Automated Card Grading - Surface

[swarmee]

Some responses:
1) A straight average is normally a terrible idea for an overall card grade. Think of a card with two moderate creases leading to a 2/10 surface score. Then give it perfect centering, edges, and corners. The Average is 8/10. That's why BGS has a cap on the difference between the lowest subgrade and the overall grade.

2) Determining how to decrement a card grade's based on flaws that PSA calls qualifiers. Are you going to take the surface grade all the way down to a 2/10 based on writing or are you going to give it a 10 with a qualifier of sorts? Consistency in identifying out-of-registration cards and deciding on the proper level of point loss is also important.

3) You probably want to focus group various flaws to respected collectors *before* announcing your scoring algorithms. Continually tuning them, I would think, would actually hurt you in terms of acceptance and trust.

4) Centering could be graded on something like 2.5 point increments. 52.5/47.5 or better is a 10, 55/45 a 9.5, all the way down to miscut getting a 1. Another point could be taken off for slight tilt or 2 for drastic tilt.

Centering		Grade

47.5	52.5	10

45	55	9.5

42.5	57.5	9

40	60	8.5

37.5	62.5	8

35	65	7.5

32.5	67.5	7

30	70	6.5

27.5	72.5	6

25	75	5.5

22.5	77.5	5

20	80	4.5

17.5	82.5	4

15	85	3.5

12.5	87.5	3

10	90	2.5

7.5	92.5	2

5	95	1.5

2.5	97.5	1

0	100	0.5 (Miscut)

5) How much does/should a pinhole count toward the surface grade? A card with a pinhole may be missing 0.1% of the surface area of the card, while one with rounded corners may be missing 5% of the card area. However a card with rounded corrners is still regularly called VG (3/10) and one with a pinholes is currently capped at GD (2/10).

6) How would you declare a hand-cut card like Post Cereal to be "full"? Would it require the full black border or is part okay?

Some things I regularly see requested: specific centering measurements, specific card sizes, noting of hard to see flaws (pinholes, surface wrinkles), specific alterations on an altered card.