Posted By:
Al C.risafulliI didn't mean to hijack Bruce's thread with a statement on grading, I was more just giving examples on why pop reports can be inaccurate. But...
I try and understand that there's still a certain amount of subjectivity in grading. The card has some funky left corners, is a bit O/C and has a slight stain at the top (which is much less pronounced in person than it is in the scan). When I bought it, I thought it's a definite 4, but could also be a 5 on a good day. I resubmitted it, hoping for the good day. Since then I've been resubmitting it, hoping to get the 4 again!
So Barry, sure, in a perfect world, every card would get the same grade every time. But there's still plenty of room for judgement calls at all points in the grading scale. There's so much room for how eye appeal can impact a technical grade, and I can usually live with that. I've had some submissions where the cards were dead-on what I thought they would be, and others where they were so out of wack that I couldn't get a handle on it at all.
Either way, I don't have this problem with the rest of my collection. Only with the 38s. But to stay on topic, it definitely is an example of how flawed the pop reports can be. I use them as a gauge, nothing more.
-Al