Are grading companies giving out 8 grades or higher on cards pre 1960 anymore?

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Lobo Aullando

This is what I think is mostly the cause. They see so much "perfect" or "near perfect" stuff that they start using more range to define those, and ultimately it ends up compressing the mid- and low-grade stuff into fewer tiers. (To combat this, they could start using more half-grades, but that's probably too easy a suggestion to implement.)

Anyway, as the saying goes, buy the card, not the slab.

To combat it they need to do more than using half grades. They need to keep a few sets of eyes off of the shiny garbage that pays their bills. The 6 to 8 grade on postwar is now 4 to 6 across the board.

[1952boyntoncollector]

I actually thing its silly to honor a prior grade if you reholder.

it would make the newer holder cards more legiit with high grades....they can agree to give a little extra weight on the old grade..but to guarantee to old grade for the new holder doesnt fix any issues...

when you see a new holder you will know the current grading standards are in place..yeah i know its all subjective...but if you have a 6..and they now think its 5.5....still keep it at a 6...but if its a 6..and it should be a 4....make it a 4. or they can just return it in the old slab....

but they wont make as much money on reholder fees..and people with weak 6's trying to show the public 'fresh' grade wont submit it. but the fresh new grades..will be worth more

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

To combat it they need to do more than using half grades. They need to keep a few sets of eyes off of the shiny garbage that pays their bills. The 6 to 8 grade on postwar is now 4 to 6 across the board.

Yes, exactly my observation as well. I primarily collect postwar vintage mid grade cards. I'm a very active set collector as well, so I see a lot of examples on a daily basis of both recently graded cards and older serial numbered cards. 6s to 8s are indeed now 4s to 6s. Dead mint cards are coming back in 7 holders. And the majority of cards that make their way into 9 holders nowadays, at least from that post war vintage cohort, are cards that have been trimmed. Occasionally, you can still get lucky with a submission, but those days are few and far between now. SGC has also moved the goalposts, but just not by quite as much. 6s to 8s are now 5s to 7s there.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Snowman

SGC has also moved the goalposts, but just not by quite as much. 6s to 8s are now 5s to 7s there.

In my first post on this topic today I opened with the fact that SGC has done the same thing. In fact SGC tightened up before PSA did.

Originally Posted by Snowman

I do think he is in denial though. Or at least he presents that way publicly. He laughs it off and excuses it away every time it gets brought up in interviews. He blames it on submitters being noobs/ignorant and essentially engages in condescension frisbee with his customer base. I like Nat for the most part, but it's a bad look. He's not listening to his customers.

Perhaps he could be persuaded if the situation were right and the data was well presented. But setting that table in the first place and getting him to join you is the challenge.

Nat is denying which is different than being in denial. Again, in my first post I noted that in interviews when this has been brought up he chuckles and says nothing has changed and it has to be our expectations. Again, this is business for him. Unless people talk with their money by not using them, he is gonna laugh all the way to the bank and make zero changes.

To that, when Joe was in charge at PSA he did the same thing. He would say the graders have not changed the standards but then you would see shortly after that the standards would loosen up.
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[Lobo Aullando]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

To combat it they need to do more than using half grades. They need to keep a few sets of eyes off of the shiny garbage that pays their bills.

Geez, man. I actually started typing this point up, then decided I should get back to work.

They like to say that all their graders can do any card, which makes it sound like everyone is doing anything. Taking that at face value, I posit that it doesn't mean they have to completely silo their graders if they decide to have some specialize. (And they still get to say "everyone can do anything," which is easy to elide from "everyone can do anything.")

At risk of sounding like an organizational consultant, having graders with concentrations builds more knowledge than having a bunch of generalists, which is what it seems like they have right now. Have folks do cross-training (aka, "going on detail").

If they're worried about consistency, they already have published standards with affirmative details. Simply have everyone in those little rooms hew to those standards instead of trying to achieve some goal of relative consistency, which can shift. Emphasizing everybody being a generalist might help homogenize the outputs in the short term, but it seems to have led to inconsistencies over time.

[Kzoo]

I agree with several previous posts, as it looks like they're pretty accurate on the modern 'shiny' stuff and I believe they get the Poor to Good (1-2 range) stuff graded correctly, but the 4-8 range stuff is really off.

I have an order of 1950's to 70's mid to higher grade cards on their way back to me right now from PSA and every single card is at least 1 grade lower (a couple are 2+ grades lower) than I've been accustomed to over the past 22 years. It seems to me that they take an even harsher grading approach to a card that is even slightly off-center. These new graders are so used to seeing perfectly centered new cards, that 40/60 off center vintage cards are getting hammered.....and it seems that they don't realize vintage cards were manufactured with rougher non-perfect cuts, as compared to modern. It would be great to see different graders for only modern OR only vintage, as mentioned.

Knowing this, I'll just stockpile cards for now and see if anything changes in the future.... and I'll patiently wait each month for their 'We Agree We Brutally Undergraded Everyone's 2021-22 Vintage Card Submissions and Would Like to Fix It Monthly Special'....That'll be the day, LOL

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by Lobo Aullando

Geez, man. I actually started typing this point up, then decided I should get back to work.

They like to say that all their graders can do any card, which makes it sound like everyone is doing anything. Taking that at face value, I posit that it doesn't mean they have to completely silo their graders if they decide to have some specialize. (And they still get to say "everyone can do anything," which is easy to elide from "everyone can do anything.")

At risk of sounding like an organizational consultant, having graders with concentrations builds more knowledge than having a bunch of generalists, which is what it seems like they have right now. Have folks do cross-training (aka, "going on detail").

If they're worried about consistency, they already have published standards with affirmative details. Simply have everyone in those little rooms hew to those standards instead of trying to achieve some goal of relative consistency, which can shift. Emphasizing everybody being a generalist might help homogenize the outputs in the short term, but it seems to have led to inconsistencies over time.

First, they are off far more than .5. I could live with their being off by .5. The issue is far greater than that. So using half grades more often does not address the issue, in the least. They have to see a half grade first in order to use them and presently they cannot distinguish an 8 from a 6.

Next, I could not imagine looking at cards 6 to 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year when most of that time I would be issuing mostly 9s and 10s. It is going to throw off anyone's perspective if they then are assigned a vintage order.

I do not know what the answer is but I feel like this is the explanation for why they are crushing vintage. No adjustment will be made by PSA or SGC unless they see submissions drop off.