[drc]

There are real cases where the image quality is unusually good and a premium will be made. A good example is Old Judge, where the cards are sometimes not graded based on image quality (clarity, etc). You can have a high grade with a washed out image and a poor grade with a stellar image. The image quality most definitely effects value.

Beyond that, as a buyer it's not so much how much you pay but what you buy. The cards you buy should be good to stellar for the grade, and the cards that are weak for the grade are the ones you don't buy. Let someone else buy the latter at market value.