BVG is inconsistent

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by tiger8mush

Put me in the minority, but I liked their system back then. The surface of this card graded a 1.5 (in between "poor" and "fair"). Its otherwise a decent looking card, so the other grades brought it up the max it was allowed to go (I believe "1" grade higher than its lowest mark) so it gets a 2.5.

Had they graded the card a "5", sure lets rip them apart. If it was rebacked and not caught, a reprint, trimmed, color added, etc then I'd see a good reason to called them "terrible". But c'mon, it was graded a 2.5! Haven't we seen SGC and PSA slabbed cards with paper loss graded a 2? So we're ripping BVG cuz they gave a card a 2.5?

Rob hit the nail on the head on this one. If you'll look at any BVG graded card that lists the sub-grades, the final grade will always be 1 grade above the lowest sub-grade - at least 99.99% of the time. I believe that they got the surface sub-grade right on this card - between poor and fair. Therefore, they were consistent with their grading scale on this card even though we wouldn't usually expect a card with paper loss to receive a 2.5.