PSA/SGC Waiting Lines At 2019 National

[barrysloate]

Let me discuss my thoughts on one of Bob's points. And thanks Bob for your thorough and detailed posts.

Third party grading came into being a few decades ago offering services that included authenticating baseball cards, determining if they were original or altered, and giving them an unbiased grade. Obviously, these were services that the baseball card industry badly needed.

Truth be told, they were no better at grading cards than the average veteran collector- there was no secret formula they devised to get it right- and what's been believed for many years and demonstrated in detail recently, they didn't really have the skills or equipment to detect card alterations. They were at least able to offer an unbiased opinion, as they were neither buying or selling the card, and they were able to heat seal the cards in slabs. So they had something to offer the public.

Given their mediocre results, they shouldn't have lasted very long. But just the opposite occurred: they attained a position of tremendous power in the industry, to the point that the baseball card hobby couldn't survive without them. And although the grading was sloppy and inconsistent, the number they put on that label became sacrosanct. So much so that if a baseball card was graded at the highest level, it would consistently set world's records at auction. Prices for these cards have been simply astronomical.

Now there are genuinely rare artifacts that are worth world's record prices. But a baseball card that has been misgraded or altered to appear better than it is should not be one of them. So how has this market survived in this manner?

That's the great question and we know that collectors don't all agree on why this phenomenon has occurred. One thing, however, that the grading services have been able to do incredibly well is make money for their customers and themselves. As has been often said, they literally mint money. And unfortunately we know that card doctor's and fraudsters have been among the beneficiaries of it all.

So maybe the great skill that TPG's have is not grading or authenticating, but making lots of people very wealthy. As such, I don't think we are going to see much change at all in the industry. Sure, a bunch of collectors may drop out or cut back their purchases, but as long as TPG's continue to mint money, nothing at all is going to change.