An independent certification body for premium quality within the grade?

[steve B]

I'm not sure about making calls on a card already in a slab. It can be done, but I'm not certain if it can be done reliably and profitably. The comment posted elsewhere about 15 min/card makes me think the price wouldn't make it practical for most cards.

But

Besides the group doing something with slabbed coins the stamp hobby has a fine tradition of expert certificates, some more reliable than others (Slabbing was tried by PSAs stamp division and has been a failure) And it's typical for some higher value stamps to come accompanied by multiple certificates.

I do think there's room in the grading business for a premium service. Not merely slabbed with a somewhat arbitrary number assigned, but a truly premium service that would slab -Or perhaps not slab, or review while in a slab, and supply a detailed written report. Expensive and time consuming certainly, but for very expensive cards it might be worthwhile. Such a service could also use a registry that allowed multiple companies cards to be entered, lowering the need for crossing over and the risks that brings.

Most other mature hobbies have fairly comprehensive national clubs that provide a number of services - magazine, authentication/grading, group rate insurance and educational. Compared to stamps and coins the card hobby is like herding cats.

Steve Birmingham
And just for clarity- I collect both slabbed and unslabbed, but can't see the point of slabbing vg or lower commons from common sets.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by steve B

I'm not sure about making calls on a card already in a slab. It can be done, but I'm not certain if it can be done reliably and profitably. The comment posted elsewhere about 15 min/card makes me think the price wouldn't make it practical for most cards...

I do think there's room in the grading business for a premium service. Not merely slabbed with a somewhat arbitrary number assigned, but a truly
Most other mature hobbies have fairly comprehensive national clubs that provide a number of services - magazine, authentication/grading, group rate insurance and educational. Compared to stamps and coins the card hobby is like herding cats.

Steve Birmingham

I don't disagree with you at all, Steve. I just wanted to throw this one out there because I was interested in what the responses would be. I particularly like the "herding cats" analogy. The coin hobby really came to be organized in the late 1850's, giving it about a 130 year head start on cards, and my study of the former has led me to conclude that we have already gone through many of the same trends as coins did, with more to follow. IMO, cards are catching up quite quickly with coins insofar as hobby maturity is concerned.

I do have a persistent feeling that Kevin Saucier, or someone very much like him, is going to have a prominent place in our hobby. Most likely, as you have indicated, that place will be with reference to the higher end cards, as the 15 minute interval for examining a slabbed card for alterations would seem to preclude a volume-type operation, unless he was to train and employ others to perform the same service under his direction.

With regard to David's comment that the registry has ruined the hobby, I would disagree in part and agree in part. The registry competition has raised the prices for high grade commons to absolutely absurd levels that cannot be sustained in the long run, IMO, but then again, I don't collect sets, so that has little impact on my collecting of stars and HOF'ers. On the other hand, those who compete to put together the highest graded sets for registry purposes seem to be much less inclined to buy and hold the cards they acquire for long periods of time, as the dedicated collector, or connosieur is likely to do. Instead, once the registry set guys have achieved their objective, the set is more likely than not put up for auction and broken up into its component parts once again. That means that the available supply of highly graded stars and HOF'ers is higher than it would be if these cards were to disappear into private collections for decades at a time, leading to lower prices than would be the case had they fallen into the clutches of dedicated collectors such as myself, who usually hate to sell a long sought-after card.

Thanks to Dan Markel for his input here--I've often thought that this forum was like an interactive, nearly unlimited hobby magazine, an extremely valuable resource. To me, the contributions from the members are valuable because the more information you have, the better decisions you are likely to make in your own hobby choices, a far more valuable function than to attempt to use it to prove a point (although I've been guilty of that, from time to time).

Thanks to all who contributed,

Larry