[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by Frankish

Just got my first CSG submission back. Decided to send an assortment of cards, none too valuable, to check it out (this was at $8/card, I think, or something like that). The new cards came back much as expected, 9s and 9.5s.

I'm still trying to figure out how they arrive at grades for vintage cards. For the most part, I agree with their sub-grades but then the final grade puzzles me.

A few examples from this submission:

(card, final grade, sub-grades: centering, corners, edges, surface)

1956 Topps Yogi Berra, 3.0: 8.0, 5.5, 7.0, 2.5
1977-78 Topps David Thompson, 5.5: 5.0, 8.5, 8.5, 6.5
1952 Bob Feller, 2.5: 8.0, 2.5, 4.5, 2.5
1981 Donruss Jack Nicklaus, 5.5: 8.0, 6.0, 8.5, 5.0

Just puzzling (to me)....

The general rule is the total grade can only be .5 higher than the lowest subgrade. There are exceptions but they are rare and when the other subgrades are all significantly higher, and usually consistent to each other

EDIT: What Bobby said.