Warning, this will be a grading nuance post...if you aren't into that kind of minutiae:
To generalize at a high level, when I was a kid first getting into old cards in the late 1980's, my initial understanding of grading the all important flaw of "the crease" went something like this:
*EX - can have no creases.
*VG-EX - can have crease(s?) / surface wear of the "wrinkle" variety that does not detract from eye appeal. You can find the defect, but may have to twist the card around in the light first, that kind of thing.
*VG - card may have a more serious crease that breaks the surface in a place - but still does not seriously damage eye appeal.
*G and below - this is where the more serious and multiple creases come in and eye appeal impact starts to be obvious.
If they don't seriously impact eye appeal, do number of wrinkles / creases count in determining where on the scale the grade lands?
Since the advent of professional grading and my awareness of it maybe some 20 years ago, I think that on the whole PSA (and I'll use them as an example just because they are the largest grader) has made the scrutiny on creases more obvious and strict in that time frame. For example a card that has a light crease which might be noticeable at an arm's length, but which does not seriously detract from the card's eye appeal (i.e. not thru the player's face or anything..) I would normally call VG. Today PSA might not give a card like that higher than a 1.5 or a 2. SGC, I'm not really sure as I don't have any recently graded cards from them which fall into this category.
I wanted to ask specifically about BVG, as a recent addition to my collection this week was graded a BVG 4. It is a well known card of a very popular HOF'er, so I took a gamble and admittedly, went with BVG because I could get the card for somewhat significantly cheaper than a garden variety PSA 4. Color and image were good, centering was good, corners were at least roughly EX - so I went with it. When the card arrived, I was not displeased with it, certainly not on eye appeal - but one of my first thoughts was wow, I seriously doubt that PSA would have given this a 4. Though the flaws are all of the "difficult to spot immediately" variety - they include:
*surface scratch which does not break the paper, but is there and obvious in the light.
* "bend" area that never quite became a crease on the upper portion of the card.
* True wrinkling - which while very difficult to see, and very minor in terms of affect on eye appeal - on the bottom right portion of the card.
Question is - and again I'm sorry for the detail - do you all think BVG is either easier or takes more "eye appeal" consideration on the grade to assign when it's lower already if there are MULTIPLES of these defects? For example just thinking out loud - I can see PSA today taking any one of these issues alone, and saying ok it's a 4. But multiple anymore, I don't know. I think they would tend to be harsher where maybe earlier PSA graders would not. Is Beckett more lenient in terms of "how many" types of these common, lower mid-grade defects can be present on one card? What do you all think the practice "should" be?
This particular card raw in 1990 when I was 13 years old, I would probably have no problem calling VG-EX. But with the continuation of time on the spectrum of the respective TPG scales, I don't know anymore. I'm not posting a picture of it - because from a scan alone you cannot tell about any of these issues, it would look like at least an EX or better example in a photo.
Should grades below EX be judged with a component more of "eye appeal" and how that affects the final outcome? Or should we be more strict on the number of flaws such as creases, wrinkles, and bends based on the fact that they are there even if not easily seen?
Bear in mind if you are still with me, that all grading is subjective. Isn't my OCD grand?
