Cards the grading companies got/get wrong

[irv]

Originally Posted by G1911

The Cracker Jack Mack might just be my favorite for how bad of a reprint it is. And at least 2 of their graders still thought it was real.

That the vast majority of collectors will stay pay much, much more $ for a card in PSA’s slab will never cease to amaze me.

Same.

Originally Posted by G1911

Agreed.



A preponderance of the available evidence would suggest that 2 of their graders could not tell a Dover reprint from a real one.



I don't think anyone expects perfection. Most of the ones in this thread are just amusing data entry errors, there are numerous far more serious examples of incompetence (or corruption), starting with the very first card in their system, a trimmed PSA 8 Wagner fraud.



This is largely the problem. PSA rests on an appeal to authority, that they are experts specially able or talented and their seal of approval and grade on a card thus is justified in creating multipliers of value. And yet they've certified hundreds or even thousands of trimmed cards from a single fraud ring (PWCC's) alone, they've certified the most obvious of fakes like Dover Connie Mack's, they misidentify many cards and sets (to cite one of many examples, they still don't know seem to know the difference between T218 and T219 and consistently grade one as the other), PSA 8's become PSA 10's seemingly at random, their foundational card is an altered fraud, etc. and so on and so forth. One doesn't have to nitpick or dig far to find tons of examples, and this is being fairly generous by only accusing them of incompetency. They are inconsistent, often misidentify, frequently miss or simply ignore (at best) altered cards, and occasionally grade the most ridiculous of fakes that are not even good fakes.

An appeal to authority while having these problems rings especially hollow. Whether "some people at these companies" know more than peons like me is, of course, utterly irrelevant. A claim or statement is true or false based on the merits of itself, not of the person making it. We don't even know who is actually grading a card, even if an appeal to authority was valid.

Very well said!