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SGC to PSA Crossover Examples, Tips & More


Ryan Barone
(@ballcardgenius, Card Expert) is a lifelong member of the hobby. He has been quoted in PSA Magazine, and his content has regularly been mentioned in “Quick Rips” (the Topps RIPPED Newsletter) and across other hobby publications. hello@ballcardgenius.com; Last Time Ago LLC dba Ballcard Genius.


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Do you know why sports cards make for great social media content? Because it’s very much a show-and-tell type of hobby. I got this card, I did this thing, I sold this card, etc. It’s amazing.

Along the same lines – believe it or not – there are so many ins and outs and things here and there that people need and want to learn as they progress as a collector, card flipper, etc. From knowing the best cards to buy, to figuring out how to store and organize the collection, and of course, card grading in general.

Today’s focus within grading is the crossover, and while we’ve already talked PSA crossover, we are looking specifically at the SGC to PSA crossover.

First, to recap, a grading crossover is when you take a card that has already been slabbed by a grading company and then submit it to another, different grading company to have them grade it and put it in their own slab.

Thus, an SGC to PSA crossover is when you take a card that has already been graded by SGC and then submit it to PSA, who will remove the card from the existing slab, grade it, and then put it in a new PSA slab. That card has then been crossed over from SGC to PSA.

Now, if you’re here, you probably already know the above, and are probably instead looking for things like tips, examples, and more.

It’s important to note that nothing in cards and grading is absolute. These are human people grading based off their own opinions, and nothing is ever going to be absolute. As in, you can never say an SGC 9.5 will always crossover to a PSA 10. Does it happen? Of course. Does it sometimes not happen? Yes.

After browsing examples on YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere, here are some examples and tidbits to take with you as you consider whether the SGC to PSA crossover is right for you and your cards.

The Good

First off, what is considered a success? It’s a question you should probably answer before you submit your crossover attempt. As in, if you have an SGC 9.5, is it only a win if it comes back a PSA 10? What about an SGC 9 to a PSA 9? Again, I don’t have the answer, and it will vary by card, but definitely something to think about.

Read More: How Hard is it to Get a PSA 10?

So with that in mind, crossover success really depends on the submitters’ goals and personal circumstances, but let’s take a look at a few experiences that could be considered successful.

Here are 7 cards that included (if I’m reading this right) 6 SGC 10s and one CSG 10. 5 of those came back as PSA 10s:

If looking at vintage crossovers, here is a cool video from Cards & Comics where they go through a few vintage SGC slabs and what PSA graded them to be:

The Bad

Now, while everyone is always quick to post their wins, and rightly so, I do appreciate transparency. I mean, I definitely recognize the fact that you can’t win them all, and if anything in cards was an automatic, opening packs would be a lot less fun, and not to mention what that would do to the value of things.

Read More: SGC vs. PSA

Here is a Lewis Hamilton 2022 Topps Industry Conference Formula 1 card then went from an SGC 9.5 to a PSA 8.

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At this point it’s also important to talk about the “minimum grade” which is a grade you tell PSA you want to meet before the card is removed from its existing slab. For example, if you’re crossing over an SGC 10 to PSA, you can state via the minimum grade that you only want the card crossed over if it will be a PSA 10.

Cool, right?

Well, on one hand yes, but on the other, you still need to pay for the PSA submission. So, it’s at this point that the minimum grade will save you from a card crossing over to a lower PSA grade, but you’ll still be out the cost to submit in the first place.

The Who Cares

This next one is a good reminder that it’s actually not always about the grade and the value, believe it or not, and plenty of people who obtain a card graded by SGC simply want to cross it over to PSA because they prefer the PSA slab.

So, here, it doesn’t matter the card went from an SGC 3.5 to a PSA 3 (and as the poster states, value might even be a wash anyway).

One last note is that while PSA does offer an actual crossover service where you simply send in the slabbed card (as described above), plenty of people crack the existing slab, remove the card themselves, and then submit the raw card to PSA.

I’ve never personally done this and don’t think I could ever have the guts or skill to crack a card out without damaging it, but I guess never say never. Until then, here is a tweet talking about a 90-card “crossover” in which the person cracked the cards out of slabs and then submitted them raw to PSA.

(I’m not sure of the result, though—can’t find it!)

Last, why not go the other way? People do in fact crossover from PSA to SGC:

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