9s and 10s
PaulMaul
Posts: 4,875 ✭✭✭✭✭
I understand cards being tough in high grade. But how do you explain the difference between these cards? Coincidence? Given that nice 9s and 10s are nearly indistinguishable, these results for three cards from the same 1972 baseball set (when the politics of stars are not even involved) seem impossible to explain.
0
Comments
I can't speak because of a lot of experience with the set, but when I was chasing the Killebrew "In Action" card, a local dealer mentioned the "IA" cards were very often mis-cut and on a tilt.
Since then I have kind of kept my eye out for the Killebrew In Action and very often this is the case.
The examples of the cards with no 10's could be because they are often just enough off-center to keep them from being 10's?
Several cards in this set with 200 or so submissions and zero or one 10 grade.
Centering is always the distinguishing factor between low-pop 9s and 0 10s.
Usually it is because of tilt issues or where the card was positioned on the original sheet.
I'm thinking that a couple of 10's are sitting in 9 holders on those two cards. Depending on the value of the card I would try to crack one out and send it in for grading. But on the higher valued 9's, I would be afraid to crack it out. Knowing my luck it would come back an 8.
I understand why a card would have no 10s. What I don’t understand is why another card like the Keough would have half as many 9s and then have twelve 10s 🤷♂️
Grading is not a science.....it's an opinion as we know. The phrase "grader of death" comes to mind.
I just went through about 8,000-9000 cards from the 1987 set. I was bored sitting at home and got a good price on some wax, vending and rack. Realizing the need for 10's in modern cards, I figured that getting three different types of unopened would give me a better chance.
Some cards were almost always well centered and some were almost always off center. I ended up with 12 Barry Bonds' and maybe one is worth sending in, on the other hand, I have about 8 Bo Jackson's that have a good chance at a top grade.
Since I am from Minnesota, I was looking for a nice Puckett. Not only did I only get about 1/2 as many Kirby's as the other players NONE were centered enough to submit with any chance of a 10.
1987 also has some cards that almost always have print spots. when you get a card like that, it makes the well centered ones even more hard to find.
Not nearly as many commons sent in from 1987, but a LOT of the cards that were submitted got 10's. Sometimes even _more than half of the total sent in got 10's! __**The aforementioned Bonds card sits at .097% 1301 10's out of a whopping 14,000 submitted.
Jim Rice was at .62% 87 out of 140 submitted got 10's!
We've all heard of cards that were plagued with an issue or two. When you're talking about a set as old as 1972 you've got to be talking about a pool of potential candidates so small that any card that was plagued with an issue could have no surviving relatives. I don't think [difficulty in acquiring 9] has as much causality in [difficulty in acquiring 10] as we think.
Cards could be plagued with an issue that bring 10 candidates down to 8s, 10 candidates down to 9s, multiple issues that could bring a card down to either depending on the combination and severity, there's virtually no limit to what causes a card to not get a gem mint 10 grade. Those variables are not universal across a set and I don't think you can make correlations with such small sample sizes. Just my $0.02.
Arthur
People make mistakes, and grading (especially centering) can be subjective. PSA does a great, but not perfect job.
Certain aspects of grading could be perfected, but how much do you want to spend to get your card in a holder?
I used to operate a machine that scanned circuit boards, It could be calibrated to measure centering, tilt, size and even surface imperfections. Something like this is going to cost money and slow down the process. With all the constant whining here on turnaround times, how would you feel about it taking longer and costing more to grade your cards?
I have had cards come back unslabbed as "miscut" and upon resubmitting they came back as 8s.
Going somewhat off topic, people even bitch about the population report being inaccurate. Why? Because collectors don't send in the old labels and have the cards population "fixed". How is this anyone's fault but the collector?
People need to accept that the grading process is imperfect and until someone can figure out how to improve it without raising prices and turnaround times, that's what we've got.
Don't get me wrong, I have a card that should be an 8.5 that PSA has told me twice is a 7. Am I frustrated? Yes.
A savvy collector can select a harshly graded card and get the bump on review or crackout. I have no problem with that if the grade is legit. That's part of collecting and as long as grading is done by human beings and not by computer an aspect like eye appeal is going to be subjective to a certain extent. If you post a raw card here and ask for a grade opinion, chances are there will be at least a 2-grade range among the opinions. That said, turning an 8 into a 10 is a tough task. It should not be assumed that 2-grade bumps in either direction are commonplace.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
Keep in mind, a lot of those "this used to be X but now it's X+2!" may have seen a brief detour between when they got cracked out of their X slab and when they got sent back in and got put in their X+2 slab.
Arthur
Some probably get shaved. I am thinking most just get the "bump".
On rare but certainly true occasions, some of those bumps are due to mech error on the grading portion of the label. I had a pre-war card I knew would be an 8. It came back a 5. I cracked and resubbed, and it came back an 8 on the second time through. I'll chalk it up to a keystroke error at PSA since the 5 is just below the 8 on the number pad, but I've seen more than a few confirmed mech error grades out there.