My GMA Experiment

[Pilot172000]

The last couple of months, my three boys have been getting into collecting baseball cards which is super exciting for me. I only collect T206 or T205 cards now but had crates of cards from my younger days and decided to break them out. As I went through them and distributed them to the kids, I picked the really good ones for safe keeping and decided to have them graded and encapsulated just for posterity.

The graded T206 cards I have are a mix of BVG,PSA and SGC which hold their value and are trustworthy. I didn't want to plunk that kinda money down on cards I planned to keep so I sent them to GMA just for fun. The first batch I got back pretty quickly and was kinda surprised at the grades. I only got two 10s and two 9s the rest were 8.5 to 6.5 which I thought was pretty fair. The second group of cards I sent twelve cards including some T206 and T205 raw cards. I pulled a few HOF and the better conditioned cards from my collection to see how they would grade. I got them back today and was kinda shocked. Out of the 8 T-cards I got a two 4s, a 3.5, a 3, a 2.5, a 1.5 and two Authentic grades. I thought the grades were pretty fair except the two Authentics. One was a solid Homerun Baker that I figured was a solid 2 with creases and some stains on the back but no evidence of alterations. The second was a a T205 common with straight corners but had a burn mark on the back. I am just puzzled by the authentic grades from GMA. Why not grade them out as Ones? I guess the moral of the story is that all grading companies have quirks when it comes to vintage cards. At least they didn't all come back as 10s.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

What the hell is GMA?

[drcy]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

What the hell is GMA?

Grand Meft Auto

[Pilot172000]

Its a lower end grading service I found.

[brianp-beme]

I have purchased a handful of their lower condition graded cards over the last few years and it seems like they do a decent job with their grading. Perhaps that WWG DiMaggio should be sent to them to verify trimming.

Brian

[bnorth]

I like them for the service they provide. If you have some cards you want slabbed at a low price to protect them they are great. As far as resale value I don't believe they would be very good for that.

[swarmee]

Guy slabbing cards at his house in Florida. May be cheap, but doesn't increase resale value because nobody trusts him and collectors expect the cards to be altered in the slab.
It's probably lowest on this rung of currently still existing grading companies:
PSA
Beckett
SGC
KSA
BCCG (because of their wacky scale) and collector distrust/disinterest
GMA

Did I miss any? Is KSA (Canadian grader) still in business?