Beckett Publishes 21 Per Cent on a Card It Has Never Given a Ten

Beckett publishes a gem rate of 21.1 per cent on the 1981-82 O-Pee-Chee Glenn Anderson. It has never awarded that card a ten.

Both of those statements are true, and the reason is that the published figure does not count tens. It counts tens and half-grades added together, and on that card all thirty are half-grades.

We have now built four-grader population tables for eight cards on this site. This is what they show.

The tens, card by card

On the Ewing, PSA has awarded 162 tens in 9,921 copies. Beckett has awarded one in 2,193. On the Mullin it is 112 against one. On the Alvan Adams, 77 against none at all.

On the hockey cards: the Coffey 25 against one, the Kurri 32 against five, the Anderson eleven against none.

Add the eight together and PSA accounts for 460 of the 489 tens recorded anywhere. Ninety-four per cent.

SGC has twelve across all eight cards. CGC has one.

What the published rate is doing

Beckett's scale runs Black Label 10, Pristine 10, then 9.5. Its published gem figure adds the first three together and calls the total gems.

On the Adams that produces 9.1 per cent against PSA's 2.65, which reads as Beckett being three times more generous. The thirty-four cards behind it are all 9.5s and Beckett has never put a ten on that card. On the Anderson it produces 21.1 per cent against 1.74. Same thing: thirty 9.5s, no tens.

A 9.5 is not a 10. It is a different grade with a different price, and nobody buying a card confuses the two - but the aggregate figure does, and the aggregate figure is what gets quoted.

The complication, which is the useful part

This would be a simple story if Beckett were always stricter. It is not.

On the 1981-82 Gretzky Super Action, Beckett has awarded five tens in 232 copies - 2.16 per cent, against PSA's 2.00. On the 1980-81 Gretzky Record Breaker, Beckett sits at 1.79 against PSA's 1.35. On both of those Beckett is the looser grader at the top.

And on the Paul Coffey, SGC is the most generous of all four - four tens in 276 copies, a higher rate than PSA managed in 2,709.

Eight cards, eight different orderings. There is no ratio to apply and no rule of thumb. The only thing that transfers from one card to the next is the arithmetic error in the published figure.

Where the scarcer ceiling is worth more

The flip side matters for anyone buying at the top.

Because Beckett awards so few tens, a Beckett ten is often the scarcer object - and the market knows it. A Beckett Pristine 10 of the 1980-81 Mark Messier sold for $18,300, more than any PSA 10 of that card has fetched. A Beckett 10 of the Gretzky Super Action made $5,400 against $3,240 for a PSA 10.

Fourteen Beckett tens exist of the Messier against 47 PSA 10s. Five against 31 on the Gretzky. In both cases the dearer holder is the rarer one, which is the opposite of what a 9.5 does and the opposite of what the gem rate implies.

And some cards have no ceiling outside PSA at all

The 1977 Topps Han Solo is the clearest case. Beckett has 34 copies and its best is an 8. SGC has 139 and its best is an 8.5. CGC has 90 and its best is an 8.5.

That is 263 copies across three companies with nothing above 8.5, while PSA has eleven tens and 116 nines. If you want that card in high grade, PSA is not the best option, it is the only one.

What to do with this

Read the number, not the word.

When a figure says gems, find out how many are tens. On a Beckett population that means separating Black Label and Pristine from 9.5, and the two do not price alike.

Do not carry a ratio from one card to another. We have tested eight and got eight answers.

And do not assume PSA is always the dearer plastic. Where Beckett has awarded a ten it is usually scarcer than the PSA equivalent, and on two of our cards it has sold for more.

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