A New Idea for Grading Photographic Cards

[Leon]

Good discussion guys. We had this discussion a few times before but it seems no grading company wants to take the first step (or maybe they are just against it for any number of reasons).

Jimmy - with enough drink tickets I think anything and everything will be discussed at the Dinner .

[novakjr]

I believe that the photo quality is already considered in the psa standards.. I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think it relates to the grade the same as the photo does on standard cards.. Here's some excerpts from the psa website where picture is mentioned.

NM 7: Near Mint-"Picture focus may be slightly out-of-register"
EX-MT 6: Excellent-Mint-"Picture focus may be slightly out-of-register."
EX 5: Excellent-"Focus of picture may be slightly out-of-register."
VG 3: Very Good-"Focus may be somewhat off-register"
FR 1.5: Fair-"The picture will possibly be quite out-of-register"

Using these stages as a guide, I'd say that the PSA 5 Wright that got all of this rolling, would subjectively fall to a 3(at best) if graded properly. As far as high quality cards with a bad photo, I believe that would fall under the OF(out of focus) qualifier... I could see that card possibly getting a 5(OF).**Ignoring the possible trim**

The problem here isn't that there's not a system to take the photo quality into account. The problem is that there's been no consistency in applying the system that is already in place..