Ineptness of Authenticators/Graders
 

So I'm perusing the mile high catalog that just arrived today and I stop on page 116 as I see a slew of babe ruth cards...specifically lot 308...a w575-2 babe ruth hand cut card. graded by SGC a 1. 2 of the three corners are gone...1 is dangling. Hand cut...missing 2-3 corners...SGC graded it a 1.

I've experienced SGC as of lately giving tons of cards the scarlet A...in many cases the explanation is a mystery.

This is certainly not meant to bash SGC...as I find them miles better than PSA.

Grading standards have changed with the wind with PSA over the years...SGC grading incredibly harsh these days. Why? To reward early adopters? We all know some receive preferential treatment when it comes to grading.

My query is this...is there any other hobby...area of collecting...where the authenticators/expert graders are as inept as they are in this hobby. Where the standards have changed so much over time...where there is so much ineptitude and corruption.

I have a hard time believing there is?

Grading is like the dental industry. Everyone has a different opinion of the condition of teeth, right ? :D

good one! same same...but very different!!!!

I am not in any other hobby so I cannot specifically comment on the comparison in other collectibles markets but in this one, we really need to expect and get better on the authentication side. There is no consistency over time, no consistency from TPG to TPG and at any given moment, favors are clearly being done where the cards are graded based on who submitted them, as opposed to what was submitted. I love holders but I find the whole game disgusting but not disgusting enough to collect raw just disgusting enough to stop lining the pockets of the TPG until they get it right--an exercise in futility.

Arrgh, don’t get me started on that Scarlet A. I am whining about SGC in the basketball forum now.

And when I asked as to why it got that grade. The answer I got was the graders do not keep any of their notes for determining grades. To me, that sucks. Why would a company not keep those type of records. With all the virtual technologies that exist today, those notes are nothing more than bits on a storage array. And with cloud service, a company does not even have to keep any of that on site. And it is stored and maintained forever.

Blah

Butthurt in Colorado :D

B. T.

As for a grading standard, I look to coins, it is pretty much cut and dry as to a coin and how it gets graded. Don’t see why card graders cannot come up with a standard like coins.

I take it was not your submission? I think they do tell the original submitter why it gets an A on the sheet that gets sent back with the cards...but I've gotten the same reply when I've inquired directly with SGC about a card graded A, they don't keep notes.

I am the original submitter. The reply from them is what I received. I was told it had evidence of trimming. I disagree. I wanted to know the specifics as to how the grader came to that conclusion. No details other than the trimming comment.

B. T.

Ah, ok. They just wouldn't give you the specifics of what they observed I guess.

Exactly.

Here is the link to my OP.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=312734

Submitters are only paying SGC to provide its opinion concerning a card’s overall grade. That is it. This does not include notes, reasoning, bases, debates, arguments, etc.

I’ve never met a person who didn’t think his/her cards were under graded. Just go look at the B/S/T section. Count how many “under graded” and “looks much better,” blah-blah comments you see.

Can you imagine how much slower the process would become, and how much more expensive as well, if a grader, who graded a card a month ago, had to pull up his/her notes and look at the scanned database photo and then answer an e-mail or telephone call? It wouldn’t stop.

The grader wouldn’t have time to grade cards. Including detailed notes and comments on the front-end would also slow the process down and reduce how many cards that grader could grade each day, which would add to backlogs.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry would call or email asking why their card was graded a 4.5 and not a 5.0. It wouldn’t end.

For the price you're paying to get these cards graded, let's say at the $250 level, I should have full access to graders notes and at least a phone call from Brent explaining why.

Would it not also behoove TPGs to not keep such accurate notes and records in case someone was to take them to court over their guarantees, or to dispute losses they felt they had incurred due to wrongful TPG opinions? Without such notes and evidence it would be extremely harder to prove fault in the case of giving an opinion. Kind of like scrubbing a crime scene so the actual fingerprints are gone.

Another reason I had heard in the past for why TPGs may not want to share all specific details as to why they graded a particular card as they did, is to not let card doctors and alterers know exactly what was found or seen so they could improve their techniques and work to better fool TPGs in future attempts at getting their altered cards past them and graded as high as possible.

I get it, the process is very imperfect and often corrupt…but in the end, the card is still the card and everyone can see it. Grading is important but don’t always determine how well a card sells. We all have our stories, and i sure wish i never had thought that the grading companies would someday be discredited (i have abandoned this thought), and had had many more cards graded before this explosion in cost and increase in grading standards. Oh well! On the other hand, it has allowed versions of many cards to obtain prices never before contemplated, and it does trickle down to the value of all cards (in general).

Not much we can do now…

I read an article by a major coin dealer a few years ago about how grading standards had slid over the years even through the TPGs.
Where a grade used to NEED to have a full clear "liberty" it became acceptable to call it that grade if it was merely legible. Then maybe a missing letter or two was close enough.

Third party grading is pretty new in stamps, and still in the controversial phase. Slabbing stamps has pretty much failed. But they will include a grade on the certificate. Most won't if the stamp has any flaws, so it's mostly based on centering. I expect that will eventually change.

Yep, it's gotten pretty bad. A lot of perfectly good cards that have not been altered in any way are now getting Authentic slabs. 6s are now 4s, 8s are now 6s. Is what it is.

I think the opposite is happening with cards - grades are slipping down and graders are becoming more strict. A few of us refer to this as GRADE CREEP - the sliding of the scale toward a more strict interpretation and, thus, a lower grade.

i personally believe they focus more on technicalities than ever, and less on eye-appeal. Eye appeal was always an aspect in the first 20 years of card grading, and older cards produced with more archaic technology were graded ever so slightly less strict. Not anymore... they (SGC, PSA, and even CSG) are grading everything like its a 2022 pack pulled, sharp edged card.

.

And yet, we all want consistent standards. The corners and edges that are Vg on a tobacco card are really bad on a modern card.

The real problem is that change, once we've had a couple decades of grading older stuff traditionally, making the standards fit every set is a problem.

Why should it be a problem? Why can't you still have consistent standards, but different accepted sets of standards for different eras, based on the technology, methods, precision, and materials used to produce cards in those different eras? Say Pre-War (through 1941) is one era, Post-War Vintage (1942-1980) is another era, and Modern (1981-today) is the most recent era. Or break it up into whatever eras everyone ultimately gets together to agree on.

But there's the problem, getting everyone in the hobby together to agree on something, and then force the TPGs somehow to do what we all want. And because we can't seem to ever get together to agree on anything, the TPGs decide what they want to do and tell us all how it's going to be, instead of the other way around, like it should be.

Seems so straightforward and therefore so easy but then the part of getting everyone to agree. LOL. If the assessors of our cards could simply agree two days in a row within a given co, it would be a victory.

I know that CSG and PSA are relying more heavily on AI to assess cards (or at least to pre-screen them) and pretty sure that SGC has their own form of AI, maybe not used as consistently. As that becomes more the norm or is relied on more often, the results of grading will continue to dismay. The AI is simply not up to the task of assessing vintage accurately. Once it points out a flaw, which may or may not be accurate, it is game over.

It would be interesting to see the results of how collectors as a group would want to value the various aspects of a card's overall grade. I know this gets talked about ad nauseum, but I would pay more for a perfectly centered 4 than I would for an off-centered 8 for pretty much any vintage card, as long as there are no creases or registration issues. I think most collectors are like me in that regard. Many of us couldn't care less about the corners.

Chase,

We'll never get everyone to agree, so there will always be problems. Oh well, we'll just have to live with it. LOL

Now as for AI making it hard/impossible to grade cards from different eras by different standards, I don't see a problem. You can still have AI go through and grade all cards from whenever based on a single set of factors and standards, but then depending on what era or set a card was from, you maybe use a different grading curve in determining a specific card's final grade then.

Think of it this way. A 75 year-old grandfather, and his 21 year-old grandson both go to the same doctor for their annual physicals, and he/she pronounces them both in almost perfect (NM) health. But is the 75 year-old grandfather even anywhere close to being in as good overall health and condition as the 21 year-old? Hell no, he's 75 years old for cripessakes!!!

But compared to other 75 year-olds, he's in fantastic (NM) shape. Does that make sense?

I'm 100% with you. Centering is a big, big deal for me.

Bob, I'll be be 75 in 5 months. I'm glad to know that getting myself a NM evaluation is still possible. :D:D:D

Just don't recommend slabbing me.:eek::eek::eek:

LOL

Frank,

I'm with you, and not too far behind you age-wise either as I'm in my late 60s. My youngest song is about to turn 26, and every time he begins complaining about how old and rundown he is and feels now, I just roll my eyes and start laughing. When he starts doing that, I usually just ask him that if he thinks he's so bad off now, what's he going to be doing and saying when he starts getting close to my age. That generally shuts him up! LOL

I try to think of guys like you and me being similar to fine wine............we're not getting older, we're getting better! :D

Steve,
This is really what baffles me! "Back in the day" grading seemed to be more "what is reasonable" than what it has gradually morphed into. A grade never used to take into account whether or not there was a fingerprint or dust on the surface. And centering overruled slightly fuzzed corners on a 50+ year old card.

Hey Bob,

I get your point. There was actually a very good thread on here which two forum members participated in who work in the tech field and both stated how far away AI is from being able to grade accurately.

In line with what you are saying, it has been my hunch that there is still a great deal of modern getting graded right now which could be influencing how vintage is seen. When you are looking at pack fresh cards all day long and deciding between a 9 and a 10 and then someone sends in a high end 58 Topps card it might be a 6 comparatively.

Funny. I'm exactly the opposite. Centering is a factory flaw and as such is part of the production process. Hell, there are some of you who will pay a massive premium for a severely off-centered T206 card. I only concern myself with condition detractors caused by owners after a card has been "packed out" like corners, creases, etc.

Hey Chase,

I read those threads as well, and agreed with the authors that AI for actually grading cards was far, far off, if it even ever became a reality. They need so many examples of each individual card to be looked at so they can fine tune the AI before letting it start operating on its own. And for a lot of vintage (especially pre-war) sets, there aren't anywhere near enough known examples of each card in many of them to ever begin to get the AI properly fine tuned so it could accurately function on its own. Which means the human element is still the most important part of the grading process, and likely always will be.

And I concur with your thinking that all the perfect modern cards are possibly getting used as the standard for grading everything else nowadays. But by doing that, the TPGs have effectively changed the way they used to grade most all vintage cards.

So if TPGs took and listened to hobby complaints about them not being standardized and consistent, and that is why they now seem to base their grading standards off today's mostly perfect modern cards, I think they've misunderstood and misinterpreted what most hobbyists meant and really wanted. A card set/issue you started grading 20-30 years ago to be graded the exact same way today as it was back then, regardless of how you now may be grading modern cards. People want to be able to look at a card's Pop Report and know that all the ones graded NM7, are all actually 7s by today's grading standards. They don't want to be guessing how many 7s are actually still 7s, and how many 7s originally graded 20-30 years ago would be something other than a NM7 if re-graded today. That is more the idea of standardized consistency I think most people are looking for.

Weirdo!

:)

It takes all kinds.

Oh I am with you too, for much the same reasons. I much prefer an O/C card with great corners than a centered card that is a bit beaten.

Of course, I prefer vintage instead of anything modern, and some would consider that weird too.

+1 , i think the obsession with centering is just that, an obsession. To each his own. I like registration, coloring, and lack of creases the best.