Craziest PSA grade....

[xplainer]

This isn't about a specific card, it is their grading system. I never really thought about it, until I got a recent submission back. After looking closely at the cards, I found a card I thought was and 9 and certainly a 8, recieved a PSA 6 grade. Then, looking at the label, I realized it read "Ex-Mt". Excellent to Mint? How can that be?

That window includes three grades, not counting the .5 grades. How can a card be a Excellent to Mint. I can understand the EX-NR/MT yeah, but this I don't get it.

I guess my card still could be a 8 or 9. I really don't know what it is telling me. To most people, including me, a PSA 6 is an Excellent graded card. But PSA says it is a Excellent-Mint card. Whatever that means.

Just an observation that I hadn't noticed until now.

What do you guys think about it. Isn't that a large window?

Thanks.

[vthobby]

EX/MT has been around since as long as I have collected (1970s) or Ex to Mint as you posted. Can't really explain it other than it has been a standard grade for a long time and has always been understood to be less then NR-MT and of course better than EX.

Sorry I could not impart more wisdom than that but it's not an error or a mistake. To me it has always made perfect sense as that grade implies a grade halfway between EX and Mint hence the EX-MT. NR/MT is then halfway between EX-MT and MINT or thereabouts....

Mike

[xplainer]

Hey Mike,
I know it isn't a mistake, but why not EX-Nr/MT. Maybe making a mountain out of mole hill, but I haven't really noticed it until now. Kinda just struck me as odd.

[vthobby]

I don't think you are making a fuss over this as it is a valid point/question. By using the EX in with the MT, I think the older stewards of our trade (Burdock and Carter and icons like that) were not too concerned with a MINT grade and had no issue tying it to EX.

Obviously now with TPGs dotting the landscape, there is a ton of difference between EX and Mint but those standards or grades kind of stuck. I did mean stuck and not suck! :)

I guess....just my 2 cents.

Thanks, Mike

[trdcrdkid]

Back in the old days, there were only six grades for baseball cards: mint (MT), excellent (EX), very good (VG), good (G), fair (F), and poor (P). Eventually people wanted a way to describe grades in between those, so EX-MT, VG-EX, G-VG, F-G, and P-F came to be. These 11 grades did a pretty good job of describing the vast majority of cards that were sold and traded, and they were all you ever saw when I first got into the hobby in the late 70s and early 80s.

When card prices rose precipitously in the 1980s and 90s, people started becoming a lot more interested in cards at the high end of the grading spectrum, and paying much more of a premium for them. The 10-point grading system used today by PSA is based on the one that Alan Hager described in his 1993 book "Hager's Comprehensive Price Guide to Rare Baseball Cards", with repeated notices that it was copyrighted. (I'm not certain, but I think PSA might have bought the rights to that system from Hager, a sleazy guy who ended up getting in all kinds of legal trouble.) Hager actually described his 6 grade as "EXCELLENT to NEAR MINT" (with 7 being NEAR-MINT and the other grades up to 10 GEM MINT being the same as today), but a lot of people were used to the old "EX-MT" designation, and so continued to use it for PSA 6. I guess PSA uses that old term too, which is kind of funny, but it kind of makes sense because it's more concise.

[tim]

SGC must have thought about this when they created their grades. Their equivalent to a PSA 6 is the EX-NM 80.
--TIM

[Peter_Spaeth]

And yet EX/MT is so engrained that many SGC 80 auctions say EX/MT in the title.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1962-Topps-387-Lou-Brock-SGC-80-6-EX-MT-HOF-RC-4429-/201401721111?hash=item2ee47a6117

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=sgc+80&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.Xsgc+80+ex %2Fmt.TRS1&_nkw=sgc+80+ex%2Fmt&_sacat=0

[Jay Wolt]

& don't forget the SGC-82 which is an EX/NM+

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTYwMFg5OTA=/z/67EAAOSwHnFVsrV-/$_57.JPG

[steve B]

Back in the old days, there were only six grades for baseball cards: mint (MT), excellent (EX), very good (VG), good (G), fair (F), and poor (P). Eventually people wanted a way to describe grades in between those, so EX-MT, VG-EX, G-VG, F-G, and P-F came to be. These 11 grades did a pretty good job of describing the vast majority of cards that were sold and traded, and they were all you ever saw when I first got into the hobby in the late 70s and early 80s.

When card prices rose precipitously in the 1980s and 90s, people started becoming a lot more interested in cards at the high end of the grading spectrum, and paying much more of a premium for them. The 10-point grading system used today by PSA is based on the one that Alan Hager described in his 1993 book "Hager's Comprehensive Price Guide to Rare Baseball Cards", with repeated notices that it was copyrighted. (I'm not certain, but I think PSA might have bought the rights to that system from Hager, a sleazy guy who ended up getting in all kinds of legal trouble.) Hager actually described his 6 grade as "EXCELLENT to NEAR MINT" (with 7 being NEAR-MINT and the other grades up to 10 GEM MINT being the same as today), but a lot of people were used to the old "EX-MT" designation, and so continued to use it for PSA 6. I guess PSA uses that old term too, which is kind of funny, but it kind of makes sense because it's more concise.

That's almost exactly what I was going to post. Ex-Mt is a historical term that may be out of date but has been used for decades. It originally described any card that was nicer than a straight EX, but not "mint" NM came later to describe the really nice Ex-Mt cards.

Steve B