Should be interesting CSG 52 Topps Mays
 

Should be fun to seeing what the masses think about this . https://www.ebay.com/itm/393197705007

Yikes. That combo of card condition and holder is not appealing to the eye in any way

I'll leave the obvious comments to others, but the taller slip and slab are so confounding to me. It's so reminiscent of why 1989 Bowmans flopped.

Wowser...
 

It's overgraded by at least +3.

Peace, Mike

I am simply astounded by the number of people selling expensive cards on eBay who haven't bothered to spend a hundred bucks on a decent flatbed scanner. Memo to seller; blurry, flash-obscured photos do not sell expensive cards.

+1 I can't believe how many four figure cards I see with crappy images and little to no description.

So much wrong here. CSG has clearly shown they have no interest in grading pre 70's cards, why would anyone sub a card like a 52 Mays to them.

Aside from the flip and holder which I'm not a fan of, that is a terrible looking card for the grade. Hard to imagine it would have been a psa 2.5. Maybe a 2, but probably a 1.

Gotta be honest, those slabs are just plain bad.

Opportunities to compete on sleekness and eye appeal are one of the few advantages an upstart has versus the hobby incumbents. Very surprising to see the initial design here (and I’m actually rooting for CGS).

And then throw in that particular shade of red cloth as a background.:eek:

If that card gets a single bid as a “2.5” at $5k (with $80 for shipping??), I’m boxing up my entire collection and sending it to CSG immediately, for they are the true alchemists.

I should send my psa 1 52 mantle to csg, maybe it'll get a 3

What's worse? A beat up 1952 Willie Mays getting a GD+ grade from CSG.............or a trimmed 1952 Willie Mays getting an 8 from PSA?

Hmmmmmm!

;)

There was a thread last month talking about CSG, and I posted a few mockups of what could be done with their holder to make it not horrible for vintage cards, because their current holder is clearly not going to work. I was rooting for them.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...=288750&page=3

But they clearly need to get their grading in order first or they might as well not bother.

52 Mays
 

If that sells for that price..Im selling mine immediately

That is too lenient of a grade. I was sort of afraid that might happen. Maybe they will tighten their standards as others have done. One can hope.

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Then why would CSG hire Andy Broome, who was the leading vintage grader at Beckett? That comment makes little sense.

Rich

Card is a poor 1

I still can’t believe they went with all that blank space on the flip. I realize it’s for subgrades, which is what goes in that space if you want to pony up for them, but I could pen a short story on all that blank white. I can’t think of another word more fitting for the overall eye appeal of that card in that case with that grade than “laughable”.

terrible looking flip...looks very unprofessional...and def overgraded.

Yuk!

Seeing as the flips have become the investment...they may be in trouble!!!

This is pretty disappointing seeing this bad of an over grade from them. It immediately discredits them in my mind. I’m still hoping they gain traction relative to other tpg’s, but they need to re-evaluate some things.

Csg
 

The seller has 11 CSG slabs for sale. One of them is a 1997 Press Pass Tim Duncan rookie, with a checklist on the back, that lists for $1.00 in the Beckett Basketball card price guide.

The bottom right edge looks pretty bad for an 8.5 graded card.

Agreed. Off to a terrible start. Vintage cards is obviously not their forte.

Great question Rich and one I've been wondering about myself. Why would a company with substantial resources like CSG not take the time to engage focus/marketing/design groups on what is important to vintage collectors if one of their goals was the vintage card market? Hell, they could have flown Leon and a few others out for a nice weekend chat at a swanky resort and had their answer. Which would have been:

"For decades, vintage collectors have been saying they love the thin PSA flip and the SGC black apron, combine those two with honest grading and good customer service and the world is your oyster".

Look at the majority of comments on any CSG thread here from the beginning, "Great flip for modern but overwhelming for vintage". Lime green label the size of a T206? Who made that decision? I'm sure it wasn't Andy but somebody over there did. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to wonder why AH's scan their vintage cards with a black background, it looks better and aesthetics are important, they always have been. And to the minority of vintage collectors that say they don't care what the flip looks like? Well here's what you get, the abomination posted in this thread.

And while I have the utmost respect for Andy and what seems like some good grading technology from CSG, and I'm sure they'll do well in the modern market, their design/marketing teams failed miserably when it comes to vintage collectors. To put so much effort into hiring one of, if not the top notch vintage graders out there and to completely ignore the vintage market is befuddling to me. That flip is designed for the modern market not the vintage market.

So the only conclusion I can surmise is that they have no interest in catering to the vintage collector, and that's okay, just don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining. My two cent opinion.

I bought a CSG card, 2020 Panini LaMelo Bell, and got it yesterday. I think the holder looks great, very clear case that makes the card sparkle.

The holder is the same size as PSA, in fact I can stack them with PSA.

The card was overgraded though, it was graded a 9 but one top corner shows wear and a bottom corner had a bit of the surface paper on the back folded over.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

There is no look of a legitimate grading company...they look more like the scam graders.

2.5
 

From their website:

2.5 A card graded Good Plus may have heavier creasing, but the creasing does not travel across the surface from edge to edge. The card may also have some surface damage such as one small writing mark on the back. An extremely heavy diamond cut resulting in a near miscut is allowed.

This is the same card that was in post #72 in this thread.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=297768

PSA 4 or 2.5 T206 Cobb??
 

This PSA 4 Cobb appears to have several issues--bent left corner, possible thumb nail imprint across the card, staining ? Would this PSA 4 grade be accurate compared to another PSA 4 Cobb Bat Off with none of those issues ?

In fairness, a grade of 2.5/10 for a card in this condition would make perfect sense in a saner world, one in which basically the entire upper third (half?) of the 1-10 range wasn’t given over to parsing the tiniest differences between great-looking cards to ensure bragging rights and huge prices for the mintiest of the minty. But alas, that’s not the world we live in.

Yup. Before grading companies and perfectly trimmed cards..........That was a Good+ or better all day on the card show circuit.

But hey, PSA has done such a bang up job so far, turning card trimmers into millionaires, we should hold them up as the gold standard for 2. freakin 5's.

:rolleyes:

As long as people can read the number on the flip everything else does not seem to matter.

they made an error hiring that guy. and hiring him makes no sense.

I disagree. IMO he is the best grader in the industry at detecting fakes and fraudulent cards. I agree that they need to tighten their grading standards to stay competitive. But then again I have know him for over 20 yrs so I am a little biased. I also know some of the other graders in the hobby and to me he is the best one out there right now.

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In CSG's defense while the 52 is overgraded they also did a 72 and a 61 Mays (on ebay now) and those look properly graded

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Leon, I do value your opinion, especially on vintage cards.

I Agree with Randy and Leon
 

I subscribe to Beckett Vintage Collector and when Andy was with that organization he regularly wrote detailed articles about how to detect fraud in vintage cards of ALL sorts. The hobby needs this man of integrity. Don't jump to conclusions so quickly. Peace and stay healthy.

I really dislike the gargantuan label, it should be half that height. Slab labels should be like umpires--best appreciated when hardly noticed. And stuff the subgrades on the back--they're obtrusive anyway. Subgrades are useful, at most IMO, to account for surface problems not readily seen from scans.

As for the grade of this card, meh. Probably more accurately a 1.5, but it's hard for me to get worked up about a card this low on the grading scale. The eye appeal or lack of same should drive the price at the good or so level. It's not like someone would be looking to pump up their registry status (assuming this were a PSA card for example). Nor would someone likely spend a bunch of time or money trying to "improve" their set with this card because of its slabbed grade. Is the market at the very low grade level really slab-number driven anyway?

I would say no, or at least less driven by the flip than higher grade vintage and modern for sure. Eye appeal is king for low grade vintage, in my recent experience as a buyer. The problem is that this card doesn't have much eye appeal for a 2.5. It might be considered a decent 1, but it just looks silly with a VG+ grade. Having the silly slab on top of that is insult to injury. If and when it is sold for a reasonable price, my guess is that the buyer will crack it out immediately. Hard to imagine any collector of low grade vintage keeping it in that! I certainly wouldn't.

Pulling for one of these new grading companies to push the established ones but I wouldn't pay > than a 1 SGC/PSA for this Mays.

The card has gd+ grade, not vg+. As for cracking it out, different strokes I guess. I didn't know low grade collectors gave much of a crap about the slabs anyway, and would be as likely to crack it out if was in a PSA holder regardless of the number. Keep it in the PSA holder if "properly" graded a 1 but crack it out if it's overgraded as a 2.5? OK.

1952
 

Should still bring 6,500+ which is in line with a PSA or SGC 1 today.

Here's a somewhat comparable PSA 1 that sold 03/07/21 for only $2,629. I'm not sure where your $6,500+ estimate is coming from Ethan. :confused:



.

Actually, youre right. It would be cracked out regardless of what holder it was in. Sorry, letting my dislike of the CSG holder cloud my thinking 😀

Just speaking from experience...maybe I overpaid, but I just spent over 8k on a decent PSA 1.5 Mays. Thinking a PSA 1 might land in the $6,500 area today.

Bingo, was just thinking this same thought as I read through the thread. We expect (hope) that a new company will come in and clean up all the mistakes of the current TPGs. Why is it so crazy to think that they might change the Auth - 10 grading scale that is currently in use, where the naked eye loses it's ability to distinguish cards at the upper level and a 1 or 2 can have such varying levels of eye appeal? If you want them to be different than the establishment, then don't knock 'em when they are.

I do however, think the flips suck.

Face creased 1 May's just sold for 4400 fwiw.

Forgetting about the holders themselves, the PSA 1 card for comparison presents far inferior to the CSG graded card. Rightfully so, the PSA card should sell for substantially less and I bet it would and it’s not because the other card is in a 2.5 holder.

Looking at things from the viewpoint of a grading company that bases it’s overall grade on the 4 sub-grades mindset (as Beckett and CSG do), the final grade can only be a half grade higher than the lowest sub-grade unless there is a very significant difference in sub-grades with the lowest being far worse than the others. In that case, the final grade can be one full grade higher than the lowest sub-grade. The seller’s pics are poor but I would estimate that the corners on this card would grade around a 3, edges around a 3/4, centering around a 2 (keep in mind they don’t have qualifiers such as MC, O/C, etc.) and surface a 1/1.5 for the creasing/scuffing but no significant paper loss. So based on the sub-grades, a 1.5 would be more than reasonable and on a good day, a 2.0 does not seem out of the realm of possibility.

Although they don’t all report their individual findings publicly like Beckett and now CSG on their flips, all of the TPG’s are using these same four facets to grade cards. I can see where the eye test might lead one to look at this card and say it looks like a 1 but in reality, the technical grade should be a bit higher based on the somewhat more positive traits that it does have. Many times we like to present a card when we are selling it as looking much better than it’s technical grade, right? In this case, the technical grade might appear high based on the overall presentation of the card but is not far off based on the sub-grade weights given. Is it a half-grade too high, maybe, but we shouldn’t be badmouthing a grader for a half-point more or less. None of us are perfect, are we?

Looks like a 1.5 to me. Everyone makes mistakes, but they obviously knew that they will be under the microscope with their first cards. I do not understand how they could have let that card out in that grade.