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It's the number on the label that needs to be reassessed. When you get a card back that's graded, for example, PSA 5, what that really means is: "it's an Excellent today, but tomorrow it may be an EX-MT, next week it might be a VG-EX, and the week after that it may show signs of trimming. We're sorry, we wish we could be more accurate, but we don't really know."
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Barry, you know I love you, but I'm in such disagreement with this statement that I feel compelled to chime in.
To me, the number on the label is an absolutely
essential component of this, and one that has made it much, much easier for me to feel comfortable buying cards - even when condition is unimportant to me.
Before third party grading, I needed to trust that the person who was actually selling me the card was going to be honest about its condition.
The person who was trying to get as much money as possible for the card was also the person who was going to tell me what condition it was in. And I needed to trust that he wasn't going to be just the tiniest bit liberal about his assessment of the corners, maybe overlook a hairline wrinkle in a tough-to-see place in hopes that I'd miss it too.
I also needed to trust that the seller was going to have a similar set of standards than me when it came to some of the more subjective attributes of a card. Centering, for instance - I've seen people call a card "Mint" when the centering was 90/10. And they weren't being dishonest, they just didn't consider centering to be important.
It's also not as if this was only a concern when I was purchasing cards through the mail - it was a concern
when the dealer was standing right in front of me! I remember being at a store called Sports Nostalgia, on Route 17 in Paramus, NJ, and looking at a 1949 Bowman Johnny Vander Meer. The guy behind the counter was trying his damndest to convince me that the card was MINT. Today, we'd grade that card VG-EX at best. I was a 10-year-old kid, and I laughed at the dealer's ridiculous grading, even then.
Third party grading makes this so much more objective. And yes, it creates opportunities for monkeying around, and playing the crack-and-resubmit game, and grade shopping based on which company is tougher on corners, etc. But when that card gets in a slab, all the weird, subjective over and undergrading becomes so much less of an issue.
When I'm buying a raw card, I always have to contend with the possibility that the seller is going to describe the card as EX-MT, and when I get it, it's going to have a pencil mark, or a pinhole, or VG corners. Then I need to deal with the hassle of arguing over grading in hopes of getting a refund - and if I lose the argument, I'm out a bunch of money.
Once there's a number on a flip, the possibility of gross overgrading gets reduced dramatically.
The inconsistency that you refer to as "we don't really know," to me, is simply the result of the infinite number of possible combinations of things that could happen on any given card, and the grader's interpretation of all those things. That's why a good grading company will be happy to review grades you're unhappy with, and tell you why they arrived at their conclusion. It's also why a good grading company will occasionally decide that they got it wrong the first time.
And those people who insist on insulting people who like to collect graded cards are just silly.
-Al