My Crazy New Grading Idea Under 6 = Authentic
 

Today I received my Mantle for the 1960 set I am putting together. It’s a beautiful card with great centering and nice corners and a clean back. But it’s got paper loss on the right boarder so if I sent it in it would at best grade a 1 ( and that would be correct grade under current standards) The problem as I see it however that there are many other cards that would grade a 1 (my 1959 Mantle for instance) which look much worse to any objective viewer.

Here is my solution. Grading companies should only give numbers to 6-10 (ex-mt - gem) Everything else is just authentic. This allows us to correctly value the actual condition scarcities and then let collectors (an investors) value everything else on a card by card basis. This eliminates all of the artificial handwringing about one crease vs two, a mark vs wax stain , a pinhole vs paper loss, off center vs miscut. It comes how does the card look and what do you want to pay for it.

T206 Wagner gets this scale too? Or do you make an exception there?

No this would apply perfectly to Wagner. All of the non-trimmed cards are lower grade and they are all equally rare. Let eye appeal rule the day

what about trimmed examples...are they still A too?

Cool cool. So basically all of the Wagners are authentic.

Yes this is the thing...how could a "5" get the same grade as a heavily trimmed card? Doesn't make sense to me

Practically my entire collection is now authentic!

In all seriousness, I care little for the graded number, I go strictly by eye appeal.

I think a better solution is for collectors/investors to stop thinking of the grading companies as gods who dictate pricing and what is acceptable. There is no rule saying you must agree with the grade on the label. Just pay what you want to pay based on how the card looks to you regardless of what the number or letter or company on the label is.

So using this logic 90% of graded T205's would now become "authentic"?
Seems like this idea can work ok for cards from the 50's and newer, but for older more condition sensitive sets it kinda all goes out the window.

I think this would be an OK idea if all cards were purchased in person and could be carefully examined. Otherwise it'd kinda be a sh*tshow.

I think this idea needs some refinement 😀

That said, I do agree that there are issues with this “1” bucket that seems to cast an ever-increasingly large net. The “poor” designation now seems capable of having its own 1-10 scale.

How can a card with a pencil or pen mark be considered bad and a signature be good? Is a 10 graded autograph still a 10 if there was a stray mark accidentally added at signing? So a 10(mk) ….. :)

How about we just go back to buying raw, and be our own judges of the cards' grade? If a card I want happens to be in a slab, I just crack it out anyway.

Way too much credence is given to the meaningless number on the slab. The hobby was much more fun before the sheep empowered these 3rd Party Dictators.

Well, it appears that regardless of perceived grade, if you send it to SGC, pretty danged good chance it will come back Authentic anyway.

Their, ummm, business model has changed somewhat. cough....

Butch Turner

There's great and unreasonable variance in condition and aesthetics in the Poor and Fair grading range. The grading scale is very uneven, and especially with F-P grades it really is buy the card not the holder.

Duly note that I've thought that all altered cards should get a Poor grade.

I do not find the OP’s idea crazy in the least, although I doubt it will ever come to pass. I suggested many, many years ago (10+) that I would favor a strict Authentic & Unaltered grade for the slabs, and let the eye appeal take over from there. With the registry now firmly entrenched in the hobby, that simply ain’t ever gonna happen– way too many collectors with the “mine is better than yours and I’ll prove it” mentality.

However, I would tweak the idea so as to start the grading at 5. It is my understanding that at that level, there can be no creases or wrinkles in the card that might escape the notice of someone looking at a scan, so a buyer could have some assurance that it was free of that condition. Below that I would have no problem with a system that just notified you of alterations– a grade of Authentic-Altered. IMO, most pre-war collectors don’t give much of a hoot about numeric grades, and many to most sets are not capable of assembly in high grades anyway. Any alteration could be designated on the flip, whether trimmed, marked, erasure, color added, etc. Authentic & unaltered cards would simply be subject to the eye test.

I assume (but do not know) that most post-war collectors don’t hunt for cards graded under 5 as it is, at least those who favor the registry. There are of course exceptions, but I doubt the proposed change would cause all that much outrage in the post-war community. For those who insist on being on top numerically, they can simply stand on their existing collections and/or seek out old graded cards that still bear the vestiges of the 1-4 grading system. Knock yourselves out.

My two or three cents.

The market already does this though. Some 3s outsell some 5s. Some 4s sell for triple the price as other 4s.

I'm blind in my left eye. Does that mean that my cards have less eye appeal even though my left eye is authentic?

As a general matter, bring primarily a post-war collector, with maybe 5% of my collection consisting of pre-war items, I’m not sure that this proposal troubles me unduly.

I do think as an amateur mathematician, having a scale that runs to 10 does give me an unsettling feeling knowing that the scale essentially skips straight up to 5, and lumps everything below it into a single category. But this might have as much to do with inertia and history as feeling that something is missing from the scale by skipping the first five grades entirely.

As a practical matter, the only way such a scale could ever be adopted in any serious fashion would be to start your own grading company and utilize this scale. And then get the entire industry to bail on the other grading companies by offering a superior product in every way. The current 1-10 scale is so deeply entrenched that even those that used to use other numbering methodologies (looking at you, SGC) have converted over to the 1-10 scale, with perhaps a few minor variations on that theme.

All of which is a long way of saying “Good luck, you’re going to need it!”

Some members and myself have discussed having cards be Altered or Not-Altered. One of those.

That would make it more fair with respect to eye appeal. It might be difficult to sell online because of nuances in cards that can be seen on a screen though.
.

IMO there should be an alternate form of grading that solely and factually represents the condition of the card - is it authentic? altered? creased? marked? off-center(based on physical measurements) etc. Facts only, take the subjectivity out of it. The grade inconsistency in the current system is ridiculous.

If I had a high-dollar card I might want the full PSA-style assessment - for insurance purposes if nothing else. But for the vast majority, I just want to ensure that a card is authentic and unaltered, and that if I cannot see the card in person prior to purchase, I know what physical "deformities" it might have that may or may not be apparent in the scan.

And this form of grading could be done at a lower price point/faster turnaround.