My 2 cents...
If you believe that the internet has given our hobby a terrific boost, it is naive to ignore the positive impact that third party grading has had. While graders make mistakes -- being only human after all -- it is a tremendous comfort to know in most cases what flaws a card has that are not visible in a computer scan. Not only do you have a reasonable expectation of what you are buying, but when it is time to sell, you have a reasonable likelihood of selling the same card you bought.
Long gone are the days of the card purchased through the mail that was advertised as Nrmt/MT, only to have it show up in VG -- and then having to sell it as a VG card when the time is right.
To ignore all that good because of a few negative experiences is really missing the forest for the trees.
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