Grading head scratchers
 

Regardless of how subjective things could possibly get between different graders at any of the big 3, you'd like to have at least some sense of consistency that you can loosely rely on (scandal aside).

At times I want to think that's sometimes the case. Then you see something like this....

I have a '55 T Jackie Robinson that looks like a 6 on the front. A light crease halfway down the back. PSA gave it a 2. I'm thinking, ok, it has a crease somewhere, it got a 2.

Then I see this today:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/VBkAA...il/s-l1600.jpg

How on earth....a 3.5 by comparison? The crease along the upper right part of the card is even more pronounced zooming in. Then whatever is going on in the bottom right. Corners mediocre. 70/30 L/R. Can't even see the back so it might even get worse.

I don't get it.

I feel your pain. Not sure why this Bench graded a 2.5 as the back is clean and cannot see any creases. Some grades just don't add up. Post a pict of your 55 Robinson I would love to see it.

https://www.collectorfocus.com/image...h-i.a.-psa-2.5

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Ru0AA...zK/s-l1600.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/CsYVa8o.png

That Bench card seems to make no sense.

Whenever i see something like that Bench, i immediately inspect the white areas for a hint of paper loss. The 2.5 grade is what you would wxpect from such a situation from an otherwise nice looking card.

Robinson
 

Just to the right of B on the hat. A spot?

That spot isn't on the card (glare from the pic).

The grade for the Musial is even more confusing to me though. They must have their reasons for the Robinson or even the Bench, but that 3.5 seems really odd for Stan

The Musial could be a reholder of an old grade. I will agree with you this type of thing is very frustrating though.


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Nope; graded recently based on Cert number.

Based on the scans - I would put the Robinson at a 5 - all day - every day

Go Figure - and yet the PSA opinion is still worth 20 bucks a pop?

I would think that they deducted for the erasure mark to the right of Robinson's head, paper loss on left boarder in two spots, and creased in the upper right corner from the edge being dinged up. The back is toned and has some boarder issues.

I do think the grade on the Musial is a bit to high considering the condition.

The white spot to the right of his head is glare from the pic. After another look, I uncovered a bigger upper right corner peeling issue that I never noticed at first (or second) look. Upper right per the photo/looking horizontally, that is. I don't think it's really visible in the pics, nor is the light crease down part of the back.

Uncovering all of these visible only at the right light/tilt/angle imperfections (while squinting my bifocal eyes through the slab) is aging me even more. I miss simply looking at raw cards 25-30 years ago in high school and just being in the ballpark with something's condition. Anyway...

As mentioned above, you knew they had their reasons for not giving it the mid-level grade that it appeared at first glance. And being as rough on it as possible could get you down to a 2 by the time you're done breaking it down. But if you did the same to the Musial, 3.5 seems like a dream, so I still don't agree at all with it being 1.5 higher

head scratcher
 

Despite that this card looks like it should grade higher, how does a card with such a huge pinhole get a "4"??

Maybe the Slab came from Mexico or the grader just looked at the centering and the corners which would have made it NM. Plus, who did the submission as Im sure that had no bearing.

Not a pin hole the reverse image shows no hole I think it’s some sort of dot on the card. Look up the image PSA has one on the site. But I know it’s more fun to boil up all these internet conspiracy theories. And some wonder why more don’t take the true crimes seriously because fools hurl rocks at things that aren’t even deserved. Plenty of legit stuff to complain about to go around fabricating or exaggerating things.

Grading mysteries
 

PSA is really tough on any sort of glue residue. I've seen Ex-Mt card get graded as a PSA 2. They are also tough on minor wrinkles that are hard to see in scans.

You might try cracking them out of the holders and re-submitting. I've had some luck with that on cards that seemed badly under graded. It could just be a mistake.

Wow! That is an excellent resource. I've never used the PSA certification verification page. Wish the auction site that is selling this card had shared a back scan (or at least pointed out that the big black hole looking spot in the exact spot that a pinhole would exist is not actually a pinhole). I have never EVER seen a black spot in that location that is not a pinhole. Thanks for quelling my fears that this had somehow slipped past a PSA grader! Okay, that "4" is rock solid then!

Print defect(s)???

Attachment 379462Attachment 379463

A couple of tiny white specks in the blue? A tiny bit of black 'overrun' ink to the left of "Valuable"?? There is no way this card should be a PD.

I've contacted PSA repeatedly about having the PD designation examined and (hopefully) removed (steps to take, etc.) and they NEVER respond with any info. The person I contacted readily helped me resolve other issues (a fraudulent use of photoshop by someone in the registry to make a mislabeled card appear to actually be the card the label indicated, and correctly changing the label of a card I submitted through Bobby's bulk submission to what it should have been in the first place), so their silence is pretty irritating.

That's what I hate about TPG, it cost money to grade and I am not made of money and don't have the money to play the game and submit things multiple times

I have never understood the whole numeric system at all. A card can be gem mint in appearance but have an invisible microcrease on the back only visible by 10x loupe and it's a 5. In the old days that card would sell at top condition all day long. Yet, I have seen (the variety of 52 Topps Mantles is a good example) all 1's lumped into the same giant cesspool. There are 1's that actually present decently and others that went through a washing machine. There are many 4's that present beautifully. Why is their grade only 3 away from the washing machine card?

Grading head scratchers
 

All of this is just further proof of what many have contested for quite some time: Grading, beyond certain obvious agreed-upon standards at some point reaches a level of subjectivity that cannot be further defined. ALL of the big 3 are routinely inconsistent at least when it comes to details; I have some cards graded 6.5 that look worse than other 5’s. This has always happened, and will continue to happen with the way the current grading platforms work. While I can tolerate subtle inconsistency, my problem with a major grader such as PSA is how their consistency changes over the decades. Look at a vintage PSA 5 of say, an early 1960’s Topps card that was graded 25 years ago, and tell me if you think many of those would receive the same grade today?

While I still believe that overall, grading has helped the hobby and is a useful tool at a higher level, at some point the subtleties that exist in the system today are simply fallacies due to the inherent subjectivity in the process that is eventually reached.


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Agree completely. There is far too much variance granted at the lower levels, and only microscopic differences separating grades of 7-8-9-10. How and why did this become the standard? The whole system needs to be re-examined... not only for detecting altered cards, but for a more equitable grading scale.

I respectfully disagree when it comes to the grading scale. It is designed to take the actual condition of the card into account. The problem I see is many people want to change that to "eye appeal". Eye appeal should make a big difference on price but should have absolutely nothing to do with the grade that uses the actual condition of the card.

Wasn't the whole idea of half grades to take the eye appeal into account?

Maybe?

But much more prevalent in their creation of half-grades was to generate millions of additional unnecessary submissions, and subsequent profits for their shareholders.

Part of it was the need for the TPG's to peg traditional grades (yes, they existed before the TPG's...) to a 10 point scale. Back in the 1980's and earlier, there were named grades from Mint to Poor, starting likely with the advent of hobby magazines in the late 70's and early 80's. Interestingly enough, I will always remember how careful the guides were then to point out that grading was only an opinion, and that collectors frequently disagreed on the "grades". (Funny how that plays today, huh? That's right, it's the same damn argument...) Anyway, the point was that eventually these named grades developed into ranges like VG-EX, EX-MT, etc. to provide a means to give collectors and dealers greater descriptive ability when there was a disagreement. If a card was maybe an EX but a weak EX, had too much corner wear or something, well then call it VG-EX. A card that was obviously not "Mint" for some reason, but better than EX was called EX-MT. All of this worked fine until the TPG's came along and decided that EX-MT was a precise grade / thing, and called it a 6. It was never really meant to be used that way by those in the hobby at the time, but suddenly now we have a pegged grade. This just got worse and worse of course as time went on, with the advent of half-grades, etc. Yes, please resubmit those cards for more money to get the half grade bump! If you think cards are bad, try the coin hobby - where the top grade, "MS" (Mint State") has like 5 different ranges if I'm not mistaken, from 65-70. The coin hobby by the way, is who you can blame all this on with our modern professional card graders. What company did CU and David Hall start before PSA? PCGS and coins in 1986. I digress...

The point of this is that the lower end of the scale being less important then as it is now, got less attention in the ever more ridiculous attempts to further refine grading scales. So by comparison to the upper grades, the Poor to about Good range with many TPG's still has even more subjectivity and room for variation. It's not necessarily fair, no, but grading scales have generally been written to evaluate "technical condition", not eye-appeal alone. If we are going on eye-appeal alone (again, still subjective - one man's beater Mantle card may still be the Mona Lisa in his eyes...) that might be a different story as to how to evaluate cards in the lower end of the technical spectrum.

I agree 100% with that, like the new slab, the new lighthouse shiny thingy, and the new security chip that is on the way.

Grading head scratchers
 

Yes, technically a "x.5" is whatever grade that did not meet the criteria for the next full grade, but with greater eye appeal. Eh, sometimes. I've seen it written in many places that centering is the most important criteria to get a .5 bump, and then in reality seen plenty of less than perfectly or sometimes even decently centered cards graded 4.5, 6.5, what have you. It’s subjectivity at best, a gimmick at the worst.

I would agree that revenue generation, and the idea of many more unnecessary submissions in the eyes of TPG executives was more responsible for them doing that than the need to improve the grading scale. That said...have I mentioned I love graded cards with the .5 bump!?! I know. But it's human nature. This card is that much more slightly better because it's a whatever, POINT FIVE. lol.

So damned funny.

R A N D O M...

The fact that the N162 Keefe is the same grade as the Cracker Jack Mullen tells you all you need to know. What's the point of them even assigning a number grade anymore?

Key takeaway - There is a lot of subjectivity in TPG holders....