Pick up two slabs of the same card. Same Wizards Black Star promo Entei, same number 34, both stamped with their grader's best gem grade. The PSA 10 sells at a median $1,171.86 on 34 verified comps. The CGC 10 sells at $145.25 on 116. That is an 8.07x spread between two labels that both say this card is perfect, and it is the widest well-sampled grader gap on our tape. So we stopped treating it as a curiosity and measured the whole board.
The study: every card where both graders have real tape
From the 176 report dossiers on our book as of August 29, 2026, we pulled every card carrying a PSA 10 sold median and a CGC 10 sold median, each on at least 10 verified comps: 107 cards qualified. The median card's PSA 10 sells for 2.11 times its CGC 10, the mean is 2.53x, and 29 of the 107 trade at 3x or wider. Loosening the gate to 5 comps per side on the broader graded-snapshot tape gives 272 cards and the same story: median 2.15x, 65 cards at 3x or more, 16 at 5x or more, and only 17 where the CGC 10 fetches more. Whatever a gem is, the market is not paying for it in the abstract. It is paying for one label.
The widest and narrowest gaps, both graders 10+ comps
| Card | PSA 10 (comps) | CGC 10 (comps) | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entei, Wizards promos | $1,171.86 (34) | $145.25 (116) | 8.07x |
| Snorlax, Lost Origin TG | $625 (144) | $87.12 (33) | 7.17x |
| Jolteon V, SWSH promos | $1,462.49 (27) | $239.20 (14) | 6.11x |
| Espeon & Deoxys GX, SM promos | $4,350 (76) | $763.98 (23) | 5.69x |
| Flareon V, SWSH promos | $1,325 (26) | $255 (12) | 5.20x |
| Raichu IR, Paldea Evolved | $821.50 (148) | $199.99 (17) | 4.11x |
| Espeon VMAX, Fusion Strike | $630.85 (304) | $490 (20) | 1.29x |
| Mega Lucario ex, Mega Evolution | $383.93 (874) | $359.99 (66) | 1.07x |
| Umbreon VMAX, Evolving Skies | $4,199.50 (425) | $4,025.50 (37) | 1.04x |
| Victini, Black Bolt | $1,400 (320) | $1,427.50 (24) | 0.98x |
| Pikachu IR, 151 | $141.50 (317) | $170 (81) | 0.83x |
The gap is a photograph of PSA's gate
Read the table top to bottom and a pattern falls out. The widest gaps live on vintage and promo cards where PSA's gem gate is tight: Entei gems at 4.6% lifetime, 1,029 tens on a registry of 22,376, so a PSA 10 is a scarce object and a CGC 10 is not priced as its substitute. The narrowest gaps live on moderns where PSA tens are plentiful: Umbreon VMAX gems near 70%, its PSA 10 is the common outcome, and the CGC 10 trades about 4% below it, which is why our house view on that card calls the crossover game juiceless there. And at the bottom sit genuine inversions like Victini and the 151 Pikachu, where the CGC 10 actually fetches more, both on cards whose PSA registries added tens at industrial pace per our drift study. The ratio is not measuring card quality. It is measuring how hard the PSA stamp was to get.
Put in exchange-rate terms: at the study median, a CGC 10 is worth about 47 cents on the PSA 10 dollar. On Entei it is worth 12 cents. And here is the detail that should bother the efficient-market crowd: Entei's CGC 10, at $145.25, still sells for 1.72 times its own PSA 9 ($84.49 on 232 comps). The market ranks the labels PSA 10, then CGC 10, then PSA 9, with a cliff between the first two that an eight-to-one spread has to work hard to justify.
All medians are verified sold comps from the moonstone graded tape through August 29, 2026, latest snapshot per card and grade; the 107-card study requires 10+ comps on both graders' tens from the live report payloads on our book as of August 29, 2026, the 272-card extension requires 5+ on the daily graded-snapshot table. Ratios divide sold medians by sold medians, never asks. Comp windows per grader can differ by days; on fast-moving cards that adds noise either direction. Crossover pass-through rates are attributed as historical grader behavior, not measured on our tape. Not financial advice.