The PSA Type System: Should it follow the photography market?

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Originally Posted by Jersey City Giants

But it all seems to boil down to a best guess after considering the paper type. In terms of collecting that is a lot of money riding on someone's "guess" IMHO. I know grading is subjective but I feel most of us are skillful enough to grade many of the cards on our own. Photo's without exact dates just seem like a crap shoot if you are gunning for Type I status regardless what PSA says.

In terms of cropping that would be meaningless to me as I developed my own negatives (I shot for my college newspaper and then as a freelancer after college) and sometimes played around with cropping the same photo different ways. This was all done in the same time frame (same day). Now I never dated any of the photos ( I did use a stamp but it was just to make sure anyone using the photo would have to credit me).

Yes, grading/authentication in general is very subjective for sure. If you look at the grading of cards, usually advanced collectors know more about the cards being graded than the graders do. Yet so much emphasis is put on the standard of the PSA grade. The subjectivity of authenticating photos by a third party service is greater than that of cards. With photos, I feel that there is an even more pronounced difference between the knowledge of advanced collectors and the grading service. The collectors have more knowledge. I feel that PSA does a decent job with photos in general; but I prefer Rhys' process. PSA's (Henry's) type system was a great start, but it can be improved. PSA should start at the top - improve authentication of Conlon photos. You are correct Jersey City, there is a lot of $ riding on someone's subjective "guess."