What's this SGC rumor????

[Big Ben]

Originally Posted by glchen

Again, I want to point out that I'm not picking on SGC, and PSA has tons of examples of doing this. However, this Magie that sold on ebay recently, doesn't this look like it should have been graded Authentic because of the writing on the front of the card, which looks like there was an attempted erasure? The original owner of the card listed this on ebay BST on the board, so he may know better, of course.

The other thing is that, and this is not really an overgrade, but more of a difference in grading philosophy, but SGC is much more lenient on diamond cuts than PSA IMHO. The Gehrig that was slabbed by SGC as 3, probably would have received an Authentic from PSA. Again, I can point out these two cards from SGC, and be shown 20 cards from PSA that have similar, if not worse, issues than these. No question that PSA needs to tighten up their grading consistency better.

I also have to say the ex-SGC employees are superb. When looking at the SGC board, it's crazy how much work Brian is still doing there. He doesn't even work for SGC anymore, and he's still answering forum questions, updating the SGC registry. That's dedication. I also had the recent experience working with Derek Grady on a consignment for Heritage. He was extremely pleasant and made the entire process for my first consignment to Heritage very smooth. Those beaters in the November Signature auction are mine! I haven't had a chance to work much with the new crop of SGC reps, but I do have a growing pile of cards that I'm preparing to send that way, and they have big shoes to fill.

This is one of my complaints with SGC. IMHO, SGC needs to establish a qualifier with their grading system. A couple of years ago, I purchased a 1941 Playball card that had four obvious glue marks on the back from when it was placed in a scrapbook. The card looks great on the front but the seller did not disclose a picture of the back during the auction. I did not complain as I won the auction with a good price. But, I was disappointed with SGC.

[spacktrack]

Originally Posted by Big Ben

This is one of my complaints with SGC. IMHO, SGC needs to establish a qualifier with their grading system. A couple of years ago, I purchased a 1941 Playball card that had four obvious glue marks on the back from when it was placed in a scrapbook. The card looks great on the front but the seller did not disclose a picture of the back during the auction. I did not complain as I won the auction with a good price. But, I was disappointed with SGC.

I'm not aware of any qualifier out there that denotes glue on the back of a card. If the card looked great on the front, but had glue on the back, I'm sure SGC graded it low (10-40 maybe) which would signify some other issue going on with the card.

[Robextend]

Originally Posted by Big Ben

This is one of my complaints with SGC. IMHO, SGC needs to establish a qualifier with their grading system. A couple of years ago, I purchased a 1941 Playball card that had four obvious glue marks on the back from when it was placed in a scrapbook. The card looks great on the front but the seller did not disclose a picture of the back during the auction. I did not complain as I won the auction with a good price. But, I was disappointed with SGC.

I am against the qualifier and I am glad SGC does not use one.

If I am buying any card from EBAY I want to see a scan of the back. PSA, SGC, raw...doesn't matter. If the card looked great on front and received a low grade from SGC, wouldn't you have to assume something is afoot with the back and request a back scan??

[Big Ben]

Originally Posted by Robextend

I am against the qualifier and I am glad SGC does not use one.

If I am buying any card from EBAY I want to see a scan of the back. PSA, SGC, raw...doesn't matter. If the card looked great on front and received a low grade from SGC, wouldn't you have to assume something is afoot with the back and request a back scan??

I assumed that there was something wrong with the card such as a wrinkle etc... (the card was a 1941 Playball SGC 40 Tommy Henrich and I won with a $10 bid so I wasn't too worried about getting a scan of the back) However, I did not assume that there would be glue stains on the back with that type of grade. The qualifier is one thing that I like about PSA so we will have to agree to disagree.

[Robextend]

Originally Posted by Big Ben

I assumed that there was something wrong with the card such as a wrinkle etc... (the card was a 1941 Playball SGC 40 Tommy Henrich and I won with a $10 bid so I wasn't too worried about getting a scan of the back) However, I did not assume that there would be glue stains on the back with that type of grade. The qualifier is one thing that I like about PSA so we will have to agree to disagree.

I hear ya, on very low dollar cards I sometimes don't need a back scan either.

I guess I wouldn't mind the qualifier so much, but I have seen so many examples of PSA adding a "OC" where IMO it really shouldn't have been warranted. Basically I would rather have an SGC 80 over an SGC 96 (OC). Just my preference, I understand the other side of it too.

[Big Ben]

Originally Posted by Robextend

I hear ya, on very low dollar cards I sometimes don't need a back scan either.

I guess I wouldn't mind the qualifier so much, but I have seen so many examples of PSA adding a "OC" where IMO it really shouldn't have been warranted. Basically I would rather have an SGC 80 over an SGC 96 (OC). Just my preference, I understand the other side of it too.

I understand where you are coming from. There are times in which I have purchased PSA cards with the "OC" qualifier on vintage HOF players as I really didn't mind the "OC" interpretation.

[alanu]

I used to not like the PSA qualifiers, but I've gotten to the point where the more information I have on why a card receives a grade the better. Sometime on SGC cards I don't know if it's been downgraded for marks, centering etc. Would like to see a "PL" (paper loss) qualifier too.

With that said, I like both PSA and SGC and have had really good customer service with both.

[peterose4hof]

I would like to point out that while it is true if you search "SGC" and "PSA" on Ebay, PSA has about 10 times more items (on average). However, if you refine your search to only including listings that are for pre-war baseball, which I believe is the focus of the majority of the collectors here, the ratio is only 2:1 in favor of PSA.