How Are Grading Cos. Going to Survive?

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Posted By: JK

I echo David's thoughts - there seems to be no shortage of collectors of the shiney stuff who want to get their cards graded. While the cards may be made to exacting standards, the search for the "elusive" 10 (and the financial windfall that accompanies it for some cards) will result in no shortage of gradeable material. As for vintage cards, there is obviously only a limited quantity of authentic stuff. However, there is no shortage of reprints and unaltered cards - they will continue to be sold raw and passed off as real. Further, while there may be a limited quantity of vintage, I doubt we are anywhere near approaching 100% graded. Once we are at that point, there will always be the crossovers and regrades to keep the graders busy.

Lastly, and perhaps a more interesting question, if the graders were to all run out of gradeable material and go out of business, would it matter as far as our niche? What I mean is, lets assume all vintage cards are someday graded by one of the reputable grading companies. If they all went out of business, would the value of the cards previously graded suffer? I dont mean to start a bashing thread here, but I think if values suffered at all (and Im not sure they would) psa's would suffer the most for the same reason they now claim value superiority - the absence of the registry would result in more losses for psa graded cards than those graded by sgc or gai. This also assumes that a better product doesnt take the place of the grading companies and that any "good will" created by psa, sgc and gai remains in our collective knowledge (in other words, we dont forget why the cards were graded and what it signifies - to most).