A technical grading question...
 

This isn't necessarily a complaint, it's more of a sense of wonderment. I just had this 1968 Nolan Ryan RC graded, and I'm looking for some insight.

Attachment 330561

The corners are pretty nice (of course, the large scan makes them look worse than they are) and the card is way o/c. Since it is practically falling off the edge of the cardboard, why didn't it get an OC qualifier?? The group sub allowed for qualifiers (as other cards I got back were slabbed OC), and I was expecting this Ryan to be a PSA 6 or 7 OC. Is it possible that that was the case and it got 2 grades subtracted from it for bad centering and ended up a 5? Could that be accurate? When I checked the auction prices website, I only found three PSA 5 OC examples there, but they were all very old labels (no types of stickers/logos in the bottom center area of the slabs), and they were in worse shape than this card (see below), so I am wondering if PSA had stopped giving OC qualifiers to 5's or something? That can't be accurate, correct? I couldn't find anything mentioned in their grading standards pages.

Anyone have an idea? Does PSA believe it to truly be a 5 with centering parameters that somehow fall into place, even though it looks to be along the lines of 97/3 or worse??



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I've seen less OC cards receive the OC designation from PSA so your guess is as good as mine. :confused:

Weird, right??

My apologies if this is a dumb question. I noticed that the first two cards you posted as comparisons and your card all have a white line on the left border. Do these three just happened to be Milton Bradley cards? Just curious as I'm not sure if the Ryan MB has the white line or not.

Thanks,

AndyH

These are all just regular Topps. I believe (could be wrong?) the MB versions don't have the crop line there, they have actual white where the 'mesh' background ends. That's always been my impression.

Edited to add: like this one...
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Well it's obviously OC, but maybe the grader thought it's either a 7OC or straight 5, and most people seem to prefer no qualifiers. So he just decided to make it a PSA 5.

Thanks Darren. I wasn't sure if the Ryan had a Hot Rod or Football card next to it on the sheet so didn't know if it would have the white line and mesh on the left or the full white border.

They are Topps for sure, not MBs. Once you start to see the white stripe, the MB cards will have white from there on out. You will never see any burlap on the 'outside' of the white line.
You can still find graded MB cards as Topps cards though.

Thanks Taylor! How you been bro?