If the internet thinks every card is over or under graded why bother?
beachbumcollecting
Posts: 461 ✭✭✭
Discussing cards has aleays been fun for me but recently it seems 50% of the discusssions are that a card is over or under graded . That grading is too tough or too easy. and it's not from just new collectors, I see experienced collectors jumping on the bandwagon. so why do we bother? personally for me , all it does is drive people from the hobby with the constant complaining.
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If I wanted to put together a mid grade 1972 baseball set and not worry so much about condition details, I probably wouldn’t bother with graded cards. The whole point of graded cards is to establish condition norms and adhere to them consistently. That is what purchasers of graded cards and submitters of cards are looking for.
People tend to complain when something is important to them. When people over many years have come to expect a PSA 9 they buy to appear a certain way, or a card they submit to receive a certain grade, and that stops consistently happening, they get upset.
There are lots of mishandled graded cards which could be resubmitted and likely receive a lower grade. Also exposure to light can affect a cards grade for the worse.
It's generally when a card is graded which has good centering, no edge/corner wear to the naked eye, and it receives a 8 when the concensus of people on a board like this would say it's no less than a 9.
Since we are moving forward with technology, and competitors are providing better grade reports, the expectation is changing.
This is a turning point since we are progressing through the information age.
You aren't wrong that complaints are on the rise but there are periods like this where some believe the service isn't meeting their expectation. I don't agree that it is driving people away from the hobby but it surely is impacting people's decision to get memorabilia graded during this crossroads. Of course there are always people jumping on and off the bandwagon at any given moment.
There are plenty of posts where people are happy with their grades but, like anything, people are often more likely to post feedback when they are unhappy instead of happy with the result of something based on their expectations.
I received a couple 10s that I felt were a 9. So do I ask for them to lower these cards or complain that they were over-graded? I expect people are buying cards based on the condition they see and not solely on what the label on the slab says. The grading method is using 100% human judgment and none of us is perfect.
I collect cards for the pure enjoyment of it and not for financial purposes, I'm all set with high grade cards and trying to gouge people when selling them because that's the name of the game for a lot of people who sell high grade cards.
This is why I collect lower graded well centered cards with soft corner wear and I thoroughly enjoy them much more knowing that I dont have big money invested in them and they are more than likely not altered
Just my 2 cents
It all comes down to what you enjoy. I have already owned complete sets of all the cards I am interested in when I was 9-13 years old. The only thing I find enjoyable anymore is finding really nice cards and building a set that is really attractive (to me). Graded cards are only a means to that end, I am equally happy with really nice raw cards, they are just hard to find. And it has nothing to do with investing or value.
I love this approach to collecting!
Well said!
Live long, and prosper.
The level of complaining, in my view, at least, is really not that much different today than it was a decade or more ago. People back then were saying the same exact things about the G.O.D., 4SC conspiracies, etc. It's just that right now there's a lot more money at stake and (I think) a lot more people collecting, which is an overall good thing for the hobby as it has certainly become more mainstream over that span of time. One thing I will say, however, simply based on my own experience, is that it is far more difficult today to get PSA 10s than it was years ago. I can still effectively predict 9s, but 10s just don't seem to be forthcoming in recent years, maybe due to all the modern cards going through PSA these days which may have created a rather unrealistic notion of what a gem mint card should exhibit when dealing with vintage cardboard stock.
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.
I was going to pose this question in the other thread myself.
If everyone is 'buying the card, not the holder', and 7's are in 9 holders, and 4's should be in 7 holders, what is the point?
And it's not like the "complaining" hasn't been warranted on some occasions.
Complaining and criticizing are 2 different things.
One can still be a PSA/TPG supporter, but also be critical when he feels something doesn't appear right.
A company can brush off the complainer as just whiners who think every one of their cards are 10s, or it can take a hard look and ask themselves why are so many being critical of the inconsistencies of grading.
Is it preferred that everyone should just be silent?
Honestly I don't think PSA has a problem with their true fan base giving their 2 cents. It seems like grading specials and other changes partially come from listening to the forums and not shutting it down. I will consider myself a newbie on this forum for a couple years yet but I like how they conduct the business with all the pendulum swings (staffing when nobody wants to work, volume of cards submitted, what specials and membership prices to offer, etc.).
In life you can't make everyone happy without giving away the farm.
About the only thing I've disliked are the members who are grinding at the bit to get a "lol" from poking fun at other members. One person in particular was under my skin but I quickly realized the new generation of internet users are all about trying to rub salt in a person's wounds while trying to get looks in their fancy cars with big rims and never having anything to back up their mouth. They want to believe they are high rollers when they are still up and comers but haven't actually looked in the mirror to see the person staring back at them either lives on credit or is still in their parents basement.
I don't get the love for PSA and hate for BGS. I like the sub grades, they let me see how the card was evaluated and derived the final grade. Seems more subjective without the sub grades.
I collect a lot of autos... and I do prefer a 10 auto. In fact, I would take a card with an 8 or 9 grade and an auto grade of 10 over a 10 with an auto grade of 8 or 9. The auto is the athletes contribution and the most valuable part to me.
Wonder if they will ever apply a separate 'relic' grade?
Paul Maul is 💯 % correct.
Forum members on ignore
Erba - coolstanley-dallasactuary-SDsportsfan
daltex
I got off the grading train a few years ago and am enjoying the hobby more then ever. Still buy graded cards, respect the TPG's, and will likely grade again. But for now, couldn't care less about card grades or the registry. Get a huge kick out of viewing a mint HOF RC in a CS1 and really don't sweat what some dude at a TPG thinks about that card, reality is I know the issues I collect better then any grader that is going to render judgement on my cards.
And if/when grading makes sense again, I will have about a thousand cards ready to go lol.
Edit - answered above
The Beckett holders are my favorite. Beckett should have maintained their subs. That really set them apart. If so much easier to sell a John Elway 9, if the centering on the card says 10. You will get a premium and you should. And their auto deal is good too.
Perhaps the top grading companies can come together and offer an new premium service to the public, a multi-grader grade, where the same card gets graded by multiple grading companies, and each company puts their grade on the new shared slab. Then, you'll know exactly where each company stands on the card.
I wouldn't mind having a card that has 3 10 grades on it (PSA 10, BGS 10, SGC 10).
PSA damages my cards within their one facility, having said cards transition through THREE separate careless facilities would pretty much guarantee every card would be pooched. What started as a 10 would be a dinged, dented, scratched, creased and greased total mess...
Interesting concept but how disappointed does one become when the last company puts a 9 on it? How many resubmissions do you attempt and how costly does it become?
My wife and I had a talk last night about the business case to ensuring the population of 10s stays reasonable and the MANY advantages to controlling it. If you don't see it then you're simply not looking.
The "internet" doesn't think EVERY card is over or under graded.
Thankfully, every correctly graded card doesn't get posted, only the ones that confuse people.
Why bother?
Many reasons, if you don't like graded cards, don't submit them, or by them, lots of people are happy with collections of ungraded items.
For context roughly 95% of my graded collection is PSA and was graded prior to 2019 and the explosion.
Respectfully I am not sure which Forum you are reading when you say 50% of the discussions are that a card is over or under graded. That's just not accurate, roughly 90% of them are about being under graded. What should we do sit back and watch our cards continue to be overly scrutinized by the new graders PSA has hired the last 3 years? If we don't voice our concerns how will change ever take place? The data is out there and it's alarming, If someone had the nerve to crack out 20 of their graded PSA cards in the older flips and send them in to be graded it would be a blood bath.
I do agree we have a choice and we can just accept it or go elsewhere. I myself will never just accept it because that's not how I live my life.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
This is the curse of knowledge, or the idea that we tend to take things for granted once we’re more informed. I still remind myself to view the service this way .
1) Authenticity - You know your card is legit. If you’re on this board, maybe you don’t need this aspect but it offers piece of mind to someone who is inexperienced when they send their cards in.
2) Protection - The card is better protected. It is framed nicely and safe from harm. It is added to a registry of certification where you can see population and condition data. Try to bend an empty card saver in half with gentle pressure between thumb and forefinger then do the same to a TPG holder. Plus, the ID label that explains what you’re looking at; you don’t need that either but some do.
3) Opinion of Condition - The condition of the cardboard is important and you want to know what you are getting inside the slab. Prior to grading, you had people with massive disagreement on how to evaluate a card and this made it harder to deal. Even now, we all know how to grade. Ask 10 people on a city street to grade a card and see how many can (and the looks you get and how many people repeat your query…”Grade it? What do you mean?” 😂). This is the part where is seasoned collectors take the biggest issue - the grade.
We can easily forget that there was a time…
However, even after all that, it is still up to the collector to decide when the technical grade does not reflect a cards beauty properly - one way or the other. And again, it’s a personal aesthetic - many like corners, others centering, others color saturation and others, still, image quality - and some highest graded examples. Then, we also end up seeking affirmation from our peers: everyone likes getting a compliment on their cards, especially when they are reeling from what they feel may be an unfavorable assessment or an exorbitant purchase. That is just human nature, I think.
Curious about the rare, mysterious and beautiful 1951 Wheaties Premium Photos?
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/987963/1951-wheaties-premium-photos-set-registry#latest
At least now there's something to talk about. What do you see people talking about other than this?
I follow a few sports card groups on Facebook. People talk about what products to crack for profit. Sometimes people talk ask if they should have their childhood cards graded or not. Or cards they got from their dad. People talk about the downfall of prospects. Most common question is probably, "How do I sell my cards?" Or, "Where other than eBay can I sell my cards." Often people talk about who is a scammer. Or who is charging too much. Or, "Check out this fake card for sale."
I think card collecting is a pretty solitary hobby for the most part.
Someone robbed my house in 2018. They stole cards, coins and comics. My watch too. It's probably not a good idea to talk about your collection too much. Not anywhere where anyone knows who you are anyway. I heard a statistic just a couple years ago. The average house has $7000 worth of stuff in it. That number is probably exaggerated too. Like Beckett. They say your TV is worth $X. But, how hard is it to find the full book buyer for your used TV? Need TV grading service. They can wrap it in logo shrink with a grade on it before you post it on Craigslist. I actually do like cards. It just reads like I don't most of the time.
A lot of people posting on Facebook seem to me to think that cards are similar to cash. "What is my card worth?" get's asked a lot. Are you planning on insuring it? Maybe you should try to sell it. I know. It's the ahole response. "What app do I use to value my collection?" is another one. Maybe someone should write an app that actually sells your collection for you. Maybe it exists. Buy list app? Or an app that lets people post offers. Like an offer auction. You don't have to post your card for sale. You can see what kind of bounty it has though. Want list app. It would be interesting if the numbers in Beckett were actually what Beckett was paying.
I agree. My response isn't really on topic with the OP statement but in response to your post (and I highly respect your opinion and agree with you), there are the occasional times where a holder arrives cracked (not from PSA to me but from the Loupe transaction and ebay transactions), seemingly misguided (sent 20 future starts which looked like there were multiple 10s and got only 1), and other members have had air bubbles (or other issues) which passed inspection and customer service was not quite efficient at responding and there is no priority given for customers who already paid for the service and had to wait months once before and will be waiting longer the second time while taking more risk of being cracked and corrected.
Many grade with PSA because they have been told to use PSA from a personal reference, because the market shows the cards are worth more than if they get a similar grade by another grading company, or because of past experiences from years ago.
I think that the big TPG'ers get it right the great majority of the time. Keep in mind, we are only hearing the complaints, either from buyers or sellers. The vast majority are not coming on and complaining about their cards grade. I believe that between the 4 big graders, they must be processing somewhere around 1.5MM cards per month.
If we are only hearing about a few hundred out of that huge total on social media each month, we are looking at, what, .0003 of the total amount graded? I would call that fantastically consistent.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
They might be grading 1.5 mil cards a month. But, most of that is modern stuff right out of the pack. Cards that really don't and probably never will matter. Except in a 10.
There is a ton of inconsistency in vintage card grading.
In pics on the internet you can't even see the cards well enough to say what grade they are anyway. Everybody is assuming there's nothing wrong that they can't see.
If gemrate numbers are correct, PSA is grading about 1-1.25 million per month in 2023.
PSA has been grading more TCG cards than baseball, football, and basketball cards COMBINED.
Prior 7 days: TCG(103k), baseball (41k), football, (25k), basketball (21k)
Just watched a Youtube vid where a guy submitted a modern card he thought was perfect and PSA graded it a 6.
He cracked it out and resubbed and it returned a 5 !
He cracked it out again and sent it to Beckett, and it came back a true gem 9.5 with all 4 subgrades being 9.5
All the comments were bashing PSA, because of course, the higher grade given by Beckett is the "correct grade" that everyone would want, right?
So which grade is really correct? Did PSA give an unreasonably strict grade....twice? Or did BGS miss something?
I would think one should be able to tell if a card is EX vs. Gem Mint?
^^^
So, at those numbers on baseball of 41K/month I wonder how many of those are vintage compared to Modern. My (complete) guess is that at least 75% are going to be modern. If so, then graders are hardly seeing any vintage if you spread that across all the folks doing the grading there.
No wonder their standards are all over the place and completely inconsistent. PSA is NOT doing themselves any favors with how this has played out since they re-opened. I already know collectors who've changed over to other grading companies and it's all over social media too. I just want them back and consistent because I have way too much tied up with them.
IMHO the first step is to do a snapshot audit on all of the graders to see which graders are the toughest. I would be willing to bet the majority of the toughest graders are newly hired as graders within the last 3 years.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
That 41k was for the last 7 days, not month.
For the last month it was TCG (486k), baseball (234k), football (158k), basketball (121k).
Based on those numbers above, you have to wonder what a guy that is grading Magic cards knows about 74 OPC hockey. That might explain all the sheet cut, clean edge vintage OPC cards I'm seeing in new slabs.
So, roughly 28,000 baseball a month. When you take out the modern and spread the rest over all the folks doing the grading then they just don't see that many vintage to develop an eye. Then when you account for the variation in finish/surface on cards from the 20s to the 80s then that's a very wide range of things to know while grading.
There have to be different standards from vintage to modern. Otherwise, vintage will be the ones to suffer in the grading. Throw in inexperience and that opens up the possibility of more variation.
Or you can just have everyone use modern as the standard and everyone who subs vintage gets hosed, finds a more attuned grading company and PSA loses market share.
PSA losing vltye vintage market is likely going to have no effect on their bottom line. How many vintage cards are there left to grade compared to modern and card games?
At some point there will need to be a premium paid for such services when demand drops. Maybe the day will come when an individual markets himself as "The Guy with the Vintage Eye" and charges a decent rate as a one stop shop. Obviously there will need to be some additional help to process payment, ship, etcetera but it may come to be that the vintage grader is known by name and not by big company with Joe Blow nobody knows.
PSA grading more TCG than sports surprises me. Because, there aren't a lot of TCG cards worth grading. Unlike sports, you know pretty much exactly how good a card is from the moment it's released. When they make powerful stuff it hurts the game. They made some of the most powerful Magic cards ever in 2019-2020. It's going to be difficult for the developers to keep the game interesting. The thing is, Hasbro is going to try to sell cards by milking the recognizable brand name. Hasbro says that Magic the Gathering is their first billion dollar brand.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me that the vast majority of really good new Magic cards never make it in to a pack.
Pokemon is a very popular brand name too. I don't think the CCG is really as popular as the hype might imply. With the amount of Magic content I take in, I would think I would see crossover. I don't see any. I watched coverage of some very important Pokemon tournament within the past year. It didn't look anything like a big Magic tournament. It looked like an advertisement.
If there is a really good, competitive, CCG being played these days, I haven't heard about it.
Again, according to gemrate:
Cards graded All time (top 5 to date)
Charizard is on pace to pass Jordan
Michael Jordan.....1,258,833
Charizard..............1,060,099
Pikachu....................684,150
Ken Griffey Jr...........682,652
Lebron James..........566,607
Dang, Lebrons gotta step it up and get past Pikachu.
Sonic the Hedgehog only has pop around 100. I wonder what Mario's pop is at.
Not likely to happen. 10x as many Pikachu cards are graded vs Lebron cards.
Pikachus were the #1 graded card the past 2 weeks, roughly 11K-12K per week.
I wonder what PSA's system of grading is. Are there grading specialists? Vintage, modern, ultra-modern? Are there TCG specialists? or do all cards just go to whichever grader is up next?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Wow , that's crazy.
I know it’s my own selfish perspective, but all of the Pokémon cards being graded is what heralded the end of PSA’s “good old days.”
One story I heard was that each card gets looked at by two "regular" graders. They get a ridiculously short amount of time to inspect, 30 seconds(?).
If they agree on the grade, it moves on to the next step, if they disagree, a "senior" grader looks it over and makes the call.
Because of multiple reasons, I am pretty much done with submitting my cards. I have some bottle caps I want to grade, but not at $75.00 each (not even sure if that's the fee). If I buy any more cards, I'll buy already graded or raw and be happy with what I pick up as is.
I had plenty of enjoyment collecting before card graders came along, it's just not worth the money and frustration any longer.
I thought the CGC grading company was going to be where the industry directed the flow of TCG cards. Not CSG, but the other one. I guess that didn't go so well. Their labels were real ugly.