True or not ??

[T206DK]

one of my friends who lives in Hollywood told me yesterday that an ex-PSA grader was at a show he went to . The guy told him that graders there are allowed to grade their own collections. Does anyone know if that's true. Seems very unethical to me if it is, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was

[Cardboard Junkie]

Does anyone doubt it. It is obvious that the BIG submitters get grades higher than the small fish?
Also...Why is it such a big secret about graders qualifications. I have often wondered why a company just doesn't use some type of computerized grading. Where a piece of pasteboard would be evaluated scanned graded according to publish criteria. I am sure the technology exists. A computer would detect a small paper loss or wrinkle that could be missed by humans. Also searching for any alterations, coloring, trimming. Take the guess work out of it.

[steve B]

It's much cheaper to train people to do the grading.

My wife works in software, and I taught her how to spot problems in a few minutes so she could help me do initial sorting on big junk lots.

And when we talk about the occasional card I'm considering she'll make comments like "why is that only a 30" or " that's a pretty weak 40 right?"

Writing software that could handle all the nuances of grading would be extremely expensive, to say nothing of the cost of sensors to detect the trimming without affecting the card.

It's doable, but a seat of the pants guess is a reliable grading machine would run close to a million. Some aspects could be automated cheaply, size and centering, and some of the worst recolorings. The trick would be to tell a recoloring apart from a stain or slight localized fading.

Steve B

[steve B]

I forgot to mention that I wouldn't be surprised if a good percentage of graders weren't involved with the hobby before becoming graders. And that might put some people off a bit(Not me, but some)

While they might not always get some stuff until they have experience, they also would be less prone to looking at a less common or star card differently than a common.

I'm sure we've all seen those dealers who have boxes of commons properly graded as VG but seldom a star that isn't at least ex+ even if it's worse than the commons.

Steve B

[sportscardtheory]

Certainly would not shock me. Nothing does in this hobby anymore.

[irishdenny]

Any mention of why he left PSA? Just curious...