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Originally Posted by barrysloate
David- that grading isn't a perfect science is of course true. But what concerns me is the ridiculous rise in price for an extra half grade or full grade when the grade we are buying is so subjective. How can you even know you are getting what you pay for? Part of this is that cards sent in for review can only get a higher grade, but never a lower one. That make no sense because if a card is misgraded, it can be either slightly overgraded or slightly undergraded. But resubmissions carry no risk because the grade will never be lowered.
We would never be having this discussion if an 8 was worth $80, a 9 was worth $90, and a 10 worth $100. Then nobody would bother resubmitting. But in the real world that $80 card might be $900 in a 9, and $10,000 as a 10. That's something that very few collectors understand. In the latter scenario, I want grading to be an exact science to justify the inflated price, and it can never be that way.
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Barry I don't disagree with how you feel about this. I honestly thought prior to that 2011 conversation with Joe that it was a perfect science. I was naive. That said I have had to rationalize the short falls of it in favor of the benefits.
I don't know if you or others have read my comments on CU over the past nine years but I attribute most of the spread in prices for the cards that sit at the top of the grade spectrum and especially those deemed important to be ego driven. I drafted a thread titled Conspicuous Consumption as it relates to sports cards and the entire thesis is predicted on bragging rights and the benefits associated with owning marquee items. To me card grading just mirrors how humans think and there are many that love the idea of saying that they have the best. They have the only one to grade this high or perhaps a card that literally can't be found and they have a copy. There is a hunter and gatherer element in collectors and so many of these same people have that in them but being able to say you have one of only three PSA 10's of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle has amazing real life benefits. You could walk into a cocktail party in Manhattan with the whose who and they might have all the money in the world but unless one of these three people are willing to sell they can't have one. The ultimate.
I have only been participating online since 2010 and the entire time there has always been a segment of collectors that have a hard time with the spreads in value. I think in many ways that is rational but because of human nature I think they will always be there in some capacity. That said it is a fair argument that for this to be the case you need it to be a perfect science and while I understand that viewpoint I think because the market for collectibles is so big at this point and so many people just accept it for what it is that this won't change.
PSA defiantly has benefited immensely from the registry. That said both SGC and BGS have one. They just are much smaller. One can argue all day that PSA has a distinct advantage because of it but collectors did it not PSA. There are over 147,000 sets registered to individuals who own PSA graded collectibles. You can go on numerous message boards and read SGC is better, no BGS is king. While the data certainly warrants suggesting PSA has a near monopoly, there are still two active market participants that are busy. Because it is a free market collectors could just as easily get frustrated with PSA and try and move their cards over to SGC or BGS for that matter. They have chosen not to.
I would be infuriated if other third party graded cards altered the PSA set registry. It will never happen but if it did it would ruin it. In the examples above I had six BGS graded cards go down in grade out of the holder. Why on earth would they be treated equally and given the same credit towards a set? They shouldn't be and PSA has absolutely no incentive to even consider this. If for some reason regulators got involved and tried to force them that would be awful for the market and while I would argue there is very little if any chance that would happen it would be a risk as people would lose a lot of interest.