Grading opinion
tennesseebanker
Posts: 5,433 ✭✭✭
I have a 56 topps mantle that i bought raw off E-Bay, The corners are fairly nice probably a psa 5 or 6, The edges are the same centering is perfect as wella s the back. The problem is with those dreaded surface creases, The card has about three which are not visible looking straight at the card but when held at an angle in light they can be seen. My question is how much does PSA usually demote a card for surface creases ?? The card without the surface creases would at least grade a psa 5. Would they demote it to a 4 or 3 or even worse?? I heard they are pretty strict on surface creaeses. Thanks for any and all of your opinions............
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Comments
From the specs I see the highest grade that allows for a crease would be a 4.
"A light crease may be visible."
Higher than 4 they mention only light scratches or surface wear.
Not an expert, but I'm sure they will weigh in to help.
Keith
Say for example the Mantle comes back in a PSA 3, Would there be enough demand to trade my PSA 3 and cash for a PSA 5??
Mantle and this one had a good Bin price, So I bought it figuring I could return it if I didnt like it. Well it came and I didnt like it. And I e-mail the guy and tried to return it. he e-mailed me back and said that he would not accept a return and offered a ridicoulous price if i wanted to send it back. So I just kept the darn thing, and chalked it up to a lesson learned. oh by the way I paid 300 for it. Which wasnt that bad of a screwin I dont guess. Could have been worse.
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that 2 doesnt sound so bad afterall now does it?
I say this because I too bought a RAW card off ebay touted by a decent seller as ex to ex/mnt..........2 minor creases on the back of the card seen only at an angle brought my 48 J Robby rookie to a PSA 2 it is though a nice looking card non the less and prolly the nicest 2 one will ever see. I had hoped for a 3 or 4 even with the sellers claim of it being ex-ex/mnt.
edited to add my seller in this case sells mainly graded cards, is a seller's asst etc. when i emailed him (before i bidded) why this card isnt graded, his reply was that he was selling it under the sellers asst thingy.
1) Take it out of the screw down and measure it... if it's more than 1/32 of an inch smaller than 2 5/8 x 3 3/4 in either direction, they won't grade it.
2) Take it out of any type of protective container and look at it under a black light in a dark room... this will allow you to check for alterations. You'll notice them easily if it's been altered, they stand out like a sore thumb under a black light.
3) Look closely at the surface of the front and back of the card under 10x magnification to look for recoloring. These are much more likely to be present on cards with colored borders, so I wouldn't be overly concerned on a '56, but it's worth 2-3 minutes to scan the surface to see if there are any. Under 10x magnification, they are easy to detect if there are any present.
4) It doesn't sound like the authenticity of the card is in question, but if it were an issue (I'm not certain if the 56 Mantle has a well-known counterfeit copy), you can check that rather easily just by looking for solid ink printing of the text & borders on the front of the card. The majority of the time, if a card is a counterfeit, those solid areas will appear in half-tone printing (a bunch of tiny dots).
Hope this helps. I do this to every one of my cards prior to buying them and/or sending them in. Very seldom do I ever get rejects.