[drcy]

As I have often said, the authenticators and graders are offering an opinion, and how that opinion is taken is a matter of the collectors, bidders, dealers and auction houses. If collectors and dealers wrongly give too much iron-clad written-in-stone arbitration-of-truth weight to what is an opinion, that is the fault of the collectors and dealers not the opinion giver. Heck, the letters themselves state in black and white that they are offering an opinion.

People are often rightly (IMO) astonished and think it is ludicrous that a PSA 10 trading card sells for many times more than a PSA 9, but wrongly blame PSA for the price difference. PSA doesn't bid on anything or set the prices. It's the collectors and dealers who determine the price differential. The hobby of collectors and bidders could have determined that a PSA9 and PSA10 (or PSA6 and PSA7, etc) that look essentially the same in condition are worth the same or very similar and PSA wouldn't have had any say over that either.

For a number of reasons I won't go into here, I personally think the high grade graded card section of the hobby is ludicrous and stupid. I do give partial blame to the graders, but give more than half of the blame for the ostrich head in the sand buyers and sellers.

The sports memorabilia hobby is often run by money not common sense and logical thinking. Many people are concerned about the authenticity of the money not the authenticity of the memorabilia.