Grading 1952 Red Man Cards
 

Has anyone else noticed that grading standards on the Red Man cards seem to be on the high side? I handpicked a couple of my best ones and they both came back about 2 or 3 points lower than I expected.

I got to looking around and noticed that there seem to be a good number of, what some would consider to be, "under-graded" Red Man cards out there in the world. I'm curious what the graders are prioritizing on these cards.

Large cards have a much larger surface area to wrinkle.

True enough. But shouldn't that mean that finding one that doesn't have any surface wrinkles should be more impressive and garner a *better* grade?

The two cards I submitted are smooth as glass.

It's more likely that you missed it. But yes, your first card looks like an 8-9 and your second one looks like a 6 due to corner wear.

I suspect the 2nd card (Stengel) was graded down because of centering. If you look at it compared to the 1st card you'll see that the border between the biography box and the edge of the card is pretty tight on Casey.

I expected Stengel to grade a point lower than Reese. What I didn't expect was for both of them to grade below a 6 or 7.

Here's a different SGC-4 Stengel that was graded in 2024. The corners are atrocious and it has a visible crease on the front.

Fuck grading. They may as well just be rolling 10-sided dice for all the sense their opinions make.

Here's a 6 that sold recently in a PSA slab. Worse corners than mine and it has horrible blue print marks on the bottom and all through his pinstripes.

None of this really matters, since there is literally nothing anyone of us can do about it. It's just an attempt to self-soothe through venting.