It is quite easy to voice your dissatisfaction with current grading standards,

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

but quite another thing to propose a viable alternate set of standards. Heck, as a group we can not approach agreement on card definition and many other basic considerations related to our hobby. I can not imagine that we could achieve any better results with this, but I want to.

Id like to address the area I am least knowledgable about and also least interested in first: the higher grades.

In another thread I made statements which infer that two basic conditions exist for a card (or any collectable): mint and used. To be used, the collectable must reach the public. Until it does, it is in mint conditiion.

Mint condition can be defined in many subdivisions of manufacturing inadequacies, after product manufacture damage and perhaps other quality impairments.

Before I go on off the deep end alone, does anyone agree with this concept, disagree with it, want to hear more, less, or change the channel?

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

With all due respect, my experience has been that the majority of people who are displeased with current grading standards are displeased because they may be overgrading their cards.

I am 100% in agreement with the grading standards that have been embraced (usually) by the grading companies. My biggest concerns stem from the treatment of hand cut cards, altered (trimmed/recolored) cards, and understanding the subtle differences in standards between the various grading companies.

I wouldn't change a thing about the current standards in general, though.

-Al

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Posted By: BcD

and trust yourself and there will be no problem with grading!

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Posted By: edacra

I seem to recall the original pitch for these grading companies was simply to standardize the practice and then seal it's purity from further damage. You were supposed to start treating baseball cards like specimens. That was really it.

At that time, you would walk through a National Convention and struggle to find anyone who was pricing acurately according to the cards condition. High book was common on anything above a VG. I recall the grading on prewar cards being a bit more honest, accept with HOF'ers or anything a dealer deemed worthy of putting in a screwdown holder. Off condition cards just weren't much cheaper, and many (not all) Dealers would tell you to take a hike if you tried to haggle over a card you thought deserved a grade of "Poor".

Grading companies never really did deliver on their promise to standardize the hobby, but you can go and at least now you can buy a Babe Ruth card with a staple hole priced proportionately.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Let's not sugar-coat history here. The real and only motive behind the slabbing thing was corporate profits. The coin graders realized there was a vast market of cards that could be slabbed if their owners could be convinced to pay for the service, hence the "card doctor" marketing blitzes from PSA designed to convince you not to trust your own eyes and the fraudulent price guide designed to convince you that slabbed cards performed like great stocks at a time the card market had been flat for quite a while. Stampeding collectors like cattle into slabbing their cards was the goal, not some noble effort to standardize grading. That was merely one of the justifications.

That said, the net result of slabbing by reputable services has been a lessening of blown grades. There isn't much a dealer can do to fake his way into a near mint price if the card is slabbed a 3. But don't confuse results for motives.

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

Well for starters, to say that everything is "mint" until it reaches the public or the consumer is something with which I cannot agree. A card can leave the printing process with a ding or a scrape.

I really hate the slabs. I've come around to somewhat being glad that slabbed stuff is out there for sale, because it gives the slab-heads something to buy so they stay away from the unslabbed stuff. That keeps slab-heads from driving up the price of raw cards. I will conceed that a good aspect of buying a slabbed card is that one has a higher expectation of the card being genuine. I've bought a few slabbed cards, and I've broken out almost every one of them. Those little guys commited no crime, they don't deserve a prison. I like to be able to hold the rascals. And those holders are WAY TOO big for storage.

I'd like to get the formula for KL93, I think that was the "stronger than steel" plastic that the Army used to encase Gort in The Day The Earth Stood Still. Make some BIG slabs. That would protect those cards.

Warshawlaw has it about right. Read his comments again, so it will sink in. Sometimes (there, I've qualified it to lessen the offensiveness) wannabe collectors take comfort in buying slabbed cards when they lack the knowledge and skill to ascertain the authenticity of a card themselves. It is like they collect the slabs, not the cards. And it seems that these "collectors" know virtually nothing about the history of the game.

To me, the little pieces of cardboard represent little pieces of history. And having one is a way to hold history. Some of my favorite cards aren't the ones with the best resale potential. I like the cards for who the players were, not for dollars in a price guide or quantities in a population report.

Baseball is not a game. Baseball is not even a season. It is a continuum. It passes along through the generations. In the 60s I listened to baseball games on the radio because my Dad did. He took me to some ball games. He played ball with me and my little brother in the back yard. Dad had listened to ball games via radio with his father in the late 30s and 40s. He'd gone to some nearby minor league games. And I don't know how my grandfather got interested, but I have to figure some adult relative took him to a game at the turn of the century. After attending a couple of hundred ML games and half a dozen WS games, I finally saw a no hit game in Arizona, Jose Jimenez beat Randy Johnson, 1-0, June 25, 1999. The Cards barely got a run off of Johnson in the top of the 9th, I believe on a broken bat single. Johnson struck out 14. My twin daughters were with me, seeing their second game ever. And the significance of a no-hitter is still lost on them. A couple of years later I handed the ticket stub to Jose before a game in St. Louis, he was in a Rockies uniform then. Several players were signing, I focused on him and walked along the left field line with him, he noticed, maybe because I had a sign for him. When it was my turn to hand him an item, I held out a ticket stub from his no-hitter, he looked at it, smiled, and then took a program from a kid. We talked for 5 minutes, him holding the stub, and signing other stuff. At first I thought he might not sign it. But then I realized that he was reliving the moment, and all around us were hearing about his no-hitter. It was the last thing he signed that day, and he returned it to me with a huge, grateful smile. Baseball transcends the generations. The little pieces of cardboard can be passed along, with memories and recollections. Or they can be antiseptically slabbed and viewed as a commodity.

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Posted By: barrysloate

But Frank- with so many cards trading in the thousands of dollars, they really are commodities. The days of them being sentimental pieces of cardboard are dwindling. I think as the hobby evolves, it will become a pastime of the very rich. As for Adam's comment that grading prevents a dealer from calling a raw card NR MT when it is in fact a PSA 3, there is a related issue that has long bothered me. If I were to sell a raw card as NR MT, and it came back from a service as EX-MT (which really is a subtle and subjective difference) even though I have been grading cards for almost 25 years and the professional grader might be doing it for six months, I would lose that argument 100% of the time. No one would accept my grade, and would only acknowledge the grader's opinion. And that would be something I wouldn't even attempt to defend, as I know I couldn't possibly win.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Barry, you are not alone in that realization. Many with similarly impeccable credentials (and some with lesser experience) find this status frustrating. BCD's point is well taken.

It makes more sense to just drop the controversy and take advantage of the system. Buy cards which have been downgraded due to characteristics which you don't care about - blank back imperfections, problems which require a magnifier to see, etc.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I long ago came to the conclusion that my opinion about the grade of a card is meaningless, and just send everything in to be graded like everyone else. Hey, for a lazy guy like me, it makes life simpler.

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Posted By: Rick

Grading gives the buyer a more balanced playing field ... Along with ebay a buyer doesnt have to be told his cards are a piece of crap by the same dealer who told him it was gem when he first bought from said dealer.

Grading has greatly enhanced my collecting experience wether i am buying a card or selling it.

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Posted By: James Gallo

Slabbing is almost a necessary evil. It may have started with coins, but has moved on to cards, comics, action figures and now I hear they are slabbing stamps too.

The benefits to it are important in this internet generation. Everything is sold on the net and even with good pictures it can be hard to know if a card has been altered.

To me the biggest things grading has to offer are

1. An expected consistency. You have an idea of what to expect when you buy a PSA 2 or PSA 8 card. They might not all look the same but you shouldn't get something that is way off (Although I know this does happen)

2. Peace of mind that the product your buying is what the seller states it is and that the piece is not altered. Certain things you may have trouble seeing even with a good scan. Take Black marker on the edges of a card. In person it would be easy to spot but with a picture maybe not so much.

3. An average/expected price. Although IMO this isn't really the case with pre-war or high end cards as the prices seem all over the map to me.

4. In a certain aspect cards do become a commodity. They become almost liquid once graded. This is by product and certainly not something that was planned but more developed because of the whole internet explosive. How easy is it to post a card on ebay with a BIN and have it sold and get paid for in less then 5 minutes.

5. Insurance. Much easier to insurance and list cards and you will have much less of a problem if something happens as there won't be an issue of subjective grading.

6. New collectors. I think it helps new collectors get a feel for a set. I have picked up a couple odd graded cards and they have opened me up to new sets which I have then in turn gone on to collect and research.

There may be others that I can't think of off hand.
All this being said I do agree that the base idea for grading was to essentially make a new product so that the grading company could make a profit off others lack of knowledge.
This can be seen perfectly with all the "new" products such as ticket and autograph grading as well as specific sized slabs for specific cards.

If the demand is big enough you can bet someone will come up with a way to implement it.

James Gallo

Looking for 1915 Cracker Jacks and 1909-11 American Caramel E90-1.

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

Ah.... Insurance.

Do get slabbed cards insured. Get the cards scheduled, and be sure and list the grader's # for the individual cards.

One day, someone, maybe the government, will wonder what happened to the cards you insured. You had to have had them, you would not have perpetrated a fraud on an insurance company insuring something you don't have. If the insured cards are in your estate, then they may well be subject to inheritance taxes. And if the cards are no longer in your estate, you must have sold them. So when they look at past tax returns will they see that ordinary income from the sale of the cards?

Oh yes. By all means insure them.

Frank.

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Posted By: edacra

I agree with most of the points being made, and especially appreciate Mr. Warshaw's recollections which are dead on - but I don't think I was sugar coating history. It was far from a flat market when the grading companies first arrived. I can remember a certain grading company doing a major push at the bigger Bay Area shows around 87-89, and their booth, with the guys in suits standing behind magnifying glasses was located in close proximity to Mr. Mint's. If they could have sat in his lap, they would have, because most of his business was behind the table with other Dealers anyway. Next to them was a booth of slabbed coins. People would stop by, pick up a brochure, and wander off confused. Even SCD who would later get in the grading game themselves had published editorials about how the concept had bombed. It was still a big deal to see Dealers in three piece suits then, even once collecting had taken a backseat to speculation buying, or um "investing", but I recall it was the Rookie thing that was still the real preoccupation at that point (that was one of those infamous shows where the Mcgwire card started jumping in value with each homerun he hit). Along with the grading companies, you also had the introduction of a publicly traded sports collectible company, and HOF'ers themselves setting up booths. People were desprate to exploit the market.

Even if my details are a little off, the real point is that the intention of grading never really met the hobby needs until things got soft. Once people realized there were thouands of certain "rare cards" it became about picking out that one cherry card and pricing it through the roof. The flipside is that the beaters finally got treated like what they were. If you were collecting in the 80's you probably paid Mint prices for a less the Mint card at some point. Which kind of explains the unfortunate idea that a 9 should sell for many times more then book value.

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Posted By: Jeff Lowe

Grading is just like having your company or service accredited . It may bring you more resale value in the end but basically its only telling you that what you know already .



Jeff

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Posted By: jay wolt

"It may bring you more resale value in the end but basically its only telling you that what you know already."

JEFF - while that is true w/ the cards you already have in your collection.
3rd party grading is valuable when you are purchasing cards through mail order or the internet. Before the days of grading many sellers tended to
overgrade their cards to make the sale, maybe no big deal on a T206 Howie
Camnitz thats VG but on a Cobb or a Young a grade or 2 off is a big deal.
At least if a seller now says he has a PSA-4 or an SGC-50 or a GAI-4 you
have an idea what you are getting. And you can always crack 'em out if the
need arises...jay

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

Seems to me that here lately, the past few months, more folks are coming out of the closet about how they think slabbing is nuts. A few of us speak about it, and then others aren't ashamed to join in.

For some folks, they'd have a nice collection if they'd bought raw cards instead of slabbed ones, then taken that pile of money wasted on slabs and slabbing, and spent it on more raw cards.

It does tickle me when I bust one out, that an added bonus is his little butt will remain in a population report somewhere forever, even though he's escaped.

What is next, slabbed diamonds? Slabbed sports cars?? Slabbed bats? I'd like for someone to slab the Yankee franchise and lock it away.

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Posted By: steve yawitz

I'm proud to have joined the hearty band of deslabbers, Frank.

As for the title of the thread, I don't think people are necessarily dissatisfied with the grading standards as much as they are with the application of those standards. At least that's been my experience with PSA. And it's not necessarily the mistakes that PSA makes, but their failure to own up to those obvious errors.

Like others have said, after 7 years in my second hobby stint - there was the obligatory lull during the college and early post-graduation years - I'd just assume trust my own eyes and eye appeal standards than PSA's.

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Posted By: John Barnes

Frank,
it sounds like you do not like the way slabs look. Because if a card is in a graded slab, or you break it out, I assume you will put it in some sort of protective cover anyway. So it will be covered in some fashion...

John

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

My 515 or so T206s are stacked in a small box, sorted by team.

I once kept them in toploaders, when I had but a few. But as I got more cards, they were difficult to store and move.

Then I moved them to 9 pocket sheets.

Now they're locked up, and in a small box.

I once saw a NICE collection of T206s, almost all EX or better, it was missing Plank and Magie. They were all in a box, my recollection is a cigar box. It was beautiful.

So no sir, as for my T206s, they aren't really individually in anything.

And I reckon I'd have only a couple of hundred of them if I'd bought only slabbed cards.