Grading then and now...

[jchcollins]

Starting this thread as kind of a broad one to talk about grading of cards throughout the years, and to get your impressions on how things have changed:

When I first started collecting cards as a kid (9 years old in 1986) there were some pretty set grading definitions as published by those like Beckett and the Krause / Baseball Cards Magazine folks. But they were high-level and the "tweener" grades didn't really exist yet. Mint, NM, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, and Poor are what I remember as a kid. Back then, as with today - the last two were sometimes combined into one and the magazines would just show a card with a really bad crease or a rip or some other type of catastrophic defect to represent it. I do recall back then thinking that most new cards should be "mint" out of the pack. If a card was "old" - and to my child's eye that mostly meant 1960's cards and earlier - the 70's I thought were still too new to be "really" old (since that was the decade I was born) - then the condition you hoped for was "Excellent" or better because you tried to find nicer old cards that did not have bad creases and though they may have had some corner dings - they were still generally in great condition to be considered EX. If I recall at least back then, centering was really not much of a factor in grading unless a card was miscut. Cards that were not centered well - whether new or old - were certainly not showstoppers for me as a child collector. I also recall thinking the most important aspect of condition was whether a card was creased or not - today of course most of us would scrutinize a card's corners more than we would for that, at least to start with.

I do recall by the time that I got older in the early 1990's that at least some additional "tweener" grades like EX-MT and VG-EX had kind of crept into the lexicon. An EX-MT card was a really nice EX card that still had something wrong with it that prevented it from being NM or Mint. A VG-EX card might be one with corners that were starting to look pretty dingy, but did not have a crease on it. I do think that during this timeframe (when a lot of folks were scouring their attic for forgotten goldmines...) many people with cards that we would consider EX-MT or so today with professional grading were sold with the honest descriptions of Near Mint or Mint by those that had found them. I don't know about the rest of you, but even today - most cards graded 6 EX-MT still look very sharp to me and I can understand this...

I took a break from the hobby for a while when I graduated high school (1995) and went off to college. When I returned to buying cards as a college senior along about 1998, that was the first time I had seen graded cards. I remember being totally confused for a while. This was quickly replaced by astonishment at what PSA 8 and above vintage cards were actually selling for. The rest as you know from the early 2000's or so takes us up into today. More scrutiny. More tweener grades. More ridiculous prices.

What are your impressions of the path that grading - whether amateur or professional - has taken since you first started collecting? I remember thinking as I said that "EX" cards if they were old were really nice as a kid. Now most 5-EX cards are considered mid-grade at best, and not really anything special. On one hand this makes me sad as I'm not and likely never will be someone who goes out and chases PSA 8, set registry type cards - but on the other hand it makes me feel good because I know those now "mid grade" cards that I collected as a kid still are affordable and for most vintage cards - even stars aside from a few key cards - in that grade can still be had for about the same price magnitude on the whole as they commanded in the 1980's. What did a 1956 Topps Eddie Mathews book and sell for in 1989? And how much does it cost in about EX condition now? About the same. My guess would be actually less if you adjust for inflation - given the fact that the hold the baseball card hobby and the baseball nostalgia craze held on this country in the late 1980's and early 90's is now just a fraction of what it used to be.

Do you still grade cards the same as you did decades ago, or has professional grading changed your perspective? Do you still collect the same level of condition on most of your cards (whether that be high or low grade) or has professional grading changed you there? What other nuances / changes have you noticed throughout the years? I have more questions, but this is probably a long enough start. Interesting to think also of just my limited perspective. I've only been collecting for 30 years. Back even earlier how did collectors look at things? Jefferson Burdick used to stamp his name and address on the back of many of his cards - so I think that's a clue to how even the most serious of all collectors must have taken condition matters as secondary at best a long time ago...

-John