PSA 10 vs raw: what grading actually adds
Almost every grading article repeats the same unsourced line — "a PSA 10 sells for about twice the raw card." We hold live raw and graded pricing for the same printings, so instead of repeating it we measured it.
Median PSA 10 premium
Versus the same printing raw in Near Mint, for cards worth $5+ raw.
PSA 10 vs PSA 9
The single most underrated number in grading. One grade apart, and it is not close.
Card pairs measured
Across 20 expansions, 1999 to the present.
The premium barely changes with card value
This was the genuinely surprising result. The intuition is that expensive cards should carry a bigger grading premium, because the stakes are higher and authentication matters more. The data does not show that. From a $10 card to a $500 card, the median multiple stays in a narrow band.
| Raw NM price | Cards | Median raw | Median PSA 10 | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5 – $15 | 480 | $8.50 | $151 | 18.8× |
| $15 – $30 | 302 | $21 | $329 | 16.2× |
| $30 – $60 | 278 | $42 | $556 | 14.6× |
| $60 – $150 | 265 | $89 | $1,283 | 12.8× |
| $150 – $500 | 142 | $222 | $4,030 | 16.6× |
| $500+ | 30 | $651 | $9,165 | 12.8× |
The practical read: grading does not become proportionally more rewarding as cards get more expensive. What changes is the absolute dollar gap, and that is what has to clear your fees.
The number we are deliberately not putting in the headline
Cards worth under $5 raw show a median multiple of 95.2× across 1,602 pairs — median raw $0.77, median PSA 10 $62. Taken at face value that looks like the best trade in the hobby. It is not, and we would rather explain why than print a number that gets people to waste money.
A PSA 10 of a mass-produced common is rare because almost nobody submits commons, not because the card is valuable. The graded population is tiny, so a handful of sales set the price. Three things kill the trade in practice: your odds of actually pulling a 10 on a bulk common are poor, the market for that slab is thin enough that you may not find a buyer at the quoted price, and the grading fee alone exceeds the raw card's value many times over. Treat the sub-$5 band as a statistical curiosity.
Why the 9-versus-10 gap is the number that should worry you
Across 2,739 cards where both grades have a market, the PSA 10 sells for a median of 4.2× the PSA 9. One grade apart. The submission that comes back a 9 does not return most of the upside — it returns a fraction of it.
This is the real economics of grading, and it is why the "median multiple" framing above is only half the story. Your expected value is the 10 multiple weighted by your odds of a 10, plus the 9 multiple weighted by your odds of a 9. If you are not confident about centering and surface, the second term dominates — and centering is the defect that most often caps an otherwise clean card at a 9.
By era
Median multiple by print era, for cards worth $5+ raw. The trend runs the opposite way to the common assumption: vintage cards carry the larger grading premium, and the multiple shrinks steadily through the modern era.
The likely reason is survivorship. A card printed in 1999 has had twenty-five years to acquire edge wear, and most surviving copies are not close to gem mint — so a genuine 10 is scarce relative to the pool of raw copies, and priced accordingly. Modern cards come out of the pack in excellent condition and are stored properly from day one, so a clean copy is ordinary and the raw price already reflects near-mint quality. The 10 has less scarcity to sell.
Sample sizes vary a lot by era, and the smaller ones deserve scepticism rather than confidence. Eras with fewer than 25 qualifying cards are not shown at all. Where an era sits far outside the surrounding trend on a modest sample, read it as noise in a thin slab market rather than a real property of that era.
Methodology
Published in full so the figures can be checked rather than taken on trust.
- Sample. 3,099 variant-matched pairs drawn from 20 expansions chosen to span every print era from 1999 to the present.
- Pairs are matched within a variant. A card's normal and reverse-holo printings are different products with different markets. Comparing the raw price of one against the graded price of another is the most common way this analysis goes wrong, and it manufactures multiples in the thousands.
- Raw side is Near Mint only. NM is the correct comparison for a card that could plausibly grade a 10, and pinning to one condition avoids the internally inconsistent condition rows that exist in any aggregated pricing feed.
- Medians, never means. The distribution has a long right tail; a mean would be dominated by a handful of low-population commons and would not describe any real card.
- Exclusions. Signed and error slabs are excluded — their prices attach to the individual slab rather than the printing. Bands with fewer than 10 cards are not reported.
- Limitations. These are market prices, not completed-sale records, and they say nothing about grading odds — we can measure what a 10 is worth, not how likely your card is to become one. Thinly traded slabs carry wider error than the medians imply.
Computed from live market pricing on August 17, 2026. Free to cite with attribution and a link to this page.
Frequently asked
How much does a PSA 10 increase a Pokemon card's value?
Across 3,099 variant-matched pairs from 20 expansions, a PSA 10 sells for a median of 15.9× the Near Mint raw price for cards worth $5 or more raw. The multiple is remarkably stable across price tiers rather than growing with card value.
Is the gap between a PSA 9 and a PSA 10 really that large?
Yes, and it is the most underrated number in grading. Across 2,739 cards holding both grades, the PSA 10 sells for a median of 4.2× the PSA 9. That gap is why centering and surface matter so much: the difference between the two grades is often a single defect.
Can a graded card be worth less than the raw card?
It happens, but it is rare — 0.6% of the pairs we measured had a PSA 10 priced below the raw Near Mint copy. Those cases are almost entirely stamped promos and similar printings where the raw card is itself the scarce collectible.
Why do cheap common cards show enormous PSA 10 multiples?
Because a PSA 10 of a mass-produced common is genuinely rare — almost nobody submits them, so the graded population is tiny. That produces huge ratios that are not an arbitrage opportunity: the odds of pulling a 10 are low, the market for such a slab is thin, and grading fees dominate the economics. This is why we report the sub-$5 band separately rather than folding it into the headline figure.
Does this mean I should grade my card?
Not on the multiple alone. The multiple tells you the upside if you get a 10; it says nothing about your odds of getting one, and a PSA 9 outcome is worth roughly a quarter of a 10. Factor in grading fees, shipping both ways, and an honest assessment of your card's centering and surface before submitting.
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