REA Auction T206 Plank Grades (?)

[M's_Fan]

Originally Posted by Matt

Your logic is flawed - the player on the card is also one of the most important aspects of evaluating a card (for most issues, THE most important aspect) yet that factors not into the grading system either. It depends what grading is meant to do - at one extreme you can say you want grading to be used to specify the desirability of the card - that would take into consideration eye appeal, the player on the card, scarcity, as well as the technical aspects. At the other extreme, you can say that grading is to put a number on the objective technical aspects of the card and that's it.

The way the system is, grading tends towards the latter, because that is what is most concrete. TPG only provides one piece of information we use when evaluating a card. In concert with the player on the card, the eye appeal, the scarcity and some other factors, we then make our own subjective determinations.

I thought this was obvious, but I guess not. I'm talking about evaluating the card's CONDITION. Not the player, scarcity of card, or other non-condition related aspects.

As someone said, they grade diamonds based on color, but color and registration/focus don't enter into a card's grade until way high on the grading scale.

The result is a grading scale that is obsessed with corners, creases, and stains, but ignores other objective factors that have a heavy influence on the card's condition. The result is you have these awful looking 5's, 6's that are way out of registration, but a sharply focused and sharp cornered card with just a hint of a stain on the back is a 2? That's stupid.

Those of us in the eye appeal camp, for lack of a better word, DO NOT want to unleash a grader to grade a card however he wants based on a touchy-feely "eye appeal" standard. That would be totally subjective and wouldn't please anyone. That's not what we want.

We DO want the grading companies to give more weight to OBJECTIVE factors like registration/focus and color. These are objective factors that a card grading service should give more weight.

In this world, Wonka's 2's would be graded higher than the 4 or 5 that is way out of focus but is stain free.