Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
take a card and a loupe and look at it for 1 full minute. It's actually longer than you think it is.
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I agree that 1 minute can be a long time to look at a card, but if we all take that minute to think about what would actually be involved in the grading process, checking front and back and sides, looking for imperfections, and then making some sort of notation, that brings up some interesting ideas about how much time is actually spent by a grader looking at a specific card.
Obviously there are more than 12 people involved in the process, and most of them don't do the actual grading, but we are talking about looking at card after card after card after card. And, each is different from the one before, so it must be hard to develop a rhythm. This process needs to be done carefully enough so as to not damage a small piece of paper.
When I have multiple copies of the same card, it often takes me a minute or two to decide which one is the "best" card, and that is just ranking them against each other, I don't have to assign them numbers on a 1 to 19 scale (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 ... 8.5, 9. 9.5. 10 is a effectively a scale of 1 to 19)
As a guy who doesn't agree with the whole grading "thing", I am obviously biased in my thoughts, but these are pure numbers we are talking about, and numbers tend to be unbiased, if looked at correctly.
We have threads on this forum that stretch onto many pages discussing whether a specific card should be given a specific grade, but we can see that, on the average, all cards are looked at by a grader for a period of time that is probably less than one minute, during which time they need to decide if it's a 15 or a 16 on the scale.
The key missing fact in my equations is the actual number of graders. Maybe they have a hundred people who get paid to grade sports cards / collectibles for a living. That would give them a lot more time per item. I'm just curious where these people come from. Maybe the really cool bagger at my local grocery store who just quit, found a new calling.
Doug