Grading Service Level Confusion - Value?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by scomeau

Thanks Steve. I had a pretty positive experience at a show as well. I just feel uncomfortable when submitting without the help of a consult. I also don't know what their remedy might be if my estimate is off.

It stings when I get an 'A' grade on what I thought was a nice card, and I never got a refund for over-estimating.

Some of my stuff was acquired quite a way back when few controls (or concerns, for that matter) were in place.

I bought a lot of my stuff decades ago too

The estimate is also used for the return insurance.

One of the things to be aware of is how the company handles cards that are actually OK, but have issues that they're not willing to assign a number to.

One of the cards in that first batch is quite nice, but was rejected for the top and bottom cut being too rough. I opted to have rejected cards not slabbed. If I'd had it slabbed It would have simply been an "A" with no explanation. Without, it came back like this.


I'm a bit surprised they made a flip with MIS, but otherwise would have slabbed as "A" seems to me the MIS would be better, but that's how it was done.

I've had two others rejected, one not making the minimum size, another trimmed -All four edges, which I somehow missed. I'm going with it being the last one I added to make a 10 card special and I didn't look closely enough.

Other hobbies have the same tiered pricing structure, coins have a similar thing with quicker turnaround for more expensive stuff, for stamps the turnaround is basically "we'll send it back when we're done". The stamp guys are seldom wrong. (And I've seen one unofficially authenticate two stamps that I took days on in under a minute. ) The stamp places also are willing to issue a cert saying "we decline to render an opinion" not a really common thing, but it's nice to know they'll admit not knowing for sure and can look again if they get more information. Those certs also list the flaws if any, not necessarily for graded, but the authenticated stuff gets the flaws listed in detail.

I do wish the card graders worked the same way, take their time and get it right and decline if they're not sure. And make clear what the problems were.

Steve B