Vorthain's 41 Playball

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Posted By: Bruce Moreland

Based upon a combination of personal experience and hearsay, my experience is that your mileage may vary. My own experience:

1) Submitted an invoice full of '52 Topps, with a few '53 Topps. All but one or two came back PSA-7, which was as expected, but they were wrecked in the holders. PSA was changing holders, and they put an old holder front on a new holder back, or vice versa, which doesn't work, and they took hunks out of each of the cards. I explained the situation, and sent the cards back. PSA coughed up a check for about $1000, which was full SMR. This happened in 2000, and nobody at PSA could have known me from Adam.

2) I bought a bad T-206 PSA-7. It was about EX. I sent it in and asked them to keep the card and comp a grading invoice totalling around what I paid for the card, and they did. This was recent.

3) Another time I had a card with the wrong flip and they fixed this for free.

This is not terribly bad. I've never wanted them to do something that they refused to do.

I had another experience with Beckett, which involved a bad card, a NM card with a wrinkle on the back, the kind of card that typically comes back PSA-5. On the phone, they told me that the guaranteed nothing, their grades were just opinions, but that I was probably wrong because several graders had seen the card. I had a friend take this to a show and try to wheedle something out of them. He got some free grading that totalled more than I'd paid for the card.

SGC used to have an explicit written grading guarantee. Now they have something watered down. PSA seems about the same. There are plenty of cases that people will tell you about where they didn't get what they want from these companies, but this hasn't been my own experience.

I know that it's not true that the possibility of legal action must always be involved.

I wish they would strengthen their guarantees though.

bruce