Thoughts on grading

[tiger8mush]

There have been many stories of graded cards getting resubmitted and receiving a new grade. I bet a good portion of grading companies' income comes from cards that were previously graded. Thats the problem with grading ... its so subjective.

I believe there was a member who posted a story on here a year or two ago about a card that he submitted MANY times (like 15 or 20 times) to the same grading company, and almost every time it came back a different grade. He posted the results and everything, and the grades ranged from Authentic to EX/MT or something.

The grading companies must love it when you spend $x to submit a card, get it back and feel it was graded too low, then send it back in along with another $x to get it REGRADED. As long as they 'bump' a certain small % of the resubmitted cards, it'll give collectors hope that their cards will get a bump, so they will do it.

A grade of "2" can mean so many things. Maybe it has a teeny tiny amount of paperloss in an inconspicuous area? Maybe the card has a tiny tear? Maybe its very dirty, or multiple creases, maybe grossly OC? I think BVG had the right idea years ago when it put 4 subgrades on the card, for centering, surface, corners, and edges. The overall grade didn't mean much, but at least with the subgrades you could get a better understanding WHY it received the overall grade. The overall grade means so little unless you can state WHY it received that grade. I think thats one way the grading companies could improve. Of course, we can all submit our graded cards and pay another $x to have each one graded when that system comes out, and we'll still have the same cards we started with except less money

Rob