No More Neighs (in other words, beating a dead horse)...

[JollyElm]

Be warned, this is a tiring post...

In general, it has always been accepted that if you checked the 'no qualifiers' box on your PSA submission, your card would be returned two numbers lower (with a straight grade) than if it had a qualifier attached to it. That has always bothered the living crap out me (okay, that's a bit too strong), because it basically deletes pertinent information.

For instance (pretend we live in a perfect world, so skip the PSA bashing here), a PSA 9 OC graded correctly means the corners are sharp as heck, the clarity, surface and everything else is beautiful...BUT it is off-center. Pretty straightforward.

Now, here's the huge problem to me (and I've went on about this ad nauseum in the past, so forgive me, I have too much time on my hands today). Since the centering guidelines for a PSA 7 and a PSA 9 are different, how do you know what your card really is?

EXAMPLE:
You see an off-centered PSA 7 card on eBay that looks pretty nice, but the clarity of the scans are a little weak (which is the norm there), so you can't judge the sharpness of the corners too well. This leaves two very distinct possibilities. Either the card is a true PSA 7 (so the centering conforms to the company's guidelines for that grade) with slight corner wear, or it shoulda/woulda/coulda been a PSA 9 OC with sharp as a tack corners, but the 'no qualifiers' box was checked. There is absolutely no way to know which of the two it is.


This isn't a guessing game (NO CHEATING!!), but here are 8 cards that have extremely similar (one way, at least) centering - the top 4 are all pushed to the left with a lot of extra room at the right border, and the bottom 4 are all pushed to the bottom with a lot of extra room at the top border. Each of them suffers from the same problem - pushed too close to a border. Seven of these cards are PSA 7s, and a single one is a PSA 9 OC. Take a guess which one is different, or which card you would prefer to have. This isn't scientific or anything (and you obviously can't tell enough from a simple eBay front scan of a card, and I have no idea if any of them resulted from the checking of the 'no qualifiers' box), as all of these are screengrabs that I had to resize and crop and whatnot to make compatible.

Edited to add: For anyone guessing or with a card preference, the numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4 for the top row and 5, 6, 7, 8 for the bottom row.





What complicates the matter even further (again, not scientific), is that many of these cards sell for similar amounts, which is bizarre. If the centering is virtually the same, then the PSA 9 OC is clearly the better card - sharper corners, focus, etc., but someone would pay the same amount for a straight 7 (with the same centering), simply because it doesn't have a qualifier on the slab??


We're told that PSA is virtually eliminating qualifiers to give 'everything' a straight grade, so that's going to mess up things even more monumentally, as the old slabs mixed in with the new slabs will make telling the 'real' grade even more problematic from an eBay scan.

For instance, when I see a PSA 5 card that is off-center, I don't think, "I guess that card was a 7, but they lowered it to a 5 due to the centering." No frickin' way!!! I say, "That card is a 5 AND it's off-center, so it's more of a 3."

To anyone still reading, congratulations!! You made it to the end of this pointless post.

[dealme]

So with PSA’s direction regarding the elimination of qualifiers, would an “old” holder that identifies a qualifier be more desirable simply because it has more information regarding what was identified during the grading process?

Regardless, I agree that this new direction continues to muddy the waters. And with respect to the Dr J cards you posted, I have no clue which one was graded 9 OC.


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[Eric72]

The two-grades-lower "thing" has always bugged me, albeit for a different reason.

Take your example of a PSA 9 OC. If graded a straight 7, some buyers would say, "...with that centering, I can only price it like a 5..." (looking to whack the card again when trying to buy it from you)

I wish ALL graded cards had sub-grades. It would make things much simpler:

• Are you a "pointy corners" collector? Get the cards with a 9 or 10 for corners.
• Want to make sure there are no surface scratches that don't show up in photos? Subgrades should have you covered.
• Do you worship at the Altar of Almighty Centering? Go for it; the subgrade is on there if you don't trust your eyes.

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by Eric72

The two-grades-lower "thing" has always bugged me, albeit for a different reason.

Take your example of a PSA 9 OC. If graded a straight 7, some buyers would say, "...with that centering, I can only price it like a 5..." (looking to whack the card again when trying to buy it from you)

Yeah, agreed. That's exactly what I was alluding to near the end of my post with the PSA 5 example. Centering (good or bad) is evident to anyone looking at a card, and the standards set forth by the TPGs are parameters they invented. Why are the 'acceptable' centering percentages on a 7 different from an 8 or 9? They should grade the card itself and leave the centering acceptability to the buyer.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

\\Why are the 'acceptable' centering percentages on a 7 different from an 8 or 9? They should grade the card itself and leave the centering acceptability to the buyer.

Because the criteria for a 7 says that the centering can be off up to 75/25. If that is suddenly no different for a 9, then people are going to get all po'd saying "Well that's not a mint card, that's OC!"

Or are you saying throw the different standards out the window. Make any card greater than 60/40 OC (where PSA 9's and 10's should be...) have the OC qualifier and let buyers judge everything else on their own?

[steve B]

Excellent points.

I don't see much difference except on two of them.
4 has a soft corner, so I'm thinking it's a real 7
2.... It's faded. Interesting that yellow went but red is ok. I don't see even a 7 for that one. Somebody got lucky.

[Hxcmilkshake]

I say 3 is the OC, I like the 7 personally

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[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

For instance, when I see a PSA 5 card that is off-center, I don't think, "I guess that card was a 7, but they lowered it to a 5 due to the centering." No frickin' way!!! I say, "That card is a 5 AND it's off-center, so it's more of a 3."

Yeah, but that's not right. At EX 5, a card can both have subtle corner wear, (generally agreed no creases...) and be noticeably OC. 80/20 is noticeable. 83/17 is noticeable. But both can still be PSA 5's. Now, dramatically OC 5's may sell more like 3's... but that is another matter.

It's been my experience for more than a long time now that centering tolerances confuse the hell out of most collectors, especially as you go further down the scale. Below about PSA 6, centering problems don't affect the grade anywhere near as dramatically as other things or as much as they do for high end cards. The PSA standard for a 5 is 85/15 or better on the front, and when you get down to a 3, it only moves to 90/10. Because of this, true PSA 6/5 (OC)'s with the qualifier are super rare. I don't know that I've ever even seen a 5 OC. This is very much splitting hairs in terms of being a small difference that the average collector, and indeed probably many graders trying to eyeball - are not going to get correct all the time. But I would disagree that a badly centered 5 should be relegated to 3 range based on centering alone. If there is a wrinkle, sure, but otherwise there becomes a point where real damage / mishandling of cards VG and below becomes more important than even really bad centering, and I think those scenarios are what the grading standards were originally written to care for.

Overall, I would agree that PSA over the years here has made a mess of things in trying to both institute reasonable centering standards per grade, AND accommodate collectors who don't like qualifiers on their slabs. It makes sense if you really get familiar with the standards, but of course most people don't and then complain when they see something they perceive as unfair. What they should be doing in cases where no qualifiers was requested is simply lowering the card to where it fits in the scale based on what the centering actually is. For example a PSA 9 that would get the OC qualifier could be a straight 7 if the centering was 75/25 or better, but only a 6 if it was 80/20. The problem here of course is this is very subjective from person to person just to eyeball, and we all know that most run of the mill cards are not measured by a ruler, or digital caliper or anything else like that at PSA.

I would agree with those who have already said that more information is better, and to me at least the idea of subgrades would be the quickest way if nothing else to settle the centering confusion. But I don't see this suddenly happening, at least at PSA and SGC - and especially for vintage cards.