What would an acceptable rate of authenticity mistakes be?

[oldjudge]

According to PSA’s methodology, as I understand it, two people review each card and, if they disagree on the grade, a third person breaks the tie. If 2-3 people are looking at every card there should be virtually no mistakes, a lot less than 1%.

[glchen]

People make mistakes. It's just a fact of life. Zero % error rate is simply unreasonable when a TPG looks at millions of cards. Here's my take on this:

Declared value:

Under $100: 0.1%
$100-$500: 0.01%
$500-$100,000: 0.001%
Over $100K: 0.0001%

The idea here is that the two graders that are reviewing the card would be more experienced the greater the declared value

[Phil68]

Very good points, all.
Adam, I like your angle of accountability.
I do not believe that PSA has 2 graders look at a card.
If they do, it's exceptional. I cannot fathom a 3rd grader assessing it, frankly, unless we're talking about a card north of 100k...which I own none and will never be a threat.
Gary,
your point is very interesting. I would have to agree with your assessment on that at this point.

[2dueces]

Zero

[trambo]

I laugh at the comments who say "zero" is the acceptable tolerable error rate. I can appreciate the sentiment but because it is a human thing, there's no practical way it could ever be zero. I don't like mistakes in the grading obvious or otherwise but to say there is no room for a mistake ever is sort of comical to me.

I think the appropriate answer is as close to zero as possible with the understanding that their opinion is just that, an opinion. Some rely and some don't. No rule says you have to buy or not buy what they're selling....

[perezfan]

Acceptable tolerance rate for making honest mistakes, due to time constraints = about a quarter of one percent

Acceptable tolerance rate for turning a blind eye to obvious alteration = 0 percent

Acceptable tolerance rate for knowingly bumping preferred submitters' cards by a grade or two = 0 percent

[steve B]

The stamp places do have experts in each field, and will occasionally issue one saying "we decline to render an opinion" some specialties have very few experts, and some items are very hard to be sure what exactly it is.

They take their time, and their error rate is very low. And on more common items, nearly 0. (I'm sure they mess up occasionally, but I've never seen a cert I knew was wrong. )

Coming from a machining and equipment repair background, an error rate of 0 is always the goal.
Some jobs didn't work out, but they generally didn't leave the shop.
some jobs, the downside of being wrong was that someone could die. Those were done with extra care.

[Phil68]

Originally Posted by perezfan

Acceptable tolerance rate for making honest mistakes, due to time constraints = about a quarter of one percent

Acceptable tolerance rate for turning a blind eye to obvious alteration = 0 percent

Acceptable tolerance rate for knowingly bumping preferred submitters' cards by a grade or two = 0 percent

I would have to agree completely. It sounds like all of us are more upset with the lack of accountability and dishonesty than the mistakes. You can fix mistakes.