If you were to start a NEW grading service...

[T206Collector]

I would do it like they do diamonds -- take a picture of the card, front and back, and return it with a sheet that describes the flaws of the card, from creases that are hard to see, to trimming/alterations. I was do away with the number system, and stick with the standard "Mint, NrMT, etc."

[Econteachert205]

I would hire computer programmers to create a program which would take high grade scans and assign initial numerical grades. Then I would use expert humans that have blacklights and other devices to double check the computer for errors. The cost per card would likely be quite a bit more, say between 20-50 dollars. This wouldnt be the company you send your ex 1968 ernie banks topps to. It would be geared toward high end cards and high grade cards.

[BobbyVCP]

Originally Posted by Econteachert205

I would hire computer programmers to create a program which would take high grade scans and assign initial numerical grades. Then I would use expert humans that have blacklights and other devices to double check the computer for errors. The cost per card would likely be quite a bit more, say between 20-50 dollars. This wouldnt be the company you send your ex 1968 ernie banks topps to. It would be geared toward high end cards and high grade cards.

This is already in development. A machine that can precisely measure a card front and back as well as width. It will be able to analyze the cuts to see it it is factory or hand cut. It will use a new software that is currently used in the film industry that is for sequencing movie frames. It will be able to take existing graded images and compare them against each other to assign a numerical grade.

[packs]

Sounds like an expensive mistake to me. You've only got 2 major clients. And after they buy a machine or two, then what do you do?

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by packs

Sounds like an expensive mistake to me. You've only got 2 major clients. And after they buy a machine or two, then what do you do?

You don't sell them the grading machine/software - you lease/license it to them. And I'm sure there's other uses for the same technology.

[BobbyVCP]

Originally Posted by Tabe

You don't sell them the grading machine/software - you lease/license it to them. And I'm sure there's other uses for the same technology.

Exactly

[the 'stache]

This topic is going to take off, that is the truth. So, before too many other people have had a chance to chime in, I am going to throw my hat into the ring, and provide the outline of my business concept for a grading company.

Bill’s card grading service

1. Transparency. I cannot think of any other service we pay for where the professional we hire is nameless, and faceless. If we go to a restaurant to eat, we see the wait staff. We can ask to see the chef, or the manager. When we buy our television sets, our cars, our furniture-we can see the salespeople. When our cars are serviced, we can meet the mechanic. Yet when we ship our baseball cards off in the mail to be graded, we have no idea who is performing the service. We are told they are “experts”, but what qualifies them as experts? The first change I would make with my baseball card company is to not only hire people with extensive hobby experience, but I would post their names, faces, and their “credentials”, such as they are, for people to see. What is their background? Have they ever worked for another grading company, or one of the baseball card manufacturers, and if so, in what capacity? The people responsible for providing their opinions will be known, and every card they grade will have their name affixed to the serial number.

2. Higher prices, better service. To charge more than the other companies might seem counterintuitive. Wouldn’t that push customers away? It is my belief that you get what you pay for. I don’t want to be a company that grades more cards than anybody else. I want to be the company that grades the most accurately. That being said, we don’t want every card sent to us. We will, of course, offer our service to anybody, and grade whatever is sent to us. But not every card should really be graded. How many of the cards you got in your wax box of 1983 Topps are really worth anything today? Two or three? Yet, you can look on eBay, and every single card in the 1983 Topps set has been graded. If you look long enough, you’ll see every card in a PSA slab. Why? Because of their registry. A $2 Reggie Jackson card becomes worth $10 because it is in GEM condition. Anybody with eyes can see it is an exceptional card. That $10 card becomes worth $400 because one of our experts has said the corners and centering are both just a little bit better than the average 9.5 we grade. Does that seem right to anybody but the dealers? When a company’s motto is “we’ll turn your cardboard into gold”, the whole meaning behind collecting is lost. Sure, some of those 100 year old cards are really valuable. If a player got 3,000 hits, they went to the Hall of Fame. And, kids put their baseball card into their bike spokes. Now, people pull a card from a pack, and they immediately go into a mylar sleeve, and a hard case, and get put in a box. We’re not going to have a registry. Ever. We are going to grade cards based on what we see. And the value of that card will be determined by the market, and not because somebody will go from #2 to #1 in the registry for ___ by upgrading their 9.5 card to a 10. We will charge more. We will tell people to send cards to us that have meaning, or intrinsic value (as much as baseball cards can have). And, our graders will treat each card we receive with the care and respect they deserve. It won’t matter if you are sending your first card to us, or your 10,000th. We won’t give your cards the benefit of the doubt because you are a regular customer. The only thing that will ever factor in a card’s grade is the condition of that card alone.

3. A 9 is a 9 is a 9. There won’t be any adjustments made to a card because of the set it came from, or because of its age. A gem mint card is a flawless card. If the printing technology utilized in 1933 means that none of the cards produced then measure up to a 10 graded card printed today, then there won’t ever be a 10 graded card from that set 1933 set. Every card we receive will be graded by the same graders. Every card will receive one overall score, and then a series of subscores, which determine the overall score. Considered will be corner quality, edge sharpness, centering, surface quality (front and back), and registration. Our graders will not feel rushed. We will provide a best estimate turn around time to our clients, but our graders will never be rushed. A condition of doing business with is an understanding that our graders will take the time needed to accurately grade a card. They will never feel pressure. They will not be penalized for doing too few cards, or rewarded for doing more. They will have ample time to ascertain a card’s authenticity, as well as its integrity. If a card has in any way been altered, that will clearly be documented. We will not simply mark the card AUTH, and leave the guesswork up to potential buyers. Findings will clearly be documented on the back of the flip. Our company’s reputation means everything, and we will never sacrifice integrity in favor of financial gain.

4. We will set the industry standard with our slab. These slabs will be tamper proof. An attempt to open the case will render it unsalvageable. The flip inside the slab will be affixed to the slab itself, and if tampered with, the flip itself will become ripped. The slab, and the flip itself, will be impossible to reproduce, through the use of hologram stickers, and anti-counterfeiting inks, to name a few examples. This will insure that a customer receiving a card in our packaging can rest assured that it is the same card we graded. Additionally, every finished product will be documented. We will employ several commercial-grade scanners, and upon slabbing, the finished product will be scanned, front and back side, with the images safely stored in our database. These images can be requested on a case by case basis at no charge. We will work with our competitors to develop industry-wide safety features to protect hobbyists, and root out the criminal element as much as humanly possible.


So, that's a rough outline. It's far from perfect, but we're only talking about a concept. I'd like to see more transparency from the grading card companies, for one thing.

[JollyElm]

I would like two things, and it would be great if we had a time machine to put these things in place from the first day the grading started at the TPG's…

1a) Put qualifiers on each and every card that has issues. If a 1967 high number is obviously O/C, then put it on the slab. There is no reason why the appearance of a qualifier has become such a Scarlet Letter. Cards have always been imperfect, so let's see some honesty in grading. Right now, based on anecdotal evidence, you can seemingly eliminate having a qualifier on the slab in most cases by 'sacrificing' 2 numerical grades. That's just ridiculous. If a card is miscut, then put MC on the frickin' slab. Having this as SOP from the beginning would have basically eliminated the stigma attached to having a qualifier, because all cards would have truly 'accurate' grades (I'm obviously speaking/typing theoretically here), plus it would make cards without qualifiers that much more desirable to all the slab chasers out there. Win win.

1b) Eliminate ST qualifiers for wax stains. It only takes two seconds with a pair of panty hose to eradicate the problem on the front of the card, so it's just silly to act like it has some terrible flaw. You could actually do the panty hose treatment while wearing panty hose, if that's your thing.

1c) Perhaps with checklists, have a special 'marked' qualifier. Most of us grew up checking off the checklists in the goal of completing our sets, so if one of these cards is checked off, but still in beautiful shape, it would be nice to have this new category.

2) Photograph, front and back, each and every single card that is graded. For the people who care about population reports, it would be nice to scan through the images of certain rare cards to see which ones have been regraded. This would definitely lead to greatly revised POP report numbers (in theory, if not in actual published statistics).

[Exhibitman]

I'd primarily revise the holder and technical end of things.

The holders would have two components, an inner mylar sleeve for the item and an outer protective shell that would be sealed and tamper-evident.

The flip's largest feature would be the identifying data in big, bold letters.

Oddball sized cards would go into mylar sleeves sufficiently large to put the item into the next size up holder.

For an optional fee, the service would scan the item from and back and make the scan available to the owner to download for a set time, or for another fee, store it indefinitely in a customer managed account.

The registry would allow all services' cards but only my brand's cards would count towards ratings. Registrants would be allowed to add images of their cards to the system. Registrants could opt to make their registry sets anonymous, in which case the set would be described generally as % complete, but without a rating, in case the registrant wants to use the set as a checklist.

I would internally track who handles which cards and how many complaints emanate from each grader's work. Heads would roll...

No clubs to join. No fanny packs, t-shirts or other trinkets. We would have an injection molded custom box that would hold cards securely and would have a moisture proof gasket type of seal. A large version with handle would be available.

[Paul S]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

No clubs to join. No fanny packs, t-shirts or other trinkets.

Fuggedaboutit

[4815162342]

Originally Posted by BobbyVCP

This is already in development. A machine that can precisely measure a card front and back as well as width. It will be able to analyze the cuts to see it it is factory or hand cut. It will use a new software that is currently used in the film industry that is for sequencing movie frames. It will be able to take existing graded images and compare them against each other to assign a numerical grade.

Tell us more, please.

[obcmac]

Originally Posted by BobbyVCP

This is already in development. A machine that can precisely measure a card front and back as well as width. It will be able to analyze the cuts to see it it is factory or hand cut. It will use a new software that is currently used in the film industry that is for sequencing movie frames. It will be able to take existing graded images and compare them against each other to assign a numerical grade.

I'm excited about this too. I don't think you can reliably tell if a card has been trimmed (well). What you can know however is the precise dimension of the card in question and compare that to the average dimension of an unaltered source. Then you wouldn't see nrmt 7's, you'd see cards that were .97 instead of 1.0. One guy's trimmed is another's nrmt...it's still subjective...but a short card is a short card.

[BobbyVCP]

Our main IT person at VCP is working on the project. His group of friends all have engineering degrees from MIT, Harvard, etc...They created this software for the film industry and it is amazing how accurate the results. We are in the process of applying it to VCP images in order to help identify cards listed in auctions for processing into our database. The testing is very promising and has yielded 100% accuracy so far. So taking it a step further he is working with his mechanical engineer to create a machine that will scan all sides of a card 6 in all. It will be able to analyze the images against existing images in our database. Once the card is identified it will have a list of parameters that it will have to uphold in the processing. I am sure the tolerance levels will be adjustable. It is just the start of things and hope to have a working model by this summer. This machine is not only for the TPG but any dealer that deals in volume. Because once the card is identified it will interact with the VCP database and give you values of the cards.

[111gecko]

"When I'm buying a card I want to know two things:

1. Is it authentic?
2. Has it been altered?

I can personally assign my own "grade" and determine the price I want to pay for the card.

I would support a company that used a simple concept like this..."

+ 1

Thats all I want to know..I can see what I am buying.

[glchen]

I'd keep the grading scale the same as PSA except I would move the 10 down to a 9.5 grade, and make the 10 grade Pristine instead of Gem Mint, which would be the 9.5 grade. The Pristine grade should have the same centering/tilt, etc, requirements on the back of the card as the front.

I'd use Beckett's holders but would improve the eye appeal some so it doesn't look so much like a brick. I like the fact that Beckett's holders cannot be compromised and there are no float or insert issues. I really like the PSA 5x7 holders, so I would use something like that. I would also have larger holders like SGC and Beckett, but I would improve both of them. (e.g., SGC's largest holder often comes apart, and Beckett is seriously too thick and looks really ugly.) I'd probably also create an even larger holder that could encapsulate larger premiums.

If the holders didn't already have this, I would add UV protection to them.

For cert verification, I would add high resolution front and back scans for the card. When you add your card to your registry, it would add this scan to it. (However, you would have the option to not show the scans or just show the front scan if you wanted.) In cert verification, I would also have comments from the grader on why that card received that grade (like you will occassionally receive when you send the card in for review.) I would debate adding one of those invisible daubs that PSA/DNA adds to auto submissions to the cards, so that if a card were re-submitted, the TPG would know that this was a re-submission and could check the previous cert #. On the flip, I would have one of those bar codes where if you scan it via your cell phone, it would automatically take you to the cert verification page for that card. Cert verification would also have date that the card was graded.

For an additional fee, I may have add data from VCP for that card or similar cards for that grade (similiar to what Heritage does on the coin side when they auction coins.)

I would use SGC's and Beckett's system of allowing cards of different sizes and grading tiers in the same return postage submission instead of PSA's more restrictive one. I would probably keep fees and turnaround times similar to PSA's. However, I'd either "guarantee" poppage on a certain date (like Beckett) or I would give greater clarity on where your submission was in the queue, so that submitters wouldn't always wonder why one submission popped so quickly and others were so slow. I would also measure turnaround time from the time the package is received and not from loggage time like PSA.

[Orioles1954]

I would love for a grading service to start grading and encapsulating wrappers.

[4815162342]

Originally Posted by Orioles1954

I would love for a grading service to star grading and encapsulating wrappers.

+1

Does/Has any TPG ever graded wrappers?

[glchen]

Originally Posted by 4815162342

+1

Does/Has any TPG ever graded wrappers?

GAI does with number grade. SGC does only as Authentic.

[4815162342]

Originally Posted by glchen

GAI does

Eh.

[frankbmd]

Why is Wilbur Goode's scan in every post in this thread?

If this has been asked or discussed, I missed it in scanning this thread, but I didn't miss Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur & Wilbur, etc