Fraudosynthesis

[jchcollins]

Heavily faded cards are ugly, even if they were to be some kind of rare factory anomalies. That's what I don't get.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Heavily faded cards are ugly, even if they were to be some kind of rare factory anomalies. That's what I don't get.

Some like that 62 Topps Aaron are ugly. Then some like the 58 Aaron when turned blue are amazing.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by bnorth

Some like that 62 Topps Aaron are ugly. Then some like the 58 Aaron when turned blue are amazing.

Kind of along the lines of some T205 cards where the gold borders seem to turn green. No specific reason or known cause, just speculated as an age, fading, ink, or exposure issue.

[cannonballsun]

He's been trying to sell a missing red ink 1963 Post Cereal Mantle for about a couple of years. He has gradually gotten the price lower.

[JollyElm]

As a postscript to all of this, I finally heard back from PSA. Of course, they pretty much ignored my simple, straightforward questions (about the Bench card) and their reply basically said that they can confirm that the cert. # is legitimate, but they cannot comment on what may have occurred after the slab left their facility.

[jchcollins]

Kind of as a companion topic to all of this, I've never understood why print quality and color are not treated with the same discernment at PSA and SGC as pure technical issues with the cardboard itself.

A hidden wrinkle is a hell of a lot less obvious to eye appeal than a badly faded card, yet I've seen examples where an ugly faded Mantle can still get a PSA 6, whereas a beautiful example of the same card with a hidden wrinkle gets a 3 or a 2. That just makes zero sense.

Likewise with focus issues. The '69 Topps Nolan Ryan #533 is a good example here. Due to focus issues, this card can often be found with Nolan having strange looking lips, overlapping pupils, or 4 eyebrows. But if this is the only thing wrong with the card, it can also easily be found this way in fairly high grade - like PSA 6 and 7. Makes no sense. I'd rather have the card moderately OC or with some other minor flaw, trading that for a well-focused image.

TPG's have harshly judged centering as a "factory" issue for at least a generation now. I know they have the OF qualifier, but in practice I rarely see this used. The criteria behind judging how a card is made at the factory either OC or OF is not really different. In terms of "color quality", at least to my knowledge there is no standard for this, and many graders seem to be at least somewhat incompetent at recognizing even badly faded cards.

[Gorditadogg]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Kind of as a companion topic to all of this, I've never understood why print quality and color are not treated with the same discernment at PSA and SGC as pure technical issues with the cardboard itself.

A hidden wrinkle is a hell of a lot less obvious to eye appeal than a badly faded card, yet I've seen examples where an ugly faded Mantle can still get a PSA 6, whereas a beautiful example of the same card with a hidden wrinkle gets a 3 or a 2. That just makes zero sense.

Likewise with focus issues. The '69 Topps Nolan Ryan #533 is a good example here. Due to focus issues, this card can often be found with Nolan having strange looking lips, overlapping pupils, or 4 eyebrows. But if this is the only thing wrong with the card, it can also easily be found this way in fairly high grade - like PSA 6 and 7. Makes no sense. I'd rather have the card moderately OC or with some other minor flaw, trading that for a well-focused image.

TPG's have harshly judged centering as a "factory" issue for at least a generation now. I know they have the OF qualifier, but in practice I rarely see this used. The criteria behind judging how a card is made at the factory either OC or OF is not really different. In terms of "color quality", at least to my knowledge there is no standard for this, and many graders seem to be at least somewhat incompetent at recognizing even badly faded cards.

I guess if somebody is buying the grade and not the card, that can be annoying. By my own standards, I weight color, focus and centering (which are easier to see from a picture than the technical irregularities the TPG's evaluate) much more than wrinkles and other surface irregularities. So I guess I am happy they spend their time on those things, so their grade gives me a good baseline before I look at it.

For example, this to me is a really nice 3.5. I don't need a TPG to grade it on eye appeal, I know what I like. But if this was being sold raw it would be very tough for most of us to know it has a major flaw. To me the technical grade of the card is what is important.