Sgc 11 / psa !!

[jchcollins]

There is nothing much about the state of professional grading today which couldn't have been predicted starting in about the late 1990's. You think card grading is ridiculous now, look into coin grading. 10 different flavors of mint? Small wonder, David Hall who founded PSA - made his previous fortune starting a coin grading company. The concept coming to the card hobby was a long time in coming, and given the state of the landscape in the early 90's with fraud and alteration - many collectors and dealers welcomed it. Of course with business models that made sense and smart marketing ideas (PSA's set registry...) money enters the equation and eventually the successful grading companies come full circle. Instead of preventing fraud and alteration, now in some proven cases all of the big 3 have been complicit in it. The ability to leave your standards the same and subjectively change how you apply them over the decades might be deceptive, but it's also a huge help to their business model.

To a few of the OP's points:

*No, there is no accountability for bad / incompetent grading. Relatively few collectors on the whole seem to care about it. Certainly not enough to affect widespread change, as slabgate and Gary Moser and other shenanigans of the pandemic timeframe proved. I'm on forums like this one and others on social media all the time where people complain all day long about grading - yet continue to submit their cards and money to PSA.

*If you feel like cards you purchased are altered, why did you send them in for grading? If you submit you ostensibly want their opinion, not yours. This is another unfortunate result of TPG dominance over the years - old collectors in some cases no longer trust their own opinions on condition and grading, and those new to the hobby don't even bother to learn.

*Yes, there will always be nuances and changes to the grading scale in an attempt to move the needle. Whether that is two different standards for a 10, a real "11" one day, or what have you. Sad as it may seem, people buy into this. In 1985 there were like 5 recognized grades: Mint, EX, VG, G, F/P. That simplicity changed even before 1990, and then with the advent of TPG's, legit "ranges" such as VG-EX or EX-MT became pegged to numbers. That's never how it was supposed to work, but the graders took over and their influence prevailed.

*Auction houses are not going to start refusing PSA grades. They specifically deal in 3rd party graded cards so they DON'T have to assume that responsibility themselves.

*PSA and others are not going to suddenly stop assigning number grades in favor of authenticity designations only. This ship sailed a long time ago. Collectors want it, and it is a huge profit factor in the TPG business model. Don't like your PSA 9? Well keep submitting it (for a fee each time) and maybe you will pull that 10! If you want a card in a slab that is "Authentic" only, there are options to do this with each of the big 3 grading companies.

At the end of the day, grading is subjective and always will be. Standards exist, but the grading companies have done a brilliant job of continuing to make them tighter to where you will always be able to look at a slab and say "Well, I'm not sure..." That's their whole intention. Remember that also at the end of the day, a slab and a flip and a grade is just one opinion from one entity. It's not a final, end-all-be-all pronouncement of the worth of your card - unless you accept that and make it that.

Funny what happens when money finds a way to seep into a seemingly established aspect of a hobby. Everything changes. But it was fairly predictable.