Diamond Cuts and grading companies

[TanksAndSpartans]

Hi All,

I mostly post on the football forum, but I wanted to post this question on the main board to get more traffic.

This may be a sample size issue as I don't have a huge collection of graded (my experience is with PSA) cards, but my diamond cut cards are graded low. I can think of 2 types of diamond cut cards - one type is where the card itself isn't "square" and the other type is where the image within a basically "square" card isn't square. In terms of shapes, I would say I have cards that are parallelograms and cards that are rectangles containing images that are parallelograms.

I can think of a few diamond cut cards in particular such that the diamond cut is the main condition issue in my opinion, yet the grades are in the PSA 4 range. I always assumed the grade largely reflected the diamond cut. Yet I've been seeing diamond cut cards recently that aren't downgraded to that low level at all. And when you read the PSA grading standards, I can't find anyplace where the term "diamond cut" is even used.

A few questions - would appreciate any answers or opinions:

Has anyone ever talked to one of the grading companies about this diamond cut issue? (In theory if its not defined as an issue, then a diamond cut card could receive a perfect grade, right?)

Do people think this is a grading factor, just not documented?

Would people consider this issue different than centering? In my mind it has to be because I can visualize (kind of) an image within a card such that the image's edges are everywhere equidistant from the card's edges i.e. perfect centering despite the fact the card itself isn't square. For the case of a square card, I think I can also imagine a diamond centered within the square.

Finally, this isn't a complete theoretical post - I have a card I'm thinking about resubmitting..... Thanks for any replies.