A New Grading Company

[drcy]

Certainly, improvements to grading and authentication are essential, but I'd focus on a reevaluation and revaluation of grading as a whole. What it is, what is supposed to do, and how grading should be considered by collectors.

There's nothing wrong with 75% accuracy if everyone realizes, considers it and uses it as 75% accuracy.

Registry final calculations of numeral grades to the .00 decimal point, with no consideration of the margins of error which are likely (offhand guess) higher 10%, has always been folly on its face.

"Knowing the extent of one's ignorance is true knowledge."-- Confucius

I think qualified graders offer useful independent opinions, especially considering cards are often bought and sold online and many buyers are not authentication experts. If I was about to pay $10,000 card from someone 1,5000 miles away, I'd appreciate an independent (if fallible) expert having looked at it in person But graders and grading companies should be treated as giving fallible opinions. Even grading companies themselves say grading involves subjectivity and the assigned grades can change upon resubmissions.

However, early economists had to change their models because the learned that, despite their models' axioms of rational behavior, there is a lot of irrationality in human buying and selling. That there's irrationality in baseball card and grading valuations would not surprise economists