{ "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/the-fee-is-a-fixed-cost", "slug": "the-fee-is-a-fixed-cost", "title": "The Fee Is a Fixed Cost: A PSA 9 Pays the Grading Bill on One Card in Three", "summary": "On 192 English cards with a live raw price and a PSA 9 median built on eight or more verified sales, the median 9 fetches 2.03 times the raw card. It still fails to cover raw plus a $25 fee on two thirds of them, because a multiple is not money. Halve the fee and half the board clears; that single assumption moves more cards than any property of the cards themselves.", "section": "Analysis", "published": "2026-09-03", "readMinutes": 8, "publisher": "moonstone", "findings": [ { "value": "2.03x", "measures": "median PSA 9 median over raw price", "basis": "192 English cards, PSA 9 tape of 8+ verified sales" }, { "value": "33.3%", "measures": "of those cards where the 9 clears raw plus a $25 fee", "basis": "64 of 192" }, { "value": "$14.85", "measures": "median dollar gap between the 9 and the raw copy", "basis": "less than the fee it has to cover" }, { "value": "16.1%", "measures": "of cards where the PSA 9 sells BELOW the raw card", "basis": "a certified loss before any fee" } ], "tables": [ { "title": "PSA 9 economics by raw price band (moonstone graded tape, September 2, 2026)", "columns": [ "Raw band", "Cards", "Median raw", "Median PSA 9", "Median multiple", "Median dollar gap", "Share clearing raw + $25" ], "rows": [ { "Raw band": "Under $2", "Cards": "16", "Median raw": "$1.12", "Median PSA 9": "$18.57", "Median multiple": "22.96x", "Median dollar gap": "$17.96", "Share clearing raw + $25": "31.3%" }, { "Raw band": "$2 to $4", "Cards": "15", "Median raw": "$2.76", "Median PSA 9": "$19.00", "Median multiple": "7.54x", "Median dollar gap": "$16.60", "Share clearing raw + $25": "26.7%" }, { "Raw band": "$4 to $8", "Cards": "17", "Median raw": "$6.38", "Median PSA 9": "$20.00", "Median multiple": "3.38x", "Median dollar gap": "$13.62", "Share clearing raw + $25": "0.0%" }, { "Raw band": "$8 to $16", "Cards": "26", "Median raw": "$10.68", "Median PSA 9": "$24.04", "Median multiple": "2.12x", "Median dollar gap": "$12.25", "Share clearing raw + $25": "15.4%" }, { "Raw band": "$16 to $32", "Cards": "24", "Median raw": "$21.48", "Median PSA 9": "$27.24", "Median multiple": "1.31x", "Median dollar gap": "$6.52", "Share clearing raw + $25": "8.3%" }, { "Raw band": "$32 to $64", "Cards": "30", "Median raw": "$43.84", "Median PSA 9": "$68.81", "Median multiple": "1.76x", "Median dollar gap": "$32.09", "Share clearing raw + $25": "50.0%" }, { "Raw band": "$64 to $128", "Cards": "27", "Median raw": "$86.93", "Median PSA 9": "$121.50", "Median multiple": "1.26x", "Median dollar gap": "$23.54", "Share clearing raw + $25": "48.1%" }, { "Raw band": "$128 to $256", "Cards": "15", "Median raw": "$202.61", "Median PSA 9": "$310.00", "Median multiple": "2.10x", "Median dollar gap": "$162.70", "Share clearing raw + $25": "66.7%" }, { "Raw band": "$256 to $512", "Cards": "11", "Median raw": "$418.85", "Median PSA 9": "$455.14", "Median multiple": "1.06x", "Median dollar gap": "$26.15", "Share clearing raw + $25": "54.5%" }, { "Raw band": "Over $512", "Cards": "11", "Median raw": "$679.51", "Median PSA 9": "$999.99", "Median multiple": "1.03x", "Median dollar gap": "$20.49", "Share clearing raw + $25": "45.5%" } ] } ], "charts": [], "sections": [ "The fee is the variable, not the card", "What the refunding cards have in common, and what confounds it", "The top of the market, where the 9 is a liability" ], "method": [ "Cohort: English cards in the moonstone catalog holding both a canonical printing price read September 2, 2026 and a PSA 9 sold median from our graded ladder cache built on at least 8 verified sold comps, giving 192 cards; 188 of those also carry a PSA population reading and form the gem-rate comparison. Raw price is the CANONICAL printing price, the same figure the card pages show. That is a correction from an earlier version of this study, which read the flagship-printing field and therefore quoted, for example, Dragons Exalted Rayquaza at $1,049 against the $659.95 its own card page shows. Restating the study on canonical prices raises the median multiple from 1.78x to 2.03x and the $25 clear rate from 26.0% to 33.3%, and it is the reason this piece's title says one card in three rather than one in four. It is still a quoted price rather than a sold median, so the multiples and dollar gaps remain biased in favour of the graded side. Graded ladders were written between August 19 and September 2, 2026, with 88% of them stamped on August 20 and 21, so the sold tape ages by up to two weeks across cards and every quoted comp count is the count behind that specific median. Fee is stated at $25 all in, covering a value-tier submission plus one-way shipping, with a full sensitivity band of $15 to $30 given in the text; it excludes insurance, return postage, your time, and the sale-side fees on either leg. Bands are powers of two on raw price; on canonical prices every band from under $2 to over $512 holds at least 11 cards, so unlike the earlier version no cell is suppressed. An era cut was computed and is not published: three of the 192 cards fall in no era bucket at all, several era cells hold fewer than a dozen cards, and the eras track raw price so closely that the cut adds nothing the price bands do not already say. Gem rate is the lifetime ratio of PSA 10 population to total PSA population at the latest registry snapshot we hold. Selection bias worth naming: a card only enters this study if enough people already submitted it to build a PSA 9 tape, which tilts the sample toward cards the hobby has already decided are worth grading. Not financial advice." ], "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." }