Can another grading company thrive?

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Posted By: barrysloate

Eye appeal is subjective but grading is objective.

While that is ostensibly true, in practice grading is far from objective. If it were, cards being resubmitted would rarely or ever get a bump to a higher grade. I think it's been proven that grading is too subjective, so why not take eye appeal into account?

I'm not suggesting that technical factors be excluded, but that a little common sense be applied when evaluating them. My pet peeve has been how Old Judges are graded; do you think collectors prefer square corners and a light photo, or rounded corners and perfect clarity? That is a situation where graders have to bend the rules a little bit.

I would certainly like to see grading become a lot more objective. I would like to see it reach the point where resubmitting a card results in virtually no grade bumps, so that that practice becomes obsolete. I don't blame the resubmitters for continually sending their cards back, as they have clearly discovered a loophole in the system. Grading is in fact too subjective and that is not good.

Imagine a college student who hands in a paper, gets a grade of C, asks the teacher to look at it again, then gets a C+, then asks the teacher to take one last look, and this time gets a B. It sounds ludicrous, but this is what happens a little too often with baseball cards.