{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/easy-grades-are-cheap-grades",
  "slug": "easy-grades-are-cheap-grades",
  "title": "Easy Grades Are Cheap Grades: the PSA 10 Premium Falls From 25x to 4x",
  "summary": "Across 4,106 cards with a trustworthy gem rate, 50 or more graded copies and a PSA 10 median on the tape, every column moves in order. As gemming gets easier the average PSA 10 price falls from $4,977.80 to $86.90 and the registry more than triples. But the raw price of the same cards falls too, so most of that 57x is era rather than grading. The number that isolates the grade is the multiple, and it collapses from 24.7x to 3.8x.",
  "section": "Data forensics",
  "published": "2026-09-17",
  "readMinutes": 7,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "24.7x",
      "measures": "median PSA 10 multiple in the under-10% gem band",
      "basis": "the graded card against the same card raw"
    },
    {
      "value": "3.8x",
      "measures": "median PSA 10 multiple in the over-75% band",
      "basis": "the same measurement, six and a half times smaller"
    },
    {
      "value": "4,106",
      "measures": "cards in the measurement",
      "basis": "every column below comes from these same rows"
    },
    {
      "value": "3.1x",
      "measures": "more copies graded at the easy end",
      "basis": "average registry 7,235 against 2,314"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "Gem rate against registry, price and the graded multiple, 4,106 cards",
      "columns": [
        "Gem rate",
        "Cards",
        "Average registry",
        "Average raw",
        "Average PSA 10",
        "Median PSA 10 multiple"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Gem rate": "Under 10%",
          "Cards": "224",
          "Average registry": "2,314",
          "Average raw": "$240.20",
          "Average PSA 10": "$4,977.80",
          "Median PSA 10 multiple": "24.7x"
        },
        {
          "Gem rate": "10% to 25%",
          "Cards": "588",
          "Average registry": "2,919",
          "Average raw": "$68.15",
          "Average PSA 10": "$1,021.53",
          "Median PSA 10 multiple": "19.1x"
        },
        {
          "Gem rate": "25% to 50%",
          "Cards": "1,431",
          "Average registry": "3,289",
          "Average raw": "$42.39",
          "Average PSA 10": "$307.85",
          "Median PSA 10 multiple": "11.9x"
        },
        {
          "Gem rate": "50% to 75%",
          "Cards": "1,286",
          "Average registry": "3,660",
          "Average raw": "$35.56",
          "Average PSA 10": "$153.83",
          "Median PSA 10 multiple": "8.0x"
        },
        {
          "Gem rate": "Over 75%",
          "Cards": "577",
          "Average registry": "7,235",
          "Average raw": "$26.58",
          "Average PSA 10": "$86.90",
          "Median PSA 10 multiple": "3.8x"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "The curve",
    "The 57x number is not a grading effect",
    "Two cards that say it better than the table",
    "Two mechanisms, pointing the same way",
    "What it does to a grading decision"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Read from moonstone production on September 17, 2026, from the nightly feature table. EVERY COLUMN IN THE TABLE COMES FROM THE SAME 4,106 ROWS: a card is included only where the recorded PSA population is at least 50, a PSA 10 median is on the tape, a canonical raw price exists, and the gem rate passes our trustworthiness test. That last rule matters more than it sounds, because the provider intermittently omits the PSA 10 breakdown and such a row lands as zero tens beside a real total; a row that cannot support a gem claim is EXCLUDED rather than counted as a 0% gem rate. Gem rate is recorded tens divided by the total recorded population of the same snapshot, never across snapshots. Raw price is the canonical printing price the card pages publish, not the raw provider market field. Price columns are arithmetic means and are pulled upward in the hard bands by a small number of very expensive vintage cards; the ordering holds on medians as well ($2,903.75, $456.31, $132.38, $79.50, $65.00). The multiple column is deliberately a median of each card's own PSA 10 divided by its own raw price rather than a ratio of the two averages, so it is not driven by the same outliers. THIS IS A CROSS-SECTION, NOT A CAUSAL CLAIM: gem rate, era, surviving supply and collector demand move together here, and nothing in this table separates them, which is exactly why the raw column is printed beside the graded one. RECHECKED 2026-09-22: rebuilding all five bands from the same feature table five days later returns 4,544 qualifying cards and the same monotone ordering in every column, with band multiples of 24.5x, 19.7x, 11.9x, 7.5x and 3.3x against the 24.7x, 19.1x, 11.9x, 8.0x and 3.8x printed here. The population grows nightly as registry coverage grows, which is where the row counts move. Related: [the gem rate curve](/articles/the-gem-rate-curve) for the era axis."
  ],
  "terms": "Figures are moonstone's own recorded measurements, dated as published. Quote them with the population stated beside them. The article at `url` is the human form of this file."
}