[the 'stache]

This topic is going to take off, that is the truth. So, before too many other people have had a chance to chime in, I am going to throw my hat into the ring, and provide the outline of my business concept for a grading company.

Bill’s card grading service

1. Transparency. I cannot think of any other service we pay for where the professional we hire is nameless, and faceless. If we go to a restaurant to eat, we see the wait staff. We can ask to see the chef, or the manager. When we buy our television sets, our cars, our furniture-we can see the salespeople. When our cars are serviced, we can meet the mechanic. Yet when we ship our baseball cards off in the mail to be graded, we have no idea who is performing the service. We are told they are “experts”, but what qualifies them as experts? The first change I would make with my baseball card company is to not only hire people with extensive hobby experience, but I would post their names, faces, and their “credentials”, such as they are, for people to see. What is their background? Have they ever worked for another grading company, or one of the baseball card manufacturers, and if so, in what capacity? The people responsible for providing their opinions will be known, and every card they grade will have their name affixed to the serial number.

2. Higher prices, better service. To charge more than the other companies might seem counterintuitive. Wouldn’t that push customers away? It is my belief that you get what you pay for. I don’t want to be a company that grades more cards than anybody else. I want to be the company that grades the most accurately. That being said, we don’t want every card sent to us. We will, of course, offer our service to anybody, and grade whatever is sent to us. But not every card should really be graded. How many of the cards you got in your wax box of 1983 Topps are really worth anything today? Two or three? Yet, you can look on eBay, and every single card in the 1983 Topps set has been graded. If you look long enough, you’ll see every card in a PSA slab. Why? Because of their registry. A $2 Reggie Jackson card becomes worth $10 because it is in GEM condition. Anybody with eyes can see it is an exceptional card. That $10 card becomes worth $400 because one of our experts has said the corners and centering are both just a little bit better than the average 9.5 we grade. Does that seem right to anybody but the dealers? When a company’s motto is “we’ll turn your cardboard into gold”, the whole meaning behind collecting is lost. Sure, some of those 100 year old cards are really valuable. If a player got 3,000 hits, they went to the Hall of Fame. And, kids put their baseball card into their bike spokes. Now, people pull a card from a pack, and they immediately go into a mylar sleeve, and a hard case, and get put in a box. We’re not going to have a registry. Ever. We are going to grade cards based on what we see. And the value of that card will be determined by the market, and not because somebody will go from #2 to #1 in the registry for ___ by upgrading their 9.5 card to a 10. We will charge more. We will tell people to send cards to us that have meaning, or intrinsic value (as much as baseball cards can have). And, our graders will treat each card we receive with the care and respect they deserve. It won’t matter if you are sending your first card to us, or your 10,000th. We won’t give your cards the benefit of the doubt because you are a regular customer. The only thing that will ever factor in a card’s grade is the condition of that card alone.

3. A 9 is a 9 is a 9. There won’t be any adjustments made to a card because of the set it came from, or because of its age. A gem mint card is a flawless card. If the printing technology utilized in 1933 means that none of the cards produced then measure up to a 10 graded card printed today, then there won’t ever be a 10 graded card from that set 1933 set. Every card we receive will be graded by the same graders. Every card will receive one overall score, and then a series of subscores, which determine the overall score. Considered will be corner quality, edge sharpness, centering, surface quality (front and back), and registration. Our graders will not feel rushed. We will provide a best estimate turn around time to our clients, but our graders will never be rushed. A condition of doing business with is an understanding that our graders will take the time needed to accurately grade a card. They will never feel pressure. They will not be penalized for doing too few cards, or rewarded for doing more. They will have ample time to ascertain a card’s authenticity, as well as its integrity. If a card has in any way been altered, that will clearly be documented. We will not simply mark the card AUTH, and leave the guesswork up to potential buyers. Findings will clearly be documented on the back of the flip. Our company’s reputation means everything, and we will never sacrifice integrity in favor of financial gain.

4. We will set the industry standard with our slab. These slabs will be tamper proof. An attempt to open the case will render it unsalvageable. The flip inside the slab will be affixed to the slab itself, and if tampered with, the flip itself will become ripped. The slab, and the flip itself, will be impossible to reproduce, through the use of hologram stickers, and anti-counterfeiting inks, to name a few examples. This will insure that a customer receiving a card in our packaging can rest assured that it is the same card we graded. Additionally, every finished product will be documented. We will employ several commercial-grade scanners, and upon slabbing, the finished product will be scanned, front and back side, with the images safely stored in our database. These images can be requested on a case by case basis at no charge. We will work with our competitors to develop industry-wide safety features to protect hobbyists, and root out the criminal element as much as humanly possible.


So, that's a rough outline. It's far from perfect, but we're only talking about a concept. I'd like to see more transparency from the grading card companies, for one thing.