the other black parallels. So I don't know. Seems to be a trend to me. One parallel-specific thing this data set is telling us is that the X Fractors are not the way to go. They show up as the clear worst performers against all the other parallels, sifting down towards the bottom of the list. This card holds up very well against the LeBron index as a whole, so it's pretty clear it's an iconic card. But if there was one crazy thing that I were to say to you based off of all of this, it would be that if in 2013 you bought a 2003 Topps Chrome Gold PSA 9 LeBron James rookie and you held it to the end of 2025, you would have been outperformed by a person who in 2022 bought 200 PSA authentic base LeBron James 2003 Tops Chrome rookies. Consider your mind boggled. But maybe you're thinking to yourself, maybe that's just a basketball-specific thing. So, in honor of the World Cup and the GOAT that is Lionel Messi, let's look at the GOAT set 2014 Prism World Cup. In Messi's card for the 2014 Prism World Cup, the craziest thing here for all the parallels is that not a single PSA 10 has outperformed a PSA 9 for any of those numbered parallels. There's not enough to really compare when it comes to the gold and the green crystals, and red, I actually couldn't find any sales. But for the purple and the blue, PSA 9 for the purple and the PSA 8 for the blue both outperform their PSA 10s. So maybe you got a good deal and bought a PSA 10 purple Lionel Messi 2014 World Cup Prism, and you held until the end of 2025 and you sold, and you look back. The crazy thing is you were outgunned by the PSA 9 holder, not by a little. Sure, your purple PSA 10 was able to outperform the Messi index by 29% over that time period. Purple 9 outperformed the index by 158%. 158, 29. And a lot of people's favorite parallel, the blue for Messi with that beautiful color match, tells the same story. Weirdly enough, this time it's not the 9 that outperforms the 10, but it's the 8 by 148% over the index versus 95. A couple clear ancillary insights from this dataset. The red, white, and blue power plaid is definitely the favorite in terms of long-term ROI, and the least favorite is the yellow and red pulsar PSA 10. In fact, the plaid did really well and the pulsar got crushed. I think a lot of that has to do with population counts. I remember the plaid one being very, very low. So maybe you're here listening to me and you're thinking to yourself, he's cherry picking. Well, let's look at the silver, the most liquid parallel there is, and your instincts were right, because the silver PSA 10 did outperform the PSA 9, but hold the phone, both of them were ultimately pretty terrible in terms of other messy cards. I don't know whether to say this means don't buy messy silvers or that they're just still undervalued after 15 years of looking at this data, but the fact remains for the PSA 10 and PSA 9 silvers, they trailed the index for broad messy assets, so they just haven't been good buy and hold assets, which is a real shame because those PSA 10s are incredibly rare. To wrap up this info on Messi though, I will say that if you're just looking at the broad messy index versus the soccer index, he outperformed in all of these cards. Messi pretty much crushes, and the colors by and large did pretty well, the serial number colors. And speaking of doing pretty well, if you have loved this video, make sure to share it with a friend who you also want to do well in terms of their card investing. LeBron fan, Messi fan, numbers fan. It helps out the channel a lot. What also helps the channel out a lot is when I show you guys stuff that I didn't know about and no one knew about before running all the numbers. TCG, honestly, there are so much open sea. There's definitely some data guys out there doing great things, but by and large, most Pokemon people are not running numbers. If you've been to your local card show, you know what I'm talking about. So because I get bored of only looking at soccer or baseball or basketball, let's throw a little twist into this thing and let's look at the 1999 Base Set Charizard under the three different variations that we have for that amazing set. Base set came out in 1999, and there were three different versions. First edition obviously came out first, Shadowless came out soon after, and then Unlimited were the later stage printings that have many, many copies. In this data set as well, I've gone ahead and indexed it to the Charizard Index as well as the Pokemon Index, so we can see how these cards have performed against those more broad baskets of assets. So here's my question to you out of those three, the first edition Shadowless and Unlimited, which one do you think was the best performer for long-term ROI? If you went with your gut and said first edition, you are absolutely correct. And also unsurprisingly, it is the PSA 10 that outperformed everything else. That first edition PSA 10 has absolutely crushed. But way trickier question Do you know what the second best performing first edition card out of this was in terms of grade? If you're looking at your YouTube screen, you see that it is the PSA 1. And this doesn't seem to be totally a fluke because unlimited the PSA 1 is the fourth best performer out of the grades. And the weirdest thing of it all is that middle child, that shadowless, if you're looking for the best performer out of those shadowless Charizard cards, it's not gonna be PSA 10, it's not even gonna be PSA 1, it's gonna be PSA 3 and 4, obviously. And I do have thoughts about why that is, but I'm not gonna give them to you right away because we gotta save some stuff for the end. However, I will call out though, one interesting thing that I'm seeing here is that the first edition PSA 9 as well as the Shadowless PSA 9 are both pretty much underperformers when looking at all of these as a whole. The shadowless PSA 9 is around halfway down the rankings, and the first edition PSA 9 is towards the bottom. Contrast that to the unlimited PSA 9, which is up near the top in terms of ranking, and it paints a picture that I promise I'll tell you about in a few minutes, so make sure you stay towards the end. Now you might have noticed, unlike the LeBron and Messi cards, I haven't been talking about how it is performed versus the player index or the sport index, and I wanted to save that towards the end, so let's get into it right now to finish this all off. That is the single craziest thing that I've understood from this data looking at Charizard, Messi, and LeBron James. The Charizard has underperformed his own index from the 1999 base set. Whoa. And not only has the 1999 base Charizard underperformed the average Charizard across all of the cards, but all but two of these grades and parallels for this Charizard card have underperformed the Pokemon index over a long period of time. When we think of Pokemon, we think of the 1999 base set Charizard. It's so iconic, and as millennials, it brings us back. But the granddaddy of all Pokemon cards has been beaten by the Pokemon Index itself. Broad basket of Articunos, Moltres, Zapdos, Blossoms, Mergles, and that Apple thing with all the lizard heads coming out of Charizard has been a less than average ROI performer. Now I'll bet you're thinking, well, what has outperformed the Pokemon index? What are the high performers out of those cards? And I haven't dived into the data yet, but subscribe to this channel to make sure when I go into it, you don't miss the videos that I put out later. But spoiler alert, it's probably Ratatta. Anyways, so we've talked about three different industries, we've talked about three different iconic cards and all the parallels and grades that have come with them. And I haven't tied it all into any conclusions quite yet, but let's do that now and let's answer that question that we started with in the beginning. Why might PSA 9s outperform PSA 10s a lot of the time? And I promised I would tell you what I thought about why it was, and I'm gonna do that right now. I think it boils down a lot to three main factors price, sport, and parallel. Speaking about price first, I've talked a lot recently about how there's two real markets in sports cards, three if you want to stretch it. There's high end and there's low end, and they operate very differently. We saw this especially in that 2003 Tops Chrome LeBron Gold. That is high-end market. And when you're looking at the people that are going to spend 1.3, 1.5 million dollars on a card if they're playing in these kind of big leagues, they probably aren't that much more bothered. Paying $1.1, $1.3 million for a PSA 10 LeBron James Gold versus $300k for the PSA 9. We're pretty much talking about a house in a really nice neighborhood versus a house in kind of a not so nice neighborhood. In the upper ends of the market, to have that PSA 10, to have that clout is going to mean that much more. And price isn't the main factor, price isn't the object, as they say. Contrast that to the lower end of the market, most notably found in that messy blue. If you're getting a messy blue in a PSA 9, you might be able to get that for 8, 9k, but the PSA 10 is gonna run you around 26k. I think there's gonna be a lot more people willing to spend 9k on the 9 than there are 26k on the 10. Think of it like rooms. The PSA 9 room is going to be a smaller room and there's gonna be more people in it. The PSA 10 room is gonna be a bigger room with less people in it. Which one is going to have more energy? Speaking of energy and rooms, the second thing I brought up was sport. And sport dictates how big the market is and how mature the market is. Looking at the basketball market, it had already gone through a massive maturation phase throughout the late 90s when we had those very popular Michael Jordan insert cards. And by the time 2003 rolled around with the Golden Boy LeBron James on deck, the market was already maturing and ready for its next Wundicund. Basketball has a very high-end presence in the market. It's a mature, established market. It's a blue chip. It had already proven itself. Contrast that to the soccer card market, which came out with the awesome, amazing set of the 2014 World Cup Prism as its first Prism set, only in 2014, 12 years ago. This is more of an emerging market versus that blue chip of basketball. It's much smaller, much less volume, pretty unproven, and it's still finding itself in the broader market. It's the new kid on the block. And if you look at the average dollar spent by a soccer card collector versus a basketball one, you are going to very vividly see the difference of market. Basketball collectors have already gone through those roaring 90s, whereas most soccer card collectors started out buying the Panini stickers, which were cents on the dollar out in Italy and Spain, transitioned from stickers into cards in the late 90s and early 2000s, and are just now having their Jordan retire. Think about that for a second. We're in those late 90s for basketball in soccer right now. And Lemania Mall might be the next LeBron James because his market actually behaved very similarly in 2023 once he got anointed. Something to think about for my Lemania Mall guys and for my soccer card fellas. Pokemon card market is kind of in the middle of all of this. There's a lot of money being thrown around in Pokemon, and there are just so many fans of it. The sales volume is crazy on Pokemon, so it can support people buying first edition and unlimited PSA 10s on scale. And it's already proven itself through a lot of years and cycles and so many sets released since basic. The Pokemon company has really innovated in so many ways throughout all their sets. I was just watching a video about that yesterday. So Pokemon kind of hits on all the things. It's pretty much a blue chip market at this point. It's got a high end, it's got a feverish low end, and a very live collector base and playing base. There's a reason why Pokemon has been up 26 weeks in a row, as measured by comp. So I talked about price, I talked about sport. Let's talk about parallel for a second, just to wrap all this up. Parallel really ties into that market question. How many people really want this parallel? I find whenever I'm looking at most of the sports, the unnumbered parallel tend to have very thin markets at PSA 9, mostly because the difference in value between the 10 and the 9 is so small. If someone wants the card, most of the time they're just gonna say, uh, I'll go up and get the 10. And the nine just never really achieves much market value. A lot of times this is even true on silvers. And then when we're talking about the rarer ones or the ones that have a massive value jump between the nine and the ten, then you get more people filtered down into the nine because they can't quite stomach the price jump into the ten. So I think rule of thumb here, if the prices are pretty close, the tens are going to have better long-term value until they get far enough apart that the nines seem to be the screaming value. There's probably bands in which you can move from the 10 into the nine when you see how that premium is expanding from one to the other. Add another thing to the laundry list for Slabnomics. If you want more information on my frameworks and my data analysis, head to slabnomics.com. I built that set myself. You'll have to forgive me for any clunkiness, but head over, check it out, let me know what you think in the comments here on YouTube or over on Instagram at Slabnomics. I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you have, make sure to subscribe. I put out a video every week and make sure to follow me on Instagram. I appreciate you all being here. As always, keep building and I will talk to you later.