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Phil GarryYou make a lot of good points, Mark. As we all know, mistakes do happen and Brian and SGC should be commended for their willingness to review the evidence and make a public statement as soon as it was prudent and based on Brian's statement, SGC is clearly working towards making the matter right. Rob Lifson should also me recognized for his efforts to rectify things as well.
As Brian mentioned, I am one of the Net 54 members that has had a number of "unique" real photo postcards, team issues, cabinet cards, etc. that have been graded/authenticated by SGC as 1/1's in their population report at the time. I can speak to the fact that SGC always has required "indisputable" documentation from me in each and every case. This documentation has included player photos from similar time period for comparison, stats from baseball-reference.com or similar websites, biographical information from websites such as wikipedia and other such resources that would help identify and date the piece. One thing that is a little bit different with many of my items submitted is that they are often team photos and as long as all of the information presents a conclusive decision, SGC will identify the year of issue and team on their label but will almost never include any individual players that are pictured on the team piece. I believe this is done to protect them from any chance of misidentification and subsequent liability.
In spite of the J.L. Wilkinson mix-up, SGC is probably 99% on the money with these types of items and I would much rather see them continue to handle them in the same manner as I have described in detail above rather than adopting PSA's informal policy "If it's not catalogued, we don't grade it".