PSA Inconsistency and others

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Posted By: FreddyMercury

I have had it!!
I would prefer to remain anonymous in this post for good reason. I have been grading cards forever and its getting ridiculous. I am full time dealer and can no longer play the grading companies game. I used to send in a card, get an honest grade and be done with it. No More. This started out to get a card graded and quickly escalated into a test of the grading companies, particularly PSA.
1. sent in a Goudey Gehrig along with several other Goudeys from the same collection. All cards graded except for the Gehrig. They say it was trimmed.
2. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 2.
3. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 5.
4. Gehrig resent to PSA and was not holdered due to restoration.
5. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 3.
6. Gehrig resent to PSA. They say it was trimmed.
7. Gehrig sent to SGC and receives a 4.
8. Gehrig sent to SGC and receives a 2.
9. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 5.
10. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 3.
11. Gehrig resent to PSA. They say it was trimmed..

Has anyone else had inconsistency problems like this? I know it was a waste of money in grading fees but it shows how 1 card can be viewed so many different ways. When will they make a computer/scanner that can grade cards consistently and honestly?

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Posted By: Matt

Once PSA gave you a 5 on the Gehrig, why did you crack and resubmit it?

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Posted By: barrysloate

Are you saying you sent the same card in eleven times, or am I misreading your post?

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Posted By: FreddyMercury

The card appears EXMT. It never got a 6. This whole grading test got out of control. It wasn't about getting the 5. It just amazed me a card can go from, trimmed, to a 2 and then to a 5. Something was strange. So I continued the experiment. Hundreds of $$$ later, I am very disappointed with the inconsistency.

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Posted By: leon

Moral of the story? Stop when you get a 5......

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Posted By: Matt

I would love to see the card that went on this magical ride.

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Posted By: FreddyMercury

yes, the exact same card sent in 11 times.

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Posted By: Jim Dale

I know this a silly comment and its ment in jest please...but look at the consistency. Its either a 5,2,3, or trimmed the vast majority of the time

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Posted By: Steve Murray

"I would prefer to remain anonymous in this post for good reason."

I can think of 9 other reasons.

Edit: Should have said 8. Once you received a 5 you should have, IMHO, stopped.

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Posted By: Anonymous

I don't think PSA really hires people that know what they are doing. They grew big too fast. My guess is that the only qualification for being a grader is that you must have a pulse.

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Posted By: dennis

save the money from grading and buy cards.

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Posted By: Kyle

1. Sent to PSA, trimmed. Value = $400.00
2. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 2. Value = $510.00
3. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 5. Value = $2200.00
4. Gehrig resent to PSA and was not holdered due to restoration. Value = $400.00
5. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 3. Value = $950.00
6. Gehrig resent to PSA. They say it was trimmed. Value = $400.00
7. Gehrig sent to SGC and receives a 4. Value = $1495.00
8. Gehrig sent to SGC and receives a 2. Value = $710.00
9. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 5. Value = $2200.00
10. Gehrig resent to PSA and receives a 3. Value = $950.00
11. Gehrig resent to PSA. They say it was trimmed.. Value = $400.00


PSA 6 Value = $2350.00

Money wasted on grading/shipping: $700+ at least


Looks to me you could have sold the 5 at $2200, bought at 6 at $2350, stopped grading after the third submission, and not submitted the card another 8 times, plus shipping, plus blah blah blah and have another $500.00 in your bank account.



Prices based on card #160, thanks to VCP. Authentic value a guess, probably would have been higher though. This is all hypothetical that the cards you would have bought and sold would have sold for those amounts. All that for just the number "6"!

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Posted By: Steve

I would have stopped after the 3rd time.


Steve

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Posted By: barrysloate

Despite the fact that the poster should have been satisfied with the 5 and stopped right there, assuming all this is true, it is a terrible indictment of the grading services. I can't see how the graded card market can sustain itself with such an inconsistent performance.

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Posted By: Steve

Barry

Most people, I think and hope anyway, send a card in 1x.


I know that is what i do.


Steve

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Posted By: DD

Either the card measures short or it does not. Unless the experiment included shaving off miniscule amounts of a border to push the envelope, I see no reason why it should be deemed trimmed one time (more than 1 in this case), and grade other times.

It seems as if a lot of people think you should have stopped when you got the 5. For Barry and Leon who run auctions, does this mean you just look at the labels? If this "5" was consigned to you, but it did look like the "3" or "4" it may well be, would you mention this in your catalog?

Rob Lifson is complimented (as he should be) when he indicates the grading of an item may be off. Will you not do the same? Telling someone to be satisfied with the "5" misses the point when clearly some reform is needed in the grading process. Acknowledging one does not preclude the other.

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Posted By: Red

So 11 times the card had to be popped out of the holder and slid in and out of the plastic holder by you, the graders, and sealers. Just the wear and tear on that alone has to have some affect on different grades.

"When will they make a computer/scanner that can grade cards consistently and honestly?"

So as soon as it's in a 6 holder it's an honest grade? It looks like it's a consistently hard card to grade. Why not try GAI?

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Posted By: Joe D.

the grading industry will do just fine - even with inconsistency.


First let me say.... I recently joined PSA and have made submissions. Prior to this I was strictly an SGC guy (and I still love SGC). I have to say - I went into the PSA situation with all of the horror stories in my head - but I have had nothing but very positive experiences. They have been courteous, on-time, and fair with their grading. By fair, I mean within a grade either way (which I think most cards would fall into that category). So far - I think they have performed as well as SGC.



As far as the value of grading:

When I was a kid - I would go from table to table and each dealer would say cards were Mint or Near Mint. Some cards would be. And some would be EX (not even close to mint / although stated as such). As a kid in a card show... it seemed I had no way to win that argument. When I would buy - everything was overstated, when I would sell - everything was understated. It was a terrible feeling. It is vital to the hobby (yes I said vital) for there to be third party opinions. It doesn't matter if those opinions are occasionally innacurate.... what matters is that the collector does not have to rely on the opinion of the dealers.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

"I know this a silly comment and its ment in jest please...but look at the consistency. Its either a 5,2,3, or trimmed the vast majority of the time"

That was the best laugh I've had all morning.

I wrote an article trashing the grading companies back in the old VCBC (about a million years ago, it feels) citing specific examples of this sort of stuff, so it isn't new by any means. Also goes to show just how bogus the pop report is for some issues as cracking out and resubmitting is much more prevalent than we non-dealers think.

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

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Posted By: Anthony S.

It's these kind of situations where PRO never seems to receive the props it deserves for consistency. That card would have come back in a PRO 9 holder every single time you sent it in.

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Posted By: barrysloate

David- I do have a card in my current auction where I state it was graded a bit optimistically, so I will try to point out obvious errors. I also have a card coming up on ebay that is graded VG-EX but has back damage. In my description I stated the card was clearly misgraded.

Joe- I agree the grading services will do just fine, but that wasn't my point. There is generally a large increase in price from one grade to the next, most noticeable when you reach 7 and above. How can a collector pay a huge premium for a 9 when it very well may have been yesterday's 8? That is the part of the formula that will baffle me forever.

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Now my question is "no matter what holder this card ends up in, when time comes to sell, will the seller disclose it's checkered history?"

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Posted By: Mark Evans

Glad to see Freddy Mercury lives. Agree with others that this just shows how zany third-party grading can be. Mark

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Posted By: Phil Garry

Well, one thing seems certain, the submitter must be very good at cracking cards out of PSA & SGC holders since the resubmission gardes do not seem to suffer the more times the card was handled. Maybe the real money is in offering to crack people's cards out of their current PSA & SGC holders for resubmission purposes.

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Posted By: Jim VB

Red- "It looks like it's a consistently hard card to grade. Why not try GAI?"


Me- He wasn't sending it in on Monday. GAI wasn't open.

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Posted By: DD

Kudos to you as well Barry. It is truly the only way to promote consistency.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Grading is an inexact science, and there will always be variations. This is why a collector shouldn't take the number on the label too seriously.

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Posted By: FreddyMercury

It would have been in my best interest as far as sale value to keep the 5 and move on. But it went beyond selling for maximum profit. I stopped after the third attempt to get a higher grade. I just wanted to see the differences the card would grade. We all know that grading companies are not perfect but inconsistency this extreme is a big problem. This is a true Grading Horror Story. I'm not trying to change the topic but heres is a much scarier true horror story that happened a year and a half ago. I'll be as brief as possible. I friend of mine has a collection. He purchased 3 boxes each of 1993 and 1994 SP baseball. It may seem like BS to you pre-war guys but listen. One of the boxes is Arods Foil RC and the other is Jeters Foil RC. Both card in PSA 9 are huge but in PSA 10 are $10,000+ in some instances. My friend opened the boxes and got 4 Jeter and 5 Arod. All cards were Gem Mint with no chipping. I advised he send the cards in to grade. 2 weeks later we get the grades on line. Of the 9 total cards, he got (1) PSA 9, (6) PSA 8 and (2) PSA 7. How can this be. Well when the cards were mailed back it was obvious. Either PSA's professional graders dinged every corner taking it out of the case or they switched the cards out with lesser grades. Switching cards out seems impossible right, think again. A grader could have those exact cards in his pocket and as soon as a Mint one comes through the door, he does the old switch a-rroo. I do not claim to be a professional but I have graded hundreds, maybe thousands of cards. I look at cards under loupes and magnification before I send them off and I can tell you the Jeter and Arods were Mint, the ones that came back defiantly were not. The moral of the story is PSA is either, crooked, stupid or just clumsy.

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Posted By: Kyle

Why test with such a valuable Gehrig? Why not test with an Arod or Jeter? I don't believe you when you say you stopped for a higher grade when you got the first five, yet you then got your five back and you still decided to crack it out again.

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Posted By: Paul S

12. Accept your own low-ball offer as a "trimmed".
13. Crack and resubmit until you're are back at a 5 grade.
14. Re-purchase the card from yourself and pocket your own profit.
15. Crack and resubmit until it is "trimmed" again.
16. Sell it for a loss to yourself and write-off that loss on your own taxes.

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Posted By: leon

We will point out inconsistencies in grading in our auction just as Barry does. We will have very large scans of front and back too. Just because a card has a number on a holder doesn't mean it deserves that number....We have all seen mistakes made and as an auctioneer we will point those out when we see them. Any decent auction house will do that....The best surprise is no surprise when buying a (graded) card. As for my response here it was in jest....Yes, I think it's pathetic that a card can get that many different evaluations by the same company......and that is why, if you notice, this anonymous post was let go.... regards

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Posted By: Chuck

This is probably the most puzzling about PSA and all the allocades that they garner. How can both of these be the same grade ?




There may be subtle differences. The centering on the Stagg is slightly better, but the corners of the Stagg are also round enough to roll away on. The Jackson border is white while the border dinge on the Stagg is almost yellow.

This will always be a factor with graded cards.

I don't beleive any of the big grading companies are purposely misgrading, but it will forwever be subjective.

I've seen worse examples from PSA, but these were at hand.

cheers

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Posted By: barrysloate

I know there will be inconsistencies with grading- it's an art, not a science, and it is clearly subjective- but that is not a satisfying answer for me.

We've all seen some extraordinary prices realized for high grade cards, especially those with low pops. So please explain how these astronomical prices can be paid when nobody really knows the history of a given card.

A Mint 9 is put in an auction and sells for $50,000. Maybe the same card in an 8 would have trouble reaching $10,000. Yet that very 9 may have been yesterday's 8. So really money is being created out of thin air. Nothing has changed, it's the same card, yet the person willing to spend that much on the card is putting tremendous faith in the veracity of that 9. Like I've said many times, I don't get it.

For cards to achieve all the record prices we see on a regular basis, there has to be incredible accuracy and consistency. If that doesn't exist, then an 8 should sell for only a tiny premium above a 7, and a 9 for a small one over an 8, because frankly, nobody really knows what is going on.

When Mr Freddy Mercury eventually sells that card, how much of its history will the buyer know?

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Posted By: cmoking

"It's these kind of situations where PRO never seems to receive the props it deserves for consistency. That card would have come back in a PRO 9 holder every single time you sent it in."

LMAO!!!!
Nice one Anthony S.!

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Posted By: Mark

95% of my cards are either raw, or were cracked out of their slabs (by me) to display better, and without unsightly bar codes. I never valued someone else's opinion on how my cards graded. And even though I detest the "professional grading" of cards (in its current form) I've been tempted on occasion to go that route...

In the early/mid '90s, I purchased a lot of pre-war cards from dealers like Sportscards Plus, Hunt's, Kit Young, and Mike Wheat. All cards were graded between "EX" and "NRMT" (so probably VG/EX to EX/MT, by today's standards). Sometimes, I am curious to see what grades these cards would now get, and have nearly even submitted a few. I know they would be more valuable if graded, but for some reason I have never been able to force myself to do it.

Recurring occurances like this thread, and similar horror stories always seem to hold me back from submitting. I remember when grading first came on the scene... Sportscards Plus had 3 examples of a 1933 Goudey Ruth (green background). The card most out of register was a blurry mess, but obtained the highest grade of the 3... it had the sharpest corners, by a microscopic/miniscule margin (barely visible to the naked eye). I remember thinking "who cares?!!" The overall image of that card was by far the worst of the 3, yet it graded 2 full points higher than the other two. I will never understand the value assigned to grading (both intellectually and monetarily) in its current form.

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Posted By: Paul S

...yet the person willing to spend that much on the card is putting tremendous faith in the veracity of that 9.

Barry, I agree with you 100%. One thing I'd like to embellish upon is that the person is putting tremendous $$ -- as opposed to faith -- on the fact that there is a 9 on the flip, not that the card itself is a 9, or else wouldn't they resubmit in hopes of a 10? Ergo, that card will never be broken out.

Just my two cents.

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Posted By: Matt R

I thought PRO always gave out 10's. Maybe it is GEM that I'm thinking of. Anyway, I feel better about my Ruth card after reading this post. Maybe I just haven't invested enough in grading fees. I thought I'd quit at $200 trying to get it crossed over.

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Posted By: Darren

Any evidence to support these specific allegations?

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Posted By: DD

Went over my head Leon. As always, you are an upstanding guy.

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Posted By: MW

I'm with Darren. Let's see some large scans of the front and back of the card and some invoices. I'm not saying that everything that has been written by an anonymous dealer isn't true, but I find it difficult to draw any reliable conclusions from this type of "evidence".

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Posted By: quan

is it april 1st all over again?

and darren...if the OP kept record of everything he's a braver man than me. i would not want evidence lying around exposing my stupidity/insanity.

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Posted By: Bill Cornell

From the forum rules:

"Also, to be absolutely clear, this is not a complaint board about grading, graders or grudges. If your first post on the forum is negative, it will likely be deleted."

This thread and the recent Gehrig one are hard to sympathize with. If you don't like the grade (or non-grade), then don't use PSA. Problem solved.

Edited to add: why use a bogus name when posting? Addie Joss, Cashews, Freddie Mercury... there's a pattern here.


Bill

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Posted By: Bob

I hear the faint, tinny voice of reason in the background, one which has been echoed time and time again, "buy the card, not the frigging holder!"
I agree, grading card companies are all over the place but I have never sent a card in more than one time with the exception of crossing over some GAIs and PSAs to SGC because they were running a special and I was curious about possible grades and wanted them in the SGC holders. I find it incredible that a card could be broken out and re-submitted that many times, I would rather spend the grading fees on more cards, but then again, that's just me...

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Posted By: Matt R

I'm trying to figure out how you put the card back together after the first time you trimmed it.

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Posted By: ChuckMontoya

I was just checking out some cards on Ebay and came across some nice cards in PCG slabs. I went to their website and was somewhat impressed with what they say. They claim that if there is a real problem with a card they've graded that with a receipt of the price paid, that they will buy it back at that price. They claim to be around since 1996.Has anyone here any experience with this company?

I know that the Big 2 are prefered but does that mean that all others are less than? Or is the grading business more about who you know? Is the card in this auction

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190218490056&fromMakeTrack=true&ssPageName=VIP:Watchlink:middle:us

not graded proper?

If PCG stands by their word then what is the risk? I sometimes wonder if maybe buying cards in lesser known slabs may be profitable. I am about to start collecting again after a lengthy hiatus and am somewhat leary of the hobby on Ebay or online for the most part. I do believe that I'll be doing some buying on the B/S/T here. At least I've got years of lurking and a much better feeling here than anywhere else. I must say that Anonymous posters that come on with stories such as the one above make me suspicious of the posters motives.Why be anonymous with such claims? JMTC.

Thanks for letting me pontificate

Chuck

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Posted By: Steve

That seller had 2 names last week get NARU.

I'd stay away from those cards.

In one case he 'sold' a PCG 9.5 53 Topps Mantle, with he and the buyer all within 36 hours leave feedback with the buyer saying it got a PSA 8.


That feedback comment was deleted by Ebay but I kept the original in a PM to a friend. He and I could not put our finger on exactly

what was going on and then like I said both the buying and selling names were NARU.

Am I 100% all 3 of these people are one and the same? I am 100% of the 2 that got Naru'd, this name though has the very same cards

and lives in the same general area so I assume they are all the same. Too many freaky things went on with the only good thing we

both got paid for our PSA examples. I am cringing everytime I open my mail expecting a chargeback.


Steve

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Posted By: Red

Chuck. Some of the obscure "grading companies" are just dealers grading their own cards. Instead of putting the card in a toploader it gets sealed inside a fancy holder with a label. Maybe they accept no submissions and only do this for their cards that they sell. If they offer a buyback guaranty then it’s no different than any other raw card dealer that offers a return privilege on cards they sell you. No idea if that's the case here.

I think it's similar to how professional coin grading started. The dealer sealed his coins inside tamper resistant holders and graded the coins. He guaranteed his customers that he would buy the coins back at the same grade.

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Posted By: Matt R

Steve, what does NARU mean?

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Posted By: Steve Murray

Not A Registered User

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Posted By: dan mckee

"if a card measures short" well 90% of pre war cards come in various sizes so measuring is as meaningless as having some punk kid tell you the condition of your cards.