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Marc S.1)How is SMR on the Old Judges?
Jim - my experience is that many Old Judge collectors tend to focus more on the image quality and contrast than the technical grade. This applies across the spectrum on Old Judges. PSA and SGC tend to place a lot of emphasis on corners, back damage, and the quality of the original cut. They both tend to overlook eye appeal, in general, and image contrast in particular. SGC is a better grader of N172s, in my opinion.
3)It is very interesting that the average grade is dropping over time. I wonder if that is the trend in every pre-war set???
With the run-up in prices of many tobacco and caramel sets, there is an increased economic incentive for sellers and dealers to grade some of their low-grade examples. This is not always the case. And there are also new collectors to these sets that sometimes prefer having a few graded examples in order to better educate themselves on the set.
4)Two King Kellys in psa 9--wow.
If my memory serves me correctly - one was in the hands of Mike Wentz, and the other was in the hands of Kris Keppler. The former example is many times better than the latter - particular in the contrast/eye appeal category. The Wentz PSA 9 almost glows when I saw it. I believe that both have since been sold.
Finally, Jim, as a general comment, I would only suggest that the "tougher grader" debate will not be decided without better data. You can just as easily suggest that PSA is a harder graded on 1914 CJ's than SGC - but we all know that that data is skewed by the 1914 CJ find that Randy purchased last year.
marc