Imo ppl arent really buying a '10' or a '9' They’re buying their/the feeling a community has already agreed upon about that number is supposed to represent. The grade matters only because a group they want to belong to treats it as proof of status, trust, or taste Examples of this is designer vs. no-brand goods or even luxury vs luxury brands. Two shirts can be made from similar material, but one carries a story the group already accepts. People pay for that shared feeling, not just the fabric This case is different because the product is actually tied to the material in a measurable sense that is more forcefully apparent, which I think matters for awareness and the arguments . Imagine Shirt-A saying its shirt is better than Shirt-Bs, except Shirt-B’s fabric is objectively better and harder to source. If enough people notice that gap, the “better brand” story can flip. Awareness is what topples brands The opposite is also true. Something can be factually better and still lose, because nobody cares enough to change the story. People will keep buying the more expensive, worse product if the community’s feeling stays attached to it, this is how sometimes you have things just disappear cuz they cant ever get their proper recognition over slop That’s why PSA vs BGS is interesting. In Riftbound & One Piece, it actually looks possible for BGS to pass PSA in desire + recognition, not just in a technical argument about slabs. The market could learn to decide that one company’s stamp not only feels more legitimate, scarcer, or more “correct”, it often actually is within this current "era"(serial eras), even if the other company was the default for years Cool things where patterns like these show up elsewhere that are cool to look at: Louis Vuitton vs Chanel // Mercedes vs BMW. One brand owns the old consensus and social perception, but eventually the other becomes the one people want once the community’s feeling changes Wild this is a random twitter reply at 4am what am I doing 😭