Derek Grady's /SGC response to Dell Football

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Posted By: leon

I had a concern about the thread concerning the Dell Football "poster" that was cut up and graded so I emailed Derek Grady, senior grader with SGC, last night. We just had a nice conversation about their thinking on the subject. He said that the Krause book lists them as "This 48 player set" and this is the reason they were done. Period. I can vouch for the way they grade, with book in hand, as ya'll might remember an article I wrote 2 years ago about grading cards from sets that were previously ungraded. (any card from that set)...I wrote it for the 19thcenturyonly site. When I wrote that article I remember thinking to myself that the first thing SGC did was look in the well respected SCD for info. They obviously did the same thing with these. Here is the solution to this. After further review Derek/SGC is NOT GOING TO GRADE THESE FOOTBALL "CARDS" anymore. He said that they have graded approximately 20 and no more will be done. Their integrity being questioned is not worth any amount of money that they could make on grading. He still is not positive what constititutes a "card" as all of us agree there is no definitive definition. There are only intelligent observations concerning this. With all of that being said I, and Derek, still feel there are far fewer "problem cards" in SGC holders than any others. I agree with that statement. Once again SGC has made the right decision based on the facts at hand.....best regards all......
ps....the reason Derek will not post on this website is because it will inevitably open a can of worms that he doesn't feel like doing....and I respect his wishes on that too...

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Posted By: runscott

I exchanged several emails with the seller yesterday and he also pointed out that these items were in SCD. SCD is a great resource, but of course can't be perfect - too much material and too many variables.

The "it's in SCD" argument doesn't really hold water. SGC doesn't grade everything that's in SCD, so they are already using their own judgement, which I think they should do more of. While SCD can't put everything in their guide because it would make the guide too bulky and less useable, SGC certainly has room on their labels to add designators that SCD doesn't have room for - an example would be series designators for t206 cards. I'm not an Old Judge collector, but I would think that additional info could be added to the Old Judge labels as well - stuff that isn't broken down in the SCD guide.

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Posted By: Tom

While I collect OJ's and T206's and other stuff, I think it would be great to have different designators on them such as 'Carolina Brights' for T206's or 1887, 1888, 1889 or real (CORRECT) year for OJ's or Player's League, etc, I think it would open a can of worms that they would be darned if they do and darned if they don't type deal. If they make a mistake, they're gonna get flamed and that's just something extra that would have to be added. Then it opens up the can of worms for the population reports. Anyway, my opinion and we all know what opinion's are like.......I just think it'd open them up for even more criticism and they do a pretty darn good job of minimizing that (at least around here.........).

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Posted By: runscott

SGC is definitely my grading company of choice - I have never mailed any cards to any other company. That's part of why I get a bit more spirited when I disagree with something they're doing - I have absolutely no doubt that they are the best. I didn't say a word about PSA encapsulating a fake Fro-joy, because PSA doesn't get my business and I no longer care what they do. People have to realize that we are used to getting no response whatsoever from businesses we deal with - I go into my rants with that assumption, and in this case it was unjustified, so I apologize for jumping on them so hard.

This was the first grading of questionable material by SGC that I've seen, and as soon as the pro-SGC board members made it clear we thought it was a mistake, SGC agreed and said they'd stop grading them - that is exactly what customers love.

My understanding is that they graded the Dell stuff because SCD listed it as a set. It isn't, but that's SCDs mistake, not SGC's. It seemed like a blatantly wrong thing to do, TO ME, because I own the guide that the pictures were cut out of and to me it is obviously a folded up poster insert. To someone who sees only the cut out images, I can see how they would think they look sort of like cards, especially when the "set" has SCDs approval, despite the fact that they are on paper stock and have unrelated partial images on the back.

Now I'm going to get jumped for complaining about SCD, but I'm not doing that either - I open the 2002 SCD Guide more than any other book I own, and it's invaluable. I really can't imagine a better guide than SCD, except that I would prefer to see it split into two guides, separating out vintage (which I do manually).