Buy the card, not the grade - stories

[jchcollins]

Interesting responses, thanks again all.

I'm becoming increasingly skeptical of PSA's grading consistency especially with mid-grade vintage. I looked at several recent examples of my '53 Topps Satchel Paige in the PSA Auction Prices Realized site last night. I know that grading when it comes down to technical brass tacks is more than just eye appeal alone, but still: My card is a PSA 5; I saw many 6's that didn't look as good, and many 5's that looked way worse. If you take into consideration the age of the slab / flip as well - then it gets even worse. I saw some older 5's that I doubt would be 4's today with the corners they had. Oy...

[MattyC]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Interesting responses, thanks again all.

I'm becoming increasingly skeptical of PSA's grading consistency especially with mid-grade vintage.

You are spot on with this. The subjectivity involved in parsing some grades, be it a 4 thru 6 or a 9 from a 10, it allows for a massive amount of disagreement with the graders.

And when we begin to look at cards graded in past years, or decades, things really go haywire.

I focus primarily on Mantle, and I see PSA 8s and PSA 9s of his basic issue cards in old grades/slabs that would be lucky to merit 7s today.

Just browse some of the "high grade" Registry sets or VCP, and what becomes clear as day is that some cards awarded a PSA 9 many years ago are simply total head scratchers. And as humans often do, PSA seems to have made the mistake of overcorrecting; now you can submit a lights-out 8 that blows away every 9 viewable on VCP past sales, and they will give you a sticky note pointing to some minor flaw as cause for the card not even getting a half point bump. So what we have in the market are some of today's cards in lower grade, destroying higher grade cards from yesteryear on both the eye appeal and even technical grade fronts. The upshot is it gets even more important to shop with our eyes and in effect police the flips.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by MattyC

You are spot on with this. The subjectivity involved in parsing some grades, be it a 4 thru 6 or a 9 from a 10, it allows for a massive amount of disagreement with the graders.

And when we begin to look at cards graded in past years, or decades, things really go haywire.

I focus primarily on Mantle, and I see PSA 8s and PSA 9s of his basic issue cards in old grades/slabs that would be lucky to merit 7s today.

Just browse some of the "high grade" Registry sets or VCP, and what becomes clear as day is that some cards awarded a PSA 9 many years ago are simply total head scratchers. And as humans often do, PSA seems to have made the mistake of overcorrecting; now you can submit a lights-out 8 that blows away every 9 viewable on VCP past sales, and they will give you a sticky note pointing to some minor flaw as cause for the card not even getting a half point bump. So what we have in the market are some of today's cards in lower grade, destroying higher grade cards from yesteryear on both the eye appeal and even technical grade fronts. The upshot is it gets even more important to shop with our eyes and in effect police the flips.

"Buy the card, not the grade" I think today is more important than ever. To me this goes to a core reputation problem - in addition to being found wanting in the "expertise" area (what expertise? how do we know since they don't routinely prove that "experts" are grading cards over and above middle school kids...) there is the problem with consistency over time which at least as this year has gone by has proven to be more and more obvious that the PSA 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9's of yesteryear are not necessarily on par with those graded in 2017 or 2018. How they continue to get away with this - to say nothing of wildly inaccurate promised turn times - increasingly feels like a bubble to me. I'm just wondering how long before it bursts.

[vintagebaseballcardguy]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

"Buy the card, not the grade" I think today is more important than ever. To me this goes to a core reputation problem - in addition to being found wanting in the "expertise" area (what expertise? how do we know since they don't routinely prove that "experts" are grading cards over and above middle school kids...) there is the problem with consistency over time which at least as this year has gone by has proven to be more and more obvious that the PSA 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9's of yesteryear are not necessarily on par with those graded in 2017 or 2018. How they continue to get away with this - to say nothing of wildly inaccurate promised turn times - increasingly feels like a bubble to me. I'm just wondering how long before it bursts.

Not only that but over time standards seem to change at SGC and PSA, and the flips sometimes change with them. Now it isn't even enough to have a card with a particular grade given by a particular TPG because that TPG could go through a big change, like SGC has recently. Then, collectors look at slabbed cards from a certain era and think they really aren't as good as the slab might say they are, depending on the era in which the card was graded. Right now, there is a thread on the prewar side discussing a collector's SGC results from a recent submission and how that collector was shocked at how tough SGC graded his cards versus some examples of SGC graded cards with old flips. Increasingly, I am quite happy with ungraded cards that meet my requirements. I am not above cracking out a graded card for a set either.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by vintagebaseballcardguy

Not only that but over time standards seem to change at SGC and PSA, and the flips sometimes change with them. Now it isn't even enough to have a card with a particular grade given by a particular TPG because that TPG could go through a big change, like SGC has recently. Then, collectors look at slabbed cards from a certain era and think they really aren't as good as the slab might say they are, depending on the era in which the card was graded. Right now, there is a thread on the prewar side discussing a collector's SGC results from a recent submission and how that collector was shocked at how tough SGC graded his cards versus some examples of SGC graded cards with old flips. Increasingly, I am quite happy with ungraded cards that meet my requirements. I am not above cracking out a graded card for a set either.

Yeah pretty soon we'll have vintage (era) listed along with slab type (era) and there will be a cross reference to value. Let's see this is a PSA 8 from the early 00's, so it's worth less than the PSA 8 from the early 10's...

[KendallCat]

Here are a few of my examples for the thread.

[bswhiten]

Last weeks pickup. Not sure what made it a 1 since there isn’t a pinhole but looks great to me