Ineptness of Authenticators/Graders

[steve B]

Originally Posted by butchie_t

Arrgh, don’t get me started on that Scarlet A. I am whining about SGC in the basketball forum now.

And when I asked as to why it got that grade. The answer I got was the graders do not keep any of their notes for determining grades. To me, that sucks. Why would a company not keep those type of records. With all the virtual technologies that exist today, those notes are nothing more than bits on a storage array. And with cloud service, a company does not even have to keep any of that on site. And it is stored and maintained forever.

Blah

Butthurt in Colorado

B. T.

As for a grading standard, I look to coins, it is pretty much cut and dry as to a coin and how it gets graded. Don’t see why card graders cannot come up with a standard like coins.

I read an article by a major coin dealer a few years ago about how grading standards had slid over the years even through the TPGs.
Where a grade used to NEED to have a full clear "liberty" it became acceptable to call it that grade if it was merely legible. Then maybe a missing letter or two was close enough.

Third party grading is pretty new in stamps, and still in the controversial phase. Slabbing stamps has pretty much failed. But they will include a grade on the certificate. Most won't if the stamp has any flaws, so it's mostly based on centering. I expect that will eventually change.