A Question of Scale

[frankbmd]

This is not a PSA vs SGC thread in terms of preference or in terms of consistency. The only issue I would like to discuss is the scales used by the two companies.

Lets say you tell me that Company A grades on a scale of 1 to 10 like PSA and Company B grades on a scale of 10 to 100 like SGC. They are grading the same cards presumably by the same criteria. It would therefore seem reasonable for a novice to conclude that an SGC 10 card is roughly equivalent to a PSA 1 card and he would be be correct. The novice might also conclude that an SGC 100 is roughly equivalent to a PSA 10 and once again he would be correct.

Then the novice would reasonably conclude that an SGC 40 would be roughly equivalent to a PSA 4 and you say no to the novice and explain to him the an SGC 40 is roughly equivalent to a PSA 3 and the novice says “Huh?”

Furthermore you explain the whole system to the novice including the fact that a PSA 8 is actually a higher grade than an SGC 84. The novice then shakes his head, stutters and wonders how can this be. I think it is a reasonable thing to wonder about as well.

One could argue that to the naked eye the difference between a PSA 8 and a PSA 9 is less than the difference between a PSA 3 and a PSA 4 and therefore the grades should be closer together, but the difference between an SGC 88 and an SGC 96 is only two less than the difference between an SGC 40 and an SGC 50. Do you get where I’m going?

I guess the one I really have difficulty with is the gap between SGC 60 and the SGC 80 vs the PSA 5 and the PSA 6. It really doesn’t make sense to add the half grade as a full 10 points between 10 and 30 and between 60 and 80 and then squeeze the other half grades in at 35, 45 and 55. And then in the 80s, you go from 80 to 82 to 84 to 86 to 88, but then 90 and 94 are omitted. If you are going to compress the scale at the top, it should go all the way to the top and not end at 88.

Certainly when SGC added their new half grades it seemed to add to the confusion and inconsistency of their system, and rather than start all over again with a new scale and invalidate their old grades, they were sort of stuck with adding to their original system rather than adding to it, but it doesn’t make it easier to understand

Once you know what the two systems are, it is easy enough to work with for most of us to work with, but sometimes I look at an SGC 45 on Ebay or elsewhere and momentarily equate it with a PSA 4.5. I suppose this happens to others as well. There is no solution and one company is not right and the other wrong. They are just different and they really didn’t have to be in my opinion.