REA Auction T206 Plank Grades (?)

[insidethewrapper]

Check out Lots 272 and 282 in the REA Auction. They both have the same grade of 30 (2). How can that be ? How could SGC grade these 2 cards the same ? Any opinions or comments ?

[T206Collector]

As I've explained on here a few times, grading is a pyramid. At the top, you have the 10s. 10 means perfection and thus all 10s will be identical. As you go down the pyramid, grades are set for a variety of reasons -- 9s almost all look the same, but 3s, 2s and 1s have a huge number of potential flaws, including paper loss on reverse, creasing, corner wear, etc. What makes a card an SGC 30 could be a variety of factors, that tell you nothing about the eye appeal of the card without looking at it.

Professional grading is not designed to reflect eye appeal. It is designed to point out flaws, often hard to see or hidden, in a piece of card board. When you see a clean-looking SGC 30, you actually know there are a lot of hard to see flaws. When you see a badgered up SGC 30, what you see is what you get. But not all SGC 30s will look alike -- in fact, at that level of the "pyramid" you will have a lot of different looking cards.

Hope this helps.

[insidethewrapper]

Sure is a lot of difference between the 2 cards graded 30. That one card should be a (1) at the best. Eye appeal needs to be part of the total grade. It was obvious these 2 cards are not alike at all , that is why the difference in price with BP was $ 17k. Poor grading .

[E93]

The two cards were accurately graded per SGC's standards. I agree with you that eye-appeal should be a greater factor. Just my opinion. If grading does not reflect the desirability of a card's physical characteristics to a large degree, I think it is missing the point. That said, bidders certainly did and there was quite a price disparity between the two. But it was not a mistake by PSA. THey were graded back-to-back on the same submission.
JimB

[glchen]

I think part of the reason is qualifiers which SGC does not have. If the card has a light pencil mark on the reverse, it won't get above a certain grade regardless of eye appeal. Same thing if the card has light paper loss, glue, pinhole, etc. If a card has any of these defects, it won't reach above a certain grade regardless of eye appeal. Another thing is creasing. I recently purchased a raw 33 Goudey Burleigh Grimes. In the top loader, you cannot see any creases. However, once you take it out of the top loader, you can see the crease. Put it back in, you can have to look really hard at an angle to see the crease again. So with creases like this, even if they only affect eye appeal slightly, can drop the grade significantly.

[T206Collector]

...for subjective things like "eye appeal" entirely misses the point.

Grading is only designed to objectively point out hidden flaws in a card. Indeed, grading was invented to add objectivity to an otherwise entirely subjective grading standard.

Again, all 1s will look different -- some will be great looking cards and some will be real beaters. All 10s will look the same.

Edited to add: Grading is MOST important for the nicer SGC 30. The fact that people bid so highly on it shows that eye appeal was important, but, in my opinion, also shows that some people were willing to ignore the technical grade and the flaws that were not apparent in the scans or catalog images.