One grade doubles the price. The next one multiplies it by fifteen.

How this was measured

For each card, we compared the asking prices of PSA-graded copies at neighbouring grades, with qualified cards left out and at least three copies required at a grade before it was used. Everything below is a multiple between two grades of the same card, not a price, so it holds as individual listings come and go.

The top grades are thin by nature. The PSA 10 figures below rest on a handful of copies each, and where a card had too few tens to measure, we have left it out rather than guess.

The ordinary step: about double

From PSA 8 to PSA 9, the multiple is remarkably consistent across cards, sports and decades.

Michael Jordan's 1986-87 Fleer rookie: about 2.6 times. His 1987-88 card: 2.4. His 1988-89 card: 2.1. Ken Griffey's 1989 Upper Deck rookie: 2.7. Tom Brady's 2000 Bowman rookie: 2.3. Wayne Gretzky's 1981-82 cards: between 1.9 and 2.4.

One grade, roughly twice the money. For most of the grade scale, that is the rule.

The cliff

Then, for the cards where PSA 10s trade often enough to measure, the next step is a different kind of number.

Griffey's Upper Deck rookie in PSA 10 asks about 13 times a PSA 9. Jordan's 1988-89 Fleer: about 15 times. Brady's 2002 Topps card: about 16 times.

The same single grade that doubles a card's price lower down multiplies it by thirteen to sixteen at the top.

Why the step is so much bigger at the top

Part of it is scarcity. When our sister site recorded PSA's figures for the Griffey rookie in August 2026, PSA had graded roughly eight 9s for every 10. The step from 9 to 10 is a step into a population an eighth of the size.

But the price step is larger than the scarcity step. Eight times rarer, thirteen times dearer. The rest is what the label means. A PSA 9 is an excellent card. A PSA 10 is, by the grader's own standard, as good as the card can be, and a certain kind of collector wants that and nothing short of it.

On older cards the cliff arrives a grade earlier

For the two oldest rookies on this index with enough high-grade copies to compare, the big step is not at 10 at all.

Larry Bird's 1980-81 Topps rookie, printed on a panel with Magic Johnson and Julius Erving, asks nearly 5 times as much in PSA 9 as in PSA 8. Gretzky's 1979-80 Topps rookie asks nearly 6 times as much.

For these cards, 9 is effectively the top of the market. Too few tens are offered for us to measure the step above it, and some barely exist at all: PSA has graded only two of the O-Pee-Chee Gretzky rookie at 10, as we set out in why only two perfect O-Pee-Chee rookies exist. So the jump that a modern card makes between 9 and 10, these cards make between 8 and 9.

The cliff is not attached to a particular number. It sits at the point where copies stop being findable.

What to take from it

Find the last grade that trades in quantity. The step above it is the expensive one. For a card from the late 1980s onwards that is usually 9 to 10; for many earlier cards it is 8 to 9.

The grade just below the cliff is where most of the card is. A PSA 9 Griffey costs a small fraction of a 10 and is, to the eye, very nearly the same card. Whether the last point is worth the multiple is a decision about what you want from the card, not about the card itself.

Be careful at the top. Asking prices for a handful of copies move a long way on one optimistic seller, and the premium for the top grade can change quickly when a few more copies are graded.

The thing worth sitting with

Most of a card's grade scale is priced sensibly: a better card costs about twice as much as the one just below it.

Then there is one step where the market stops pricing the card and starts pricing the idea of a perfect one, and that step costs more than all the others put together.

This index tracks each card grade by grade, which is what makes a comparison like this possible. There is a related piece on what the rookie premium costs, and you can read how we work the numbers out.

Sources