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Posted By: William Heitman

Please note, Barry, that I commented on the grader's expertise, not their competence. With objective criteria, graders will, and I agree with you, become more and more competent as they look at more and more cards. But the objective criteria may be all wrong for a W514 or an Old Judge. Determining the "objective" criteria requires a great deal of expertise, not just competence. I mean, look at PSA. They grade 1 to 10 with half of those grades mentioning the word mint. Poor and fair, which are two very distinct things, get lumped into 1 number. Where is good to very good? And when does mint become gem mint? Eye appeal? This is a very subjective thing and that's where expertise must overcome competence. My point on this is that I just don't think baseball cards lend themselves to this purely objective means of grading. So the rule is that once a card gets slabbed, there is supposed to be absolute faith that what the slab says is what the card is. With the level of expertise the graders possess, I think that this is a naive thought. PSA got where they are with wonderful marketing(and very little expertise), starting with the 8 Wagner which should not have been graded at all (David Hall was a coin guy, Bruce McNall was a coin guy, and the guy who graded it was a coin guy and 5 year baseball card veteran) through the piling up of just outrageous numbers because of that card. But they certainly didn't get there because of any expertise on cards. Slabbing cards is a tool for investors just as it was in coins, that has turned collectors into investors. If you can't look at a card and grade it(if the grade is of importance to you), then you shouldn't be collecting it, or I guess more appropriate in today's world, risking your financial future on it.