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Originally Posted by Zach Wheat
Travis,
Very thorough answer. Just curious if you had any commentary on the major reasons for half point upgraded/downgrades at the various firms. Is it as simple as being slightly better or worse than their grading scale?
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Great question. With SGC, it's pretty straight-forward. They award the half point almost entirely for eye appeal. Or so I claim. They don't really "downgrade" by half a point though. They basically assess the technical grade first and if it has strong centering, registration, and color for the grade, they give it that extra half point. It's similar to how PWCC awards their eye-appeal stickers. I only collect centered cards, so I get a ton of half grades from them. However, one thing to note is that sometimes it seems like they'll give a full grade bump due to eye appeal. I have a really nice VG-EX Kaline RC that is dead centered with great surface. It was a PSA 3 when I bought it. A 4.5 is probably the correct holder for it, but SGC gave it a 5 in an order where every other card was graded perfectly accurate. I can't prove it, but I really do think they gave it a full grade bump due to eye appeal. Whoever game that card a 3 at PSA though should not be allowed to touch vintage cards.
As far as why PSA gives out the half point? I have yet to figure this out. Their lack of consistency makes it difficult to solve that riddle. It really does seem like there's no rhyme or reason to it at all. Although it does seem lille they give half point downgrades sometimes. But I'm just not sure. One thing I do know though is that they do not award it for nice centering/eye appeal like they claim on their website.
With CSG, they seem to treat half point grades as literally being halfway between two grades. Everything comes into play there, with centering being the most important. But they consider corners and edges too when determining whether to give that half point. But they'll rarely award it if the card isn't centered. Although it's worth noting that my sample data with them is heavily biased towards 1986 Fleer basketball. I have sent them some 1950s Topps cards though.