The BCCG problem

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Pat, just the opposite is true. Nobody has added more confustion to the marketplace than PSA. Go look at the very first issue of Beckett. It came out years before PSA was ever in business. In that magazine, there is a 5 point grading scale with a definition for each grade - Fair, Good, Very Good, Excellent and Mint.

Notice you don't see Poor, VG/EX, EX/MT, NM, NM-MT, etc. There were only 5 grades and the system worked. Then came PSA and they told us we've been doing it wrong and that there were 10 grades. BULL$HIT!

Sorry, but PSA didn't invent VG/EX, EX/MT, NM, NM/MT.

Those were around long before the TPA's.

Beckett never fit those grades in their "Price Guides", because the font would be too small, and the price research would be too daunting, the publication landscape being what it was in those days.

Dealers used them all the time.

I will also add, back in those earlier days and being a weekend warrior doing shows all the time...........I never once used the term MINT, to describe a card.

I'd use NM or even NM/MT, but there was always some sort of bug in my head that made me tell myself a true MINT piece of cardboard coming out of a pack of gum, was inherently impossible.

Maybe I was just being silly, I don't know.