Charles Conlon Fakes, Baseball Magazine Stickers & A Brief Tutorial

[drcy]

As I've said before, I like Yee's book and think PSA does a good job at identifying photos. I've never complained about that stuff. And I've said the PSA rules are fair enough. It's that I know that many collectors will use it as an iron clad rule for judging and valuating photos.

An example of a curiosity in a system is MEARS grading system for game used bats. Many game used collectors at gameuseduniverse have noticed that the 1-10 system rules docks points if a bat is cracked or has chipping or deadwood and inevitably say "What does that have to do with whether or not the bat is game used? I thought the grading system was about determining if it's game used?" And a few others will say "What's with a 1-10 number system in the first place? A bat is either game used or it isn't. What the heck does a bat being 7/10th game used even mean? Is that like being 7/10th pregnant?""

Another example is graded baseball cards. Even avid graded card collectors will say there are "good 8s" and "lesser 8s" and one 8 should be valued better than normal because its colors are sharper or the focus is extra crisp. In other words, the grading system is a guide and no serious collector judges a card only by the number assigned. Even when the number is important to them, they also look at the card.

In short, don't take any grading or labeling system as gospel. They all have limitations, margins of error and arbitrary aspects.