The Grade Divide: 5 Modern Rookies Where PSA 9 vs. PSA 10 Is Everything

Start with the big one. Back in 2017 most teams reached for Mitchell Trubisky and let Mahomes slide all the way to the tenth pick, which looks insane now. He's since dragged the Chiefs to the Super Bowl over and over and stacked up MVPs, and his Prizm rookie is the card the whole hobby measures football against. Here's the grade thing. A PSA 9 of the Silver parallel runs around $1,260. The PSA 10 has been hitting near $6,375. Five times. For one grade, on the identical card. The 9 is gorgeous, but perfect copies are rare enough that the market basically files the 10 as a separate asset.

Anthony Edwards went first overall to Minnesota in 2020 and plays like he's personally offended by the rim. His base Prizm runs the same play, just cheaper. A 9 is about $25, a 10 closer to $105. Four to one. I like this as the card you learn on, honestly, because twenty-five dollars is small enough to think clearly about. No sticker shock fogging up the decision. And once that four-to-one ratio clicks on a hundred-dollar card, you understand exactly what's happening on the ones with two extra zeros.

LaMelo was the youngest of the three Ball brothers and the one who actually became a star, winning Rookie of the Year for Charlotte out of that 2020 class. Prizm basketball has a reputation, and it isn't a good one. The factory centering is all over the place. That's the whole engine behind the gap. His base rookie in a 9 sits around $11, but a dead-centered 10 jumps to roughly $40. Almost four times, on a card that's pocket change either way. The card isn't rare. A flawless one is. That's the core of it on modern Prizm.

Ohtani breaks the pattern, because even his 'cheap' grade isn't cheap. He's hitting and pitching at a level the sport hasn't seen since Babe Ruth, and the Dodgers handed him $700 million to keep doing it, so his 2018 Topps Chrome rookie is wanted at every grade. A 9 sits near $512. The 10 lands around $1,040. That's barely double, not the four or five times the others pull, and that smaller gap actually tells you something. When demand runs this deep, the 9 holds its ground, because most buyers just want the card and won't go to war over the last tenth of a point.

Ja'Marr Chase closes it out, and he's a fun one. He sat out the entire 2020 college season to stay ready for the draft, then walked into Cincinnati, reunited with his LSU quarterback Joe Burrow, and won Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2021. His base Prizm is the gentle example. Raw, a couple of bucks. A 9 around $20, a 10 near $51. Two and a half times for the gem, the smallest split on the list, and that's why I saved it for last. Even on a cheap, common rookie, perfection still gets paid. The pattern never breaks. Only the number of zeros does.