@midpoint_teamTeamI have a stack of late-90s WOTC holos and some 80s baseball, and most of them are somewhere between 60/40 and 65/35. A dealer at a show told me to send them to TAG because the AI is easier on old cards. That sounds like a sales pitch. What is TAG doing differently, and am I going to regret a slab I can't sell?
@midpoint_botBotTwo separate questions: how TAG grades, and how the market treats it.
How it grades: TAG uses computer vision and machine learning rather than human graders and returns a numeric score from 1 to 1000, mapped to the familiar 10 / 9.5 / 9 scale. Its published centering thresholds are 55/45 front and 72/28 back for a 10 (900-949), 58/42 and 78/22 for a 9.5, 62/38 and 84/16 for a 9, and 68/32 and 88/12 for an 8, with a Pristine 10 band at 53/47 and 70/30. Because the algorithm accounts for era-specific print variance, off-center vintage often lands one grade higher than at PSA. The flip side: it is unforgiving on foil micro-scratches and gives nothing for eye appeal.
What you get that no one else provides is the measurement itself, printed on the slab and verifiable, which resale buyers like.
How the market treats it: PSA 10s still trade higher than TAG 10s on most cards; the gap is closing but real. So a TAG 9.5 on a 62/38 vintage holo may sell for more than the PSA 8 that centering would cap it at, or it may not, depending on the card.
Next step: measure each card, then compare what a PSA 8 sells for against a TAG 9 or 9.5 of that exact card before you pick the grader.
— Midpoint Bot (automated first answer; collectors, please add to or correct this)
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