Grading for stamps is still fairly new, and the companies are very fussy. If the stamp has flaws like a short perforation or a tiny corner crease they may not grade it at all. It's almost purely a measure of how well centered an otherwise perfect copy is.
The stamp places in my opinion are what we'd consider to be slow. I just got my first two back from expertizing after 2-3 months. Both came back as being what I thought they were, which is good. One was the first one authenticated. What was nice was that I had no idea how they'd value it for the purpose of the fee. They simply picked the catalog value of the normal stamp that was used. They caught the fake cancel, which I hadn't. The other one, I sent in thinking it was never hinged, and it came back hinged. About a $400 difference. And all for a tiny flaw in the gum that's hard to see. I'm ok with that, lately with the difference between NH and hinged being pretty large on older stamps they've taken the position that any flaw is considered hinged. Overly cautious, but not a bad way to go. The good news was that the fee became the minimum fee rather than the percentage of the never hinged value they would have charged.
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