The (Base) Ball (card) Is In Our Court

[Archive]

Posted By: Judge Dred (Fred)

Bruce,

That is an interesting (and good) idea but you can't force PSA (or others) to accept or submit to a "monitoring" group or agency.

First of all, you'd have to get support from all the PSA slabheads. I doubt that this will happen because they run the risk of having their precious collections of labels devalued.

Second, how many tens of thousands of vintage cards have already been graded? The standards would only seem to apply to cards that haven't been graded.

Now there's a thought. You try to convince everyone that cards, in holders without the "monitoring group" (ISO 900x, for example) signature of approval, are technically not graded and that they need to resubmit the cards. The grading companies would love that.

I thought of this a while back but figured, although the "monitoring group" would have merit, it would be like a UN security force in a country where they're not welcome (by graders and slabheads alike).

I certainly would agree that it would be nice to have one industry grading standard. It would be great if grading services were held accountable for their errors. Overall, I think cards should only be authenticated and the label should only have ranges on them or information indictating alterations. For example, it's ridiculous to think that one grader may grade a T206 an "8" and another a "7" because the price difference between those two grades could be relatively astronomical. I suppose that if someones dumb enough to buy the grade and not the true merits of the card, then so be it.