Grading Guarantees - Are They For Real???

[BobC]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Yeah, when it's not egregious, they likely just "re-affirm" the grade. But when it's determined to be trimmed with solid photographic evidence, they sometimes will. I'm guessing they also did it with the two Clemente or Mays cards that were PSA 7s with pinholes that weren't seen by their grader.

There are times where they claim that the original grade was entered in error, and then don't pay out. This happened last year with the 70/30 off-centered Montana RCs they just graded as 10s. They just recalled them and re-slabbed them as 6s or so. If it's a mechanical error, it doesn't fall under the grade guarantee. But only they know if it truly was an error or the original grade assigned.

Whether the error is due to a mistake by a grader or a "mechanical" error, either way it still seems to me that it is an error by the grading company. What if someone had sold one of those "10"s to someone? Could/should a TPG have been able to blow off paying out a grade guarantee in that case? I would certainly hope not.

It sounds like in your case the TPG realized the error, and contacted the submitters to quickly correct the situation, correct? In that instance, I can see a TPG not paying anything to a submitter as they noted their mistake and corrected it. I would hope that if a "10" grade as opposed to a "6" grade resulted in a higher grading fee that the difference was returned to the submitter though. Otherwise, the person who submitted the card is really out nothing.

But as I said, if a card was sold to someone else that paid a price based on the grade given, mechanical error or not, the person that then owned the card should be fully entitled to a refund of the difference in value between a "10" and a "6", wouldn't you agree?

Quite frankly, if that did happen, I'm surprised that someone being informed by a TPG of such an error would not have gotten a friend or colleague to "buy" the card from them for a "10" price, and then direct the TPG to the new owner to deal with the error. Would love to hear what a TPG would say to the new owner in that case.