I guess the unease underlying all of this is the degree to which the registry proponents are willing to hand over control of their hobby to a monopolistic for-profit business, unregulated and beholden to no one except its shareholders, with all that implies. All the talk of markets and investments and so on, yet no consideration of the fact that the registry exists on the whim of whoever runs it, as do the awards, as does the difference between grades of cards, especially at the top levels with modern cards. PSA decides not to grade an issue or not count an issue and the registry doesn't reflect it. For example, PSA won't grade any exhibit cards except baseball. Which means that the player sets for other sports are woefully incomplete and inaccurate, often missing a whole run of a subject's cards that predate the PSA-approved rookie card. Or it won't differentiate between T205 backs, so a Drum or a Hindu counts the same as a Piedmont or Sweet Caporal because PSA acknowledges no difference.
|