Quote:
Originally Posted by Dandor
Grading a card on a 1-10 scale is not that difficult and people can be trained relatively quickly. However, we will see huge discrepancies from even from the same grading company order to order. This is already happening. I have been seeing orders from knowledgeable people that submit high quality modern cards. One order gets a 70% gem rate and another order gets a 20% gem rate. It used to be that the grading from PSA/SGC/BGS was done by a few graders and they were much more consistent. Now it is boom or bust and it depends on which graders from the pool of 100 plus you get.
I am completely done with grading cards past 1985 Topps in baseball and 1988 Fleer in basketball. Looking at COMC I can find beautiful copies of Tim Duncan raw cards for $3. Having a graded PSA 9 or 10 is just silly.
I typically grade all my PC and know what the card should be graded. 95% of the time for the cards I collect I am within the low/high estimate of the grade. They do a decent job with lower grades IMO. The 9 and 10 grades are pure BS 50% of the time. They are flipping coins in most instances.
The premiums put on cards from the junk wax era to present are insane and I am out of that game. I am taking all my graded cards from the junk wax era and putting them into lower graded slabs or raw. I bought three beautiful Tim Raines 1981 Topps rookies from COMC and they are all PSA 8 or higher quality. They cost me $1 to $1.25. I have only been back in the hobby for 2 years and grading cards myself has taught me that there are so many amazing raw cards still available from the 1980's on.
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I've been collecting over 40 years. Pretty sure I know how to grade my cards, and I'm positive that I don't care about the difference between a 9 and a 10. There has to be a quota where if someone is giving too many (or too few) 10's they get talked to.
A job as a grader, especially at entry-level, has got to be terrible. It's like an assembly line where you get cards rolling by 1-2 per minute, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and you have to make a judgment on every one of them. What does PSA pay a new grader? These aren't veterans in the hobby, these are young people who think this is a way to make a living on cards. The pay can't be great for such mind-numbing work.
The girlfriend yells at you for leaving towels on the floor, the cards you grade are getting 7's and 8's today. If your kid does something like make the honor roll, the cards you grade are getting 9's and 10's today. Just human nature. With hi-res scans all you're doing is gambling that you get the lenient grader. It basically like opening wax, you're gambling on a good outcome.