Yet Another Grading Issue

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

Buying remotely has ALWAYS been risky. I correlate the rise of third-party grading directly to the rise of internet selling of cards.

That said, there are some auction houses that are trustworthy. I bought a lot of 150+ gum cards from REA two years ago and had about 75% of them graded; I was pleasantly surprised to see that almost every one graded out as described or higher. I bought a lot of T205s from Huggins & Scott and all were graded accurately.

I also think that, in cases like this, it's important to note the subtle differences in standards between the grading companies. There most definitely are differences in how the two grading services treat certain types of flaws that can result in some discrepancies. It is my opinion that it's these subtle differences that result in a good portion of the hard feelings (over unexpected grades) from most of the more knowledgeable collectors out there. In my opinion, issues like surface flaws, edge wear, print defects and tiny bits of paper loss or scuffing on the back of a card result in some pretty dramatically different treatment from the two grading services. Even among knowledgeable collectors there is a wide range of opinions over how to treat these types of flaws when assessing the condition of a card.

There are some members of this board that are acutely aware of these differences and choose a grading service based on the flaws in the card and how each company treats them. There are other members of the board who are loyal to one service or the other, and are willing to live with the grades they get. Where it gets dicey is when a person buys a raw card described by one seller, submits it to their grader of choice, and gets a different result than the seller described - there are so many grey areas in an equation like that, it's difficult to determine who is at fault, or even if ANYBODY is at fault.

-Al