[Archive]

Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

Why is it unfair if a card could be bumped down in addition to being bumped up? Provided PSA spelled out the rules ahead of time, nobody is being mislead. And, if done competently and impartially, nobody would end up with a grade not commensurate with the true condition of the card. Would it be unfair if you went to challenge, say, your phone bill and the phone company learned that in fact they underbilled you for something and now sought to have you pay it. You might be upset you allowed them to discover the error, but if in fact they were correct that they originally underbilled you, would you feel that you had no obligation to pay the deficiency? Or if your child went to challenge a test result with his teacher and during the regrading the teacher learned he missed five wrong answers and ended up lowering the grade. Would you be emailing the principal the process was unfair and the original grade should be reinstated? I might add that if PSA did announce that bumpdowns were fair game, in the end I don't think it would be that big a deal to the collector. True, it would force them to use a bit of discretion in deciding what cards to submit, but for the most part they would simply withhold those cards they feel are not suitable candidates for a bumpup. If they miss a few here or there, my guess is PSA still would not bump them down. Presumably such cards were not egregious overgrades (or they would never have been submitted for a bumpup) and PSA (or any other grading company for that matter) would not look to piss off their customer base with trivial downgrades.

So why then, assuming what I say is correct that downgrades are neither unfair nor likely to be given except in egregious circumstances does PSA's new half grade policy not bump down as well? IMO the answer to that one is easy, G R E E D!!!! They want as many resubmissions as possible (i.e., they want collectors to robotically ship the whole ream of plastic back to them) and, as important, they want set registry members who resubmit to reap the biggest gains possible in the standings. That will then entice other registry members who have been sitting on the sidelines to succumb to their competitive juices and submit their cards, and so on and so on....

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me that as we discuss this issue PSA is having active discussions about their next advertising campaign. It will probably be some statistical analysis showing that when PSA-registry sets are sold, each notch up in the registry standings corresponds to an x% increase in price realized.