Your Collecting Thoughts on Grading Companies

[Mbjerry]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

I suppose it's fair to say I have a love-hate relationship with grading over the past 5 years or so. I love a properly graded card in a clean slab, but I hate issues / errors in the grading process and scratched, dirty slabs. If I like the slab once I get it in hand (50% chance?) I will leave the card slabbed, but I've busted dozens upon dozens of them in the recent past too.

Anymore grading is very much just an option for me, certainly not a hard requirment. I like to buy graded online if I cannot evaluate the card in hand first, just to make sure I'm in the ballpark with expectations once the card arrives - and especially if it's over like $100 in value. I will usually stick with PSA and SGC when buying online. I've submitted on rare occasions in the past, but only to SGC - I've never met the patience criteria for PSA turn times or really agreed with their pricing.

I will say even with SGC, the rampant inconsistency lately is just a huge turnoff for me - they recently graded the same '65 Mantle both a 5 and then a 6.5 a few months apart. Anymore I really just prefer to buy raw vintage at the LCS. I learned to grade almost 30 years ago. The allure of the "official" holder in light of how many mistakes even the reputable graders still make I guess has just mostly worn off for me.

I listened to a podcast the other day where they presented statistics on a study where they resubmitted the same cards to the same companies multiple times. 45% of the time the card came back as a higher grade. The results of the study put a really bad taste in my mouth for grading. I recently received my first ever round of grading back from SGC and I got hammered. Every one of the cards came back 1-2 grades lower than I expected. Really disappointed. All raw for me from now on except the big cards or grade sensitive cards. Grading feels way overused and mostly not necessary in the under $300 world that I play in.


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[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Mbjerry

I listened to a podcast the other day where they presented statistics on a study where they resubmitted the same cards to the same companies multiple times. 45% of the time the card came back as a higher grade.

Yep. Even 3 decades into professional grading, so much of the actual service remains a gimmick. A scale that at the end of the day is tied to eye appeal can never be anything more than subjective, no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise. In the mostly midgrade vintage world I play in, I could submit the same "EX" raw card 10 times, and sometimes it would get a 5, sometimes it would get a 6, and sometimes it might get a 4. There might be the outlier where it gets a 3 or a 1 because of something a grader thought they saw only under magnification. Bottom line - you know the "range" of your raw cards and which ones are nicer than others, and even with the nicer ones what their micro flaws might be. These things don't change. But if you play the slab game, the grade can and often will. I'm just at a point in my collecting career where I would rather focus on the card only and appreciate it for what it is. This is why I don't sweat grading anymore. For protection if I buy graded online, I don't focus on the grade. I have some 5's nicer than other 6's, and some 6's that look better than 7's. It's just the reality of how the game works in practice.