Posted By:
Peter ThomasI have purchased several items from Lew over the years and have been happy. His grading descriptions I understand since they were developed in the preslab era. The slabers grading system started by trying to place grading so you can distinguish between brand new fresh from the factory pack cards. So they start by assigning 4 of their 10 grades to near mint cards 7,8,9&10.
There is little substantive difference between these grades. At the bottom of their scale they have 1 which accomodiates ratty ass cards and also great looking cards that have a fatal flaw defect like a small pin hole. 2's & 3's are frequently nice looking cards that are down graded for defects like small surface wrinkles. That leaves 4,5,and 6 to distinguish the majority of older cards. When Lou describes a card as ex it is a nice looking card, but it may have some of the defects that the grading companies punish severely. So they might grade the card much lower. When you look at CJ's I feel that many of the 2's and 3's are great looking cards even some of the 1's.
The grading companies should have someone who looks at all low graded cards who can bump any great looking card to a 3 vg grade to get it away from the 1's with 10% of the card missing and 30 creases on the remaining 90% of the card.