Yet Another Grading Issue

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Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

Interesting thread. A few points.

First, as you said, simply assume the grades will come back on average 1-2 notches lower. Maybe on a few you'll get lucky (the card will have been properly graded or even undergraded), and maybe on a few you'll be unlucky (the card will have been overgraded by more than 1-2 levels), but at least you will have bid with your eyes wide open.

Second, the overgrading of raw cards by auction houses for the most part reflects simply the puffery that goes on in auction descriptions in general. (In saying this I do not refer to isolated cases of sloppiness -- missing, say, a minor crease that had it been noticed would have resulted in the card's description being downgraded.) Is overgrading raw cards really that different than describing something as being rarer or more historically important than it really is, or describing a poster's colors or a photo's contrast as being brighter or crisper than in reality it is? That kind of stuff goes on all the time, and that is why people are well-advised to use auction descriptions as rough guides generated by auction houses that are hardly impartial in their descriptions.

Third, in my view the best way for some corrective measures to happen is to name names. There's nothing like widely disseminated negative publicity to get businesses to mend their ways. With graded cards it is easy because there is no quibbling about what the truth is. If a card is graded excellent and then comes back a "2", then its pretty cut and dried how materially overgraded the card was.