When a PSA 1 Is Worth 4X More: Does Eye Appeal Matter More Than Grade?

Michael Jordan. Sports cards is a lifestyle Sports cards and we live now Jeremy Lee in the building and every guess that you ever needed Sports cards after hours Keep the hobby heated Updates, homie Talk like you never seen it Sports cards live and I could ever beat it Sports cards is a lifestyle Sports cards and we live now. Welcome to another episode of Sports Cards Live with your host, Jeremy Lee. Josh, what are your thoughts on all this as you're with us tonight? I think it's cool that four people can look at the same card and have four different opinions. I think that's kind of neat. And you know what? It doesn't, you know, it's interesting. You're Josh, you're a lawyer. You do, you know, you do a lot of, a lot of lawyer work. And what you just said is you, it's neat that that can happen. Like, and I'm just, I was. My mind quickly contrasting that with, you know, other worlds, other professions where, you know, you can have four people look at a situation like even like a, a murder case, for example. You can have four different stories, but there's only one real truth. Whether it's, whether it's discoverable or not, it's another story. But do you like that four people can have a different opinion on something in the, in the sports card hobby? Like, does that come at all from your, your, your professional training where you're searching for one truth versus subjective opinions? No, I think it's just me. I like the, I mean it'd be pretty boring if everyone agreed on everything all the time. So it's nice to see people have a different opinion on what they like on a card where they like centering or corners or registration or what have you. So it makes the hobby much more interesting. It's akin to movies and TV because, you know, it's like some people there's the fundamental. Is this thumbs up or thumbs down and then you zoom in closer and that's where some of the divergences exist. What I found fascinating, looking at stuff on I appeal link is for a lot of cards, consensus does form like something that's really pretty. For some it's a B plus. For some it's an A, it's an A. But generally it's in that bracket. So it's nice to see where they diverge but that when you zoom out, there is a general consensus on a lot of cards that forms too. So, but mostly it's I just wanted something that's free and transparent and, and fun and useful and building a community like you said, it is great. So a couple comments here. First, Laura says to David, nice alteration. Mr. Chase on his haircut. Jeremy from California is calling him a David Chase impersonator. This is that again. I don't even know who he is anymore, you guys. Joe Perot says, greater in a cubicle is a great opening to a movie. An opening scene. The card professor says, how does Yu-Gi-Oh Appeal Inc. Differ from mba? I mean, Matty, do you want. Do you want to take that one? Well, I wouldn't even know where to begin. My understanding of NBA is that they charge you for a sticker on a card. I appeal Link is a community. It's more of a tech company. It's a community where collectors are hanging out and rating cards blind. And so we're not saying for the grade. The IQ plus is saying for the grade. We're just basically going back to being in a card shop and saying, here's a letter grade that represents how much this card pleases my Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know what grade it is. Then what the system does it take aggregates all those opinions, all those pure opinions because they're not influenced by. It's a four, it's a three. And then we compare that beauty to. Let's say we can all agree if we buy a 9 or a 10, it better be an A or an A plus because that's the expectation. If we're buying a 1, well, PSA is saying a 1 is 10 out of 100. That's an F. That's pretty bad. So if you have a one that looks like satisfies everyone to a B level, well, that's going to have a pretty high IQ plus score, so. And also my understanding is NBA, you pay for that. We're free and we're not. One opinion of someone you don't know. We're free and we're everyone's opinion. And you do know us because you could click on us and see everyone's cards. And in terms of stickers, it's. It's free. If a sticker qualifies, I'm just. I just giving them away for free. That shows how much I think stickers are important as a business to I appealing. It's. It's free. It's free. So, Yu-Gi-Oh some fundamental differences there. This next comment I'm going to bring up to the sports cards live regulars, guys, brace yourselves for this one, because this is an insult. No, no. This is an insult to all. It's an insult to. To me, it's an insult To David Chase, it's an insult to Josh Adams, it's an insult to Joe Perot, it's an insult to Chris McGill, and it's an insult to everyone we've had on this show except one person. Flint hall says keep preaching. Maddie C. This is great insight. We don't get this sort of insight on this show unless Adam Gray is on. Adam Gray hasn't been on this show in years. On other. He's on other ch. He's on other shows with me. He's not on Sports Cards Live. But this is Flint hall, whose comments I often ignore because they're rarely worthy of the screen. And this is. This is kind of why. This is kind of why. Because he comes in and he insults all of us in one fell Sepia One fell Sepia Thank you, though, bro. All of us. So just, just a good comedy there. Flint hall, this is your first comment in like weeks and weeks that has been, that has been worthwhile of, of being read out loud. So keep up the, Keep up the work there, buddy. The professor says, should I appeal Inc. Have a gallery or glossary examples of what they think are near perfect of certain grail cards? We do. Go ahead, Maddie. I, I feel like I could answer this one, but I'll let you answer it. Well, there, there are two ways to see such cards. We have something called the hall of Fame, which is for cards that have a very high level of pure beauty, but also are extreme overachievers. Because again, if you're a 10, you better look good if you're a card that's a 10. So that doesn't really get you into the hall of Fame because as a Collector you're a 10 and I'm paying for you as a 10. So you better look gorgeous. But then if you just want to see those cards that are extreme Absolute beauty, you can search for whatever cards you want and sort of by highest badge. And then you'll see all the God tiers and A pluses which are going to be beautiful cards. So there are two ways to. To see just that. And I, I always love looking through the hall of Fame because I see, you know, I know you guys each have some on there and it's like those, those are my favorite cards. Those are my favorite cards. Yu-Gi-Oh I was. My Joe Jackson was. Was number one, I think for a bit. But now it's like number. It's. Now it's 4 or 5. I think it's 197. Like, oh, it's an open basically IQ plus is OPS plus. It's ERA plus. That's what it is. Yu-Gi-Oh I'm not, I'm not complaining. You're 197 ops plus. Chase. I, I don't complain when my card moves around the hall of Fame. Unlike some people in the chat. Mr. Mike Petty who can't. Who can who. His whole life he has like all the cards in the hall of Fame. He's dominating the site. Well but all he does is about it. It's, it's hilarious. Pick a, pick a spot, Petty. Pick a spot, buddy. A couple more comments here, fellas. Bob Boozle how do I connect my hobby spectrum with my I appeal link in my only fans account? Well, we will be able to connect it with, with the hobby spectrum. Mike Petty says I think it's neat. Well here it is. I think it's neat when the first review is a minus and there's no hall of fame for you. Yu-Gi-Oh whatever. Let's, let's not, let's let him continue to complain about that whenever he gets the chance. I like this. Bob Boozle says to Flint hall, you can return from the doghouse. Trust me, he's right. You can, you can. I, I'm, I, I like to forgive and forget. Brad's vintage here says just joined have been reviewing cards. How do I gem mint reviewed? Says I need to get friends to review first. How do I tell friends I put a card on there? Can you address all that, Maddie? Oh absolutely. Yu-Gi-Oh That little bulletin on the top doesn't mean you have to get them to review first. It's just saying that's a nice way and an easy way to get more reviews. We have a share button on the card details page is very card. You could just hit that share button, text it, put it anywhere you want and tell your friends to, you know, come on and, and join. But yes, you just get reviews by putting it up there. It pops into all of our feeds. We see it and whenever we come on the site there are many different ways to review. You can search for things to review. You can hit the review tab, kind of review by yourself. You can review through the feed by intention the site sort of. There's so many ways to play around and land on things to review. But no, you don't have to send it to friends first. You just put it up there and the Yu-Gi-Oh blurs the flip and then everyone can see it and have fun and give their opinions. Thank you for responding to the comment there. A couple more here. Flint hall, you're back on the screen says without sports cards live on Saturdays, I'd probably kill myself. Flint hall, you're forgiven. Okay, well, you're forgiven, buddy. Josh, what do you want to say? We're off next Saturday, so just saying. Yu-Gi-Oh that's true. No show next Saturday, guys. Will be the national. Flint, please don't do that. I know you one-of-one I don't. I shouldn't say. I know you one-of-one I hope you don't. Please keep yourself around Flint Hall. This show got very dark situations. Need to merge Hobby Spectrum type in into users of IP link if not already doing it. Great overlap and Yu-Gi-Oh I know I've been saying it for a while, but I've got some big updates coming literally for, for the Hobby Spectrum. Major changes, not changes, major additions. And they would provide some, some good overlap between the two platforms to help give insight into the. The various people within the community. So great, great shout out there. Absolutely. Okay, David, go ahead please. I. You know how Maddie was kind of saying about, you know, which I want everyone to understand, like you give a card a grade and, and you know you get you know a God tier A plus down to F. Right. And then there's a number score and that number score is where that average grade hits compared to what the technical grade is. And that's the thing that I like more. Right. I enjoy that part of it because I try to collect as low for the grade as possible. So. Right. And I know Matty does too. Matty has some crazy like what cards that are one that are, that are God tier which are those ones that are like one in a million kind of cards. Those are so hard to find which I feel like it's really tough to get into the hall of Fame because you need to be an A and you need to have that high number. But I also, you know, because I do like cards that are like ones and twos and see how high they can perform. I like that number that we can look at so we can really see, you know, that's really an over performing card. A card that it might not be an A plus because it is A1 but it looks so much better than any other ones which is what it gives that number grade. So just to let people know if you're really just wanting to see how nice a card is compared to the technical grade, that's when you look at the number and you can sort by number, right Matty? Or how that's the IQ plus number and you can even, you can even. We have a registry and it's the default setting is by IQ plus. I think you're way up there that, that basically guys like you and me where it's like I'm looking for ones. Like I want ones. I, I want a one. My ideal card is a one that I like. Like that's, that's you. I've maxed it out. Wait, Matt saying max sounds weird, but you know, I get it. I know you know, no one else knows but you know. Couple more here. James Fertita says is I appealing only for baseball. Don't see any other sports, but maybe I'm missing them. Well, let me just show you from my show own Basketball, football, football, baseball, hockey, hockey, Hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey. So Yu-Gi-Oh it's for all sports. One thing Maddie, that it doesn't have the ability when. Because when you add a card, the Yu-Gi-Oh does a really good job of picking up the card information and the grade information from the, from the, from, from the label. What I can't do though, Maddie, is pick a category for not vintage non sport. Oh, okay. Well I, I just said all I have to do is then add that so I can add manufacturers I can add. It might not be available in the drop down, but we do now have a vintage non sport section. Okay, good. It is if you go into collectibles, it's in there but it might not be there to, to type in yourself. So if the Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't sense it, maybe you can't Beckett. But I'll look into that. But Yu-Gi-Oh I haven't, I haven't tried. I haven't tried to upload one, but I just noticed that it wasn't in the drop down so I didn't trying. You can upload them now. The Yu-Gi-Oh should pick that up. Okay, really cool. Couple more things. First of all, Chris from Missouri is confused like I am. Is that even David Chase? And then Orlando says Petty. Oh, he's talking to Petty. I thought he was talking to David Chase, but he's saying, Petty, your hair is a plus. More important than cards. Guys, Petty has the hair of a Greek God. Okay? Petty's hair is something that many of us could only dream of ever having. Here's a really good question for you, Maddie from the the back in the days of, of playing like Castlevania and that I probably knew how to say it better. But the Konam. The Konami kid. The Konami kid. one-of-one the cone. The Konami kid says how does Yu-Gi-Oh Appeal Inc. Shake? The critique of being a vibes measure. Is that even a critique I don't know that I really understand the question per se, but. Yu-Gi-Oh What's a Vibes? It's not a Vibes measure. It's a measure of how attractive, how. How beautiful does each collector think this card is? Meaning, are there flaws that bother the collector and. And other flaws that exist that don't. Like. I know, for. For Chase and myself. And please correct me if I'm. If I'm speaking for you out of line, there could be a flaw. But. And I. I see it technically, but it doesn't disturb my eyes, so I don't count it. And so that card may be an A plus to me in terms of beauty just because. Or there's a wrinkle on the back, and I'm like, I don't care. So it's not a Vibes measure. It's an aesthetic appeal measure. Well said, Matty. Well said. Another question from. Well, and I might try situational. How do ones with beautiful front Yu-Gi-Oh appeal with rear with rear paper loss fare on I Appeal, Inc. I just want to say, Maddie, like, the question is almost unanswerable unless you go look for yourself, because I Appeal link is not one person like grading companies or MBA with I Appeal or other I appeal sticker givers. It's not really one person or a small team of two or three people giving them. It's the community giving their vote. And then there is the council, which is made up of like 20 or 30 people. And as soon as a card gets 10 reviews by the council, it locks in a vote. So to ask, to answer situational adventures question here, it's seven, though. Seven. Sorry, seven. You not. You actually have to look at the people doing the reviews. The nice thing that Matty did right at the beginning. And I'm going to show you this right now, guys. I'll show you what I'm talking about here. If I can find my public page. So what. Why is it here, Maddie? Where do I find the way I grade? I know it's somewhere here. If you go to council and you find your profile and then it's your grading style, like how it says, how does the ump call the game? Right? Okay, so if I. Okay, sorry. I'm just going to share that so people can kind of see what that is. So here, guys, this is the council page. And you can see there's Matt ec. He's on the council. Here's his grading style in his own words. Here's another one. Air Rev. His biography. His grading style is written right there. There's one for another. These are all council members that have their grading style written right there. You'll eventually see. There's. You'll eventually see David Chase, who's on the council, as I am also on the council. Why? Because me and David Chase have a great Yu-Gi-Oh for cards, if we might say so ourselves. At least we think we do for ourselves. There's. There he is. There's David Chase's grading style. You can go here and read these yourselves. And mine is coming up somewhere down here just to get to it. There's Jackie's and Jordans. There's JB rules. There's JD9 cards. There's me. There's my grading style. So you can go and read how the council grades cards. So the question is situational wrote in here. Really, Maddie, now that I've shown that, is there anything that you can say that kind of ties it together from a macro angle? I would say it depends on each collector. So, for example, you put up a one that has a beautiful front and then has paper loss on the back. And you get to see what every collector on the site thinks of it, and you get to see who they are. Again, if we think of all the other systems, all the other systems in the hobby as a black box that we pay for, and it's one stranger's opinion, this is fully transparent. It's everyone who's a real collector and it's free. And so in general, though, I can say those type of cards do very, very well. What's fascinating is to see one of the places where there is great consensus, if not near unanimity is that to this old system, those cards get hammered. And to real collectors, we tend to love them. So might there be someone that goes, you know, the front is gorgeous to me, but there's the back. I give it a B plus. I. I have not seen on the site real collectors going that beautiful front with a bad back is a C minus. It's. So in general, I can answer that. So far, the data is showing that real, real live collectors who do flying in the hobby tend to really like cards like that. Yu-Gi-Oh I one-of-one you know, One sec. David Chase, you. Maddie, you've mentioned the black box, which is funny because Pops and comps. Chapter 11 Transparency and the black box of grading. I had. Right. I had nothing to do with that chapter. He had nothing to do with that chapter. But it's, you know, it's, It's. It's important to understand that a lot of people don't. We talked about that earlier on in the show, David, over to you. I was just going to, to reiterate what Maddie was saying. How, you know, if I see a card on there that has a messed up back and a nice front, I, I, there are, there's a possibility I could give it the highest grade, a God tier. I'm still able to give a card the highest grade even though PSA and SGC would give it a one because it has a scrapbook, paper loss or something like that. I'm cool with it. Now there are some, I do know that there are some people who like, will max it out at a certain grade. It's going to be a lot higher than what A one would be though, right? It would be just like what Matt was saying, you know, an A minus, B plus kind of situation. But I have a lot of my cards that are on there with bad backs and people are very nice about those grades. That's why like you kind of have to think like maybe our grading companies a little bit off or maybe the backs of cards not as, not as important as the fronts maybe to some, but it is the technical grade. But it just kind of makes you start thinking about. I'm happy that technical grades are low like that because it makes it more affordable for those kind of cards. So I don't want them. Joshua Adams, any thoughts? Josh is the, Josh is the best to have. I love all, I love everybody in our regulars, guys, you, you know that. But Josh is the best because he puts the least amount of. David Chase will call me after the show. He'll be like Jay Lee. There was a, there was a portion of the show there where you didn't let me talk for 15 minutes. What's up with that? I have never said that to you. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But Josh is like, I'm good. I'm just happy to be here. He has fun. You're, you're Josh, I still want to give you a chance, buddy. Any thoughts on what we're talking about before I go to some more comments? Not really. Thank you, Josh. Okay. A couple more comments from the chat though. And this is what I do want to get Josh's thoughts on, actually. And we're going to start with you on this one, Josh. Alex Hiddell says I appeal should already factor into the number, the condition score. He's saying I appeal should be part of the grade of the, of the technical grade that a grading company. Now this is something that Mickey Mintle and I are talking about offline. Well, I haven't really responded. I've been, I haven't been able to give him a full put time into it and I want to, but it's a really interesting topic. I disagree. I don't think that I appeal should factor in to the score because the, the great it's based on, it's based on a different set of standards that are not I appeal based. They. You can make connections. But Josh, what do you think? Should I appeal factor into this technical grade of a card? I mean, I thought it already does. I mean, I don't know. I don't think cards in the grade, so I really don't know. But I mean. Well, here's where it does. Here's. Here's where it doesn't. It's the old Mookie Chilson situation. You've got a card that looks like it could be a PSA9, but it's got a pinhole in it. Zebra strong Yu-Gi-Oh appeal. But technical standards tell you that's a one and it cannot be any higher. This is why I think I actually, to a degree, I agree with the I agree with Mickey Minto and Alex Hidell that it should. But what you're asking for when you say that you're asking for complete rewriting of the grading standards, that's not going to happen because it they're not going to completely reverse what they've been doing for years. So that Josh, to your question, that's where it doesn't. It's not included in the, in the technical grade is when is when there's something a small hairline wrinkle on the back of the card can cause it from being a 10 to being a 3 sort of thing. So that's where it doesn't. So with that said, I mean, that renders technical grades, doesn't render them anything. They are what they are. But it opens the door to I appeal opinions I accompany. Like I Appeal Inc. A company like Mike Baker. It opens the doors to these sorts of things. Sorry, Josh, I might have said a lot there, but how do you. How do you. What do you think it sounds like that you're saying you shouldn't grade cards. Then if you can't trust the gray, then you're better off keeping them raw, right, bro? Yu-Gi-Oh basically. Yu-Gi-Oh That's kind of what I'm here. I say authenticate the cards. I like graded cards because I, I feel safer buying them because they're authenticated. But when you said that. What I am saying is that you shouldn't grade Cards, I pretty much don't because I don't want to take the risk because I don't trust the grading company to give me an accurate grade. I just don't trust them. I don't think they're consistent enough to. To give me a good grade. The card could be an 8 one day and a 6 the next day. That happens all the time. Otherwise, imagine how many fewer submissions they would have if that wasn't the case. Imagine if there weren't 400 submissions of a card numbered to 200. Right. It's because people see it. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't trust the grading companies to give me an accurate grade, so I don't grade cards with them. Instead, I let other people take that risk. Paid the insurance premiums for my lifetime insurance policy, and. And I'll go buy them already graded. Like, just makes so much more sense to me. So. Yu-Gi-Oh Maddie, thoughts on. On that? Well, I think we. I always. I remember when the half point system first came out, and I remember assuming, well, gee, that'll be when a card looks extra nice. Or. And. And I thought that would be the case. But I think ultimately I kind of side with what you're saying here, Jeremy, in that it would be nice philosophically, but in practice it would be chaos because that system's already in place. And as a collector, that's why I always fantasized about the existence of what's now. I appeal Inc. Because I felt that as collectors, we need a system, a metric or set of metrics that can account for, you know, all those juxtaposition posts I make on Instagram where it's like, these are both ones, and one looks like it's been, you know, run over by a Sherman tank, and one looks beautiful. Now, by the strict application of their criteria, PSA is. Is correct. But that means that we need another system, a complementary system that says, okay, according to that criteria, these are both ones, but we need more than just, hey, this is prettier. We need some system in place that can make those adjustments so we can go, okay, but the IQ plus on that one is 100 because one is 10 out of 100 and it's an F. And if the card looks like an A and it's a one, it's got a high IQ plus because it's overperforming. So the badges in the IQ plus that. That I was hoping the system would do help complement the grades. And together now you get the whole story. But I think you're right. I'm sorry. I'M talking so long about it. But if it was try, if we tried to change that, even if we were all as collectors collectively in charge of psa, I think it would be chaos. Because how do you rewrite that whole rule book and then apply it? They can't even apply their current rulebook consistently now. So. Yu-Gi-Oh But I love. Josh, that was a great comment because it's kind of true. You know, it is like that's why grading, the subjectivity of grading, the inconsistency, the, the non reproducibility of technical grades for, for people who, who do find, who, you know, where you get joy from, from buying what you consider to be an undergraded card or a card that, whose, whose presentation shoots above its grade class. Like that's where, that's where technical grades and inconsistency grade grades offer us opportunities to build a collection that we're going to be Zebra proud of. Feeling like we're beating the grading company because we're paying, we're beating the grading company and we're getting the better of the people doing the grading because they're only getting fours on cards that we think are sixes and we're going to in most cases get to pay four prices. But guys, that isn't always the case. I want to get your thoughts on this. We just saw we've had two huge Yu-Gi-Oh appeal sales this year that really stick out. We had the 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson in a PSA one sold on February 3rd of 2026 on eBay by PSA was the seller. Just to mention it, PSA1 sold for $27,600. Since that sale of the PSA1 Jackie Robinson 48 Leaf rookie card for 27,600 again PSA1. Since that PSA1 sale, there have been 13 more PSA1 sales that have hit the card ladder database. And those 13 PSA ones have sold for from a low of $6,300 to a high of $10,928. The highest PSA one Jackie 48 Leaf to sell since the big one for 27. Six sold for 40% of the February 3rd sale. That's one example. Here's another example. This one just happened on July 1st on eBay. A 1933 worldwide gum Babe Ruth card in a 1933 Babe Ruth in a PSA2 sold for $72,000. There's been no sales since then in PSA2 pre the previous PSA2 sales. The previous PSA2 sold on November 24th, 2025, less than a year ago for $9,900, 14% of the most recent price. Why? Because these two cards have superior Yu-Gi-Oh appeal. So in that case, you can't beat the system. You have to pay because enough people are. Are kind of buying in to the fact that grading companies in many cases are not giving you an accurate representation or their, their grades are not translating to value. They're just. They're just irrelevant. The grade is irrelevant. It. It. It's meaningless on those cards. It's absolutely meaningless. The Jackie. To talk about. The Jackie's owned by one of our members. Yu-Gi-Oh he bought. Yu-Gi-Oh the Jackie. It's on. It's on. I. Appealing. One of the IP Link members bought that card. Another member really wanted to buy that card, Maddie, but he was not successful and he's. He's sitting right beneath me here. It's. It's that card, Maddie, that actually led to David Chase even being on the show, because we were chatting about it back in, back before it sold. But Yu-Gi-Oh isn't that interesting, though? Like, we're literally talking about a minuscule proportion of those high prices are what's been paid since then for cards of the same grade. So thanks for tuning in and being a part of the sports cards live community. Don't forget to, like, subscribe and most of all, keep collecting more great content to come. Sports cards is a lifestyle.