PSA 9 ARBITRAGE

Buying a card graded 9, cracking it out of the slab, and resubmitting the raw card in the hope it grades a 10. The profit is the difference between the 9 price and the 10 price, which on the right cards runs into hundreds of dollars for one grading opinion. The costs are the grading fee ($79.99 at PSA's Regular tier as of 2026-08-17), selling costs on whatever comes back, and the real chance the card regrades a 9 or lower.

By crack score: the dollar gap between the grade 9 and PSA 10 prices, multiplied by the card's own gem rate, multiplied by a freshness weight that halves every 5 years of card age. The age weight is the editorial part, and it exists because a cracked 9 is not a fresh submission: modern 9s are often one centering judgment away from a 10, while a vintage 9 usually earned its grade and will keep it. Sort by raw gap if you want the unweighted dollars. The formula is documented on the methodology page.

Unknowable from public data, and this page does not pretend otherwise. The gem rate shown is the share of all submissions of that card that came back 10, and for a cracked 9 it is a ceiling: slabs graded 9 for centering or an edge flaw will regrade 9 or worse every time. The break even figure on each tile tells you the odds you would need; whether a specific slab clears that bar depends on why it got its 9, which you judge from photos of the actual card, not from a table.

Because 9s are what a grading wave leaves behind. When thousands of copies of a modern chase card go through PSA, the misses pile up on the sell side and the 9 price can sink under the raw price. For this play that is the attractive case: the market is selling you the crack candidate at a discount to the raw card. It also happens because PriceCharting's grade 9 bucket pools all major graders, and non PSA 9s drag the figure down; that pooling fits a crack play, since the slab you crack does not need a PSA label.