Grading Old Judges (or not?)

[trdcrdkid]

The recent threads about the value of cards graded Authentic vs. 10/1 has prompted me to write about something that's been on my mind -- namely, the way the grading companies evaluate Old Judges and similar 19th-century cards, and what value, if any, a graded Old Judge's number grade has. I know some of this has been discussed here recently, for example in that "What would your ideal third-party grading company be like" thread, and last year in this thread (started by Leon) about grading Old Judges:

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=191265

As numerous people noted in that thread, the standards that TPGs use for Old Judges leave a lot to be desired, and the technical grade that a card gets from a grading company often has little to do with its desirability for most collectors. For example, I'm a raw card guy, but after collecting about 45 raw Old Judges, I recently got my first graded ones on eBay. One of them was this card, with a beautiful front but that AUTH grade undoubtedly scaring away some potential buyers:



Unlike with some cards, it wasn't immediately apparent why this card got an AUTH. It didn't look trimmed, unlike another AUTH-graded card I got from the same seller that definitely is trimmed (but which still has good eye appeal). I thought maybe it was rebacked, but several other cards from the same seller were graded SGC AUTH with a (REBACKED) notation, and this card didn't have that notation. (However, I realize that SGC only started using the REBACKED notation a couple of years ago, and this card might have been graded before then.) Unfortunately, the listing didn't include a picture of the back, and while I could have written to the seller asking for one, I decided to just bid on it and take my chances, and I ended up winning the card for a relative song.

When I got the card, I compared it to other Old Judges of the same style in my collection, and it sure looked the same size, not trimmed. Here is what the back looked like:



This card was obviously glued in an album, and when it was taken out it suffered some paper loss, but the bottom two-thirds of the back looks fine. As near as I can tell, it's that paper loss that caused SGC to grade it AUTH. In any case, that AUTH grade allowed me to get this great-looking card for a fraction of what I otherwise would have had to pay for it, and that's fine with me.

The issue of paper loss or glue on the backs of blank-backed sets like OJs is one that I know has come up repeatedly in discussions of grading standards. Writing on the back, common with OJs, is a similar issue. I think we've all seen Old Judges that have a great-looking front, but are graded 1 or 2 because of back damage; yet I don't really care very much about the backs of Old Judges, and I get the impression that the same is true of many (most?) Old Judge collectors. I guess glue or paper loss on the back (and to a lesser extent writing) would make a card somewhat less desirable than an otherwise identical card with a pristine back, but not nearly to the extent the the grading companies' practices would imply (i.e. downgrading an otherwise 5 card to a 1).

Another issue that arises with Old Judges is identifying trimmed cards. There is quite a bit of variation in the exact size of individual Old Judge cards, much more than in later sets (including T206), based on what I've seen. Not only are many of the 1887 cards significantly shorter than most of the 1888 and 1889 cards, but odd/rough cuts are pretty common. I've seen some Old Judges that are graded AUTH, apparently because they look trimmed, though they don't necessarily look trimmed to me. There could very well be other issues with these cards that I'm not noticing, but it remains the case that identifying trimmed Old Judges isn't always as straightforward as it is for later sets, and I'm not sure exactly how the grading companies handle that.

Of course, the biggest problem in grading Old Judges, and the one that dominated the thread I linked to above, is photo quality. We've all seen Old Judges that have sharp corners, no creases, and a high technical grade, but a faded photo. I would much rather have a card with a great photo but a low technical grade due to back damage (as in the card pictured above) or even a pinhole (and I have a few like that too). Photo quality and contrast are among the most important features I consider when evaluating an Old Judge and deciding whether to buy it or bid on it, and it seems that the same is true of most other Old Judge collectors, to judge by the prices I see and other anecdotal evidence.

So, all you Old Judge collectors: how much attention, if any, do you pay to the grade on a graded Old Judge? Would you avoid a card graded AUTH? Would you pay more for an SGC 50 card with a faded photo, or for a card with a great, sharp photo but a grade of SGC 10 or AUTH? I know that some of the most advanced Old Judge collectors here primarily collect raw cards, as I do, but for them the other issues I raised above are still relevant: to what extent, if any, do you care about back damage on OJs, and how important is photo quality relative to other factors in evaluating a card? Based on that long "Just OJs" thread last year in which people posted their favorite Old Judges, photo quality is one of the most important factors for most people, because most of the cards in that thread had fantastic photos.

All this is related to the question of how the grading companies could do a better job of assigning grades to Old Judges. That was covered pretty thoroughly Leon's thread from last year, but I'm sure people still have things to say about it.