PWCC now with a 2nd sticker...

If PWCC offers to assess a card and sticker it for the consignor to keep or sell (both) then the purple sticker company goes out of business and PWCC makes a lot of money beyond stickering the auctioned ones.

Send me a couple royalties some day. xD

If people weren't stupid salesman would never lie.

"We are not graders and trust in TPG assessments."

"Here is our grading system to in effect grade the TPG assessments."

If putting a sticker on a holder causes a potential buyer to look more closely at a card than he/she would have, the seller has already achieved a "win".

There's plenty of examples of cards that appear to be undergraded (as well as overgraded) so I don't see a problem with a sticker that says this is correctly graded, but nicer than other cards with the same grade. They are not going to send them back to get reviewed unless there's a big upside if the card gets a bump.

Ralph, I have always liked the 1-100 grading system, but I have come to believe that it would actually make for even more complaints. "WHAT, my 88 looks better than your 93!"

My dad was a bread delivery driver. He used to have little round red/orange stickers that simply said "Special". To increase sales on a particular type of bread they would sometime put these stickers on the packages. Nothing special about the bread, but used occasionally it sold more bread.

Nothing new here, simply an effective sales strategy.

I am wondering if they might next cull out their overgraded cards that aren't selling, drop the price a bit and put a sticker on them saying they were a great deal for the registry/buytheholdernotthecard guys. "Improve your set rating at a bargain" sale.

if you've ever sent a card to Oregon and had it slapped with the HE tag (i've had a handful), then this evolution should come as no surprise

gimmicky? that argument could be made. a boon to multiple parties? there's no arguing that.

@HighGradeLegends said:

@waxman2745 said:
What training does PWCC have to grade cards? They are taking cards that are already graded and essentially grading them again. It sounds like PWCC is an FPG (Fourth Party Grader).

This.

I'm sure to them they consider it a marketing gimmick. They would use a different word than gimmick but it is what it is.

PWCC is not grading the graders.

They're really just applying the DM23HOF test to cards.

"This one looks nice".... "this one looks really nice". It's not particularly hard to do, especially when you see lots of examples of the same cards in hand day after day.

I understand your point. If I point out a card as being a terrible example of a PSA 9, no one really cares because it carries no weight. If PWCC did it I imagine it would be a problem. But of course it won’t happen because there’s no money to be made trashing a card, only by puffing it up.

As a consignor I'm all for it.

@ReggieCleveland said:

@1970s said:

@waxman2745 said:
What training does PWCC have to grade cards? They are taking cards that are already graded and essentially grading them again. It sounds like PWCC is an FPG (Fourth Party Grader).

Did PSA have to give PWCC permission to do this ? PSA goes after people legally who tamper with their holders. Do they go after people who add or subtract from their grading process ?

This is an excellent question. It's easy to skirt the issue when it's all positive and everyone's winning. However, look at it from the opposite point of view: what would PSA think if another company were affixing permanent labels to their proprietary property that had a negative impact on either the card's value or PSA's reputation?

If you've established a precedence of being fine with it when it was all dumplings and honey buns it's tough to turn around and say well now we have a problem with it.

Arthur

PSA won't have a problem with it, as PCGS has already set out the model, having no problem with CAC stickers on their product.

@ReggieCleveland said:

@originalisbest said:

@ReggieCleveland said:

@1970s said:

@waxman2745 said:
What training does PWCC have to grade cards? They are taking cards that are already graded and essentially grading them again. It sounds like PWCC is an FPG (Fourth Party Grader).

Did PSA have to give PWCC permission to do this ? PSA goes after people legally who tamper with their holders. Do they go after people who add or subtract from their grading process ?

This is an excellent question. It's easy to skirt the issue when it's all positive and everyone's winning. However, look at it from the opposite point of view: what would PSA think if another company were affixing permanent labels to their proprietary property that had a negative impact on either the card's value or PSA's reputation?

If you've established a precedence of being fine with it when it was all dumplings and honey buns it's tough to turn around and say well now we have a problem with it.

Arthur

PSA won't have a problem with it, as PCGS has already set out the model, having no problem with CAC stickers on their product.

Does CAC denote negative connotations as well?

Arthur

It's a point that can be argued many times back and forth, but no CAC sticker doesn't imply the coin must be bad; it might be, or, it might simply haven't been submitted ever to CAC for approval. Even if it has, and didn't get a sticker, that fact isn't published/made available. CAC pro and con is pretty much like arguing religion. I would think the PWCC stickers won't have as much controversy, since the only way they're applied (for now) is to cards auctioned through PWCC. Should he open up a service to submit cards for his sticker, without having to sell said cards, it would get closer to what CAC is. CAC is simply a way for John Albanese to identify coins he would like to make a market in. With his sticker applied, he knows it reaches a minimum level of quality, and he can offer buy/sell prices for same, without having to see it again.

@ReggieCleveland said:

@originalisbest said:

@ReggieCleveland said:

@originalisbest said:

@ReggieCleveland said:

@1970s said:

@waxman2745 said:
What training does PWCC have to grade cards? They are taking cards that are already graded and essentially grading them again. It sounds like PWCC is an FPG (Fourth Party Grader).

Did PSA have to give PWCC permission to do this ? PSA goes after people legally who tamper with their holders. Do they go after people who add or subtract from their grading process ?

This is an excellent question. It's easy to skirt the issue when it's all positive and everyone's winning. However, look at it from the opposite point of view: what would PSA think if another company were affixing permanent labels to their proprietary property that had a negative impact on either the card's value or PSA's reputation?

If you've established a precedence of being fine with it when it was all dumplings and honey buns it's tough to turn around and say well now we have a problem with it.

Arthur

PSA won't have a problem with it, as PCGS has already set out the model, having no problem with CAC stickers on their product.

Does CAC denote negative connotations as well?

Arthur

It's a point that can be argued many times back and forth, but no CAC sticker doesn't imply the coin must be bad; it might be, or, it might simply haven't been submitted ever to CAC for approval. Even if it has, and didn't get a sticker, that fact isn't published/made available. CAC pro and con is pretty much like arguing religion. I would think the PWCC stickers won't have as much controversy, since the only way they're applied (for now) is to cards auctioned through PWCC. Should he open up a service to submit cards for his sticker, without having to sell said cards, it would get closer to what CAC is. CAC is simply a way for John Albanese to identify coins he would like to make a market in. With his sticker applied, he knows it reaches a minimum level of quality, and he can offer buy/sell prices for same, without having to see it again.

Okay, I think I understand what it is now. Thanks for explaining it, I'm completely ignorant when it comes to coins.

Arthur

Not at all! I was into coins before I discovered cards; I like 'em both.

@drc said:
How can the assess the grade of a card in a holder?

Easy enough to do with a strong enough light. While not the same as truly seeing a card outside of its plastic confines, you can tell enough about it to say "do I agree with the grade overall" and "is this truly a premium example because of rare focus, rare lack of print defects, rare great color, rare pinpoint centering for the issue -- etc." It's no different than what DM23HOF does when considering a card for his collection, as someone else mentioned.

Here is the link

https://www.pwccmarketplace.com/eye-appeal?utm_source=social&utm_medium=tweet

@DM23HOF said:
Whenever I consider a card, I do dig up every single image of other examples in the same and surrounding grades to gauge its eye appeal. I have been doing this comparative analysis for almost two decades, and it has been a fun and engaging part of the hobby/process.

I think what PWCC is doing is a gimmicky and purely mercenary version of it, while also posturing as if they are inventing some proprietary new system. Most irksome is that they are trying to codify a terminology that they would like us to swallow and parrot— when we collectors have been doing it with our eyes just fine.

It's a fine line, for sure. Hanging a lantern on a card with rare eye appeal for the grade, that is certainly a cool thing. Rolling out a didactic, for-profit system replete with terminology— not a fan of that. The HE designation served the purpose adequately I thought— of course many of us saw some of those opinions we agreed with, and others we didn't, which is all good.

I agree with most of what you say, but I don't think this is a for-profit venture specifically for PWCC, other than it encourages submissions of high-end cards, that would hopefully earn such a sticker and get higher results and thus a higher % for them. If people didn't buy into PWCC's opinion (but they do) -- it won't carry any weight, and no worries. But it benefits not only PWCC, but those consignors of said cards, too. In the end, it's not all that much different than CAC green and gold stickers. And ultimately, the buyer can decide to chase a card with a sticker, or not, depends just on how much $$$ they are willing to part with.

Many can benefit from knowing if a given card has high-end merits at a glance; it doesn't mean they have to agree with the sticker, or that other cards that are PQ and sticker-worthy suddenly don't exist. Your mention of "a terminology that they would like us to swallow and parrot— when we collectors have been doing it with our eyes just fine" is literally, verbatim what a grumpy old cuss in Australia says about the idea of grading rare stamps; except he adds "we've been doing it just fine for 100 years."

No matter PWCC HE designation or not, every card consigned that will sell above $2000 will be technically superior for the grade and worthy of consideration.

Gotta hand it to them, they have created a platform to get higher returns for the consignors with their HE designation. But just like the Solo Star Wars movie in relation to the Star Wars brand, just because they had a hit with HE doesn't mean the PQ designation will be a hit too.

I noticed in my Email from PWCC that showed us their grading scale on a PSA labelled card that better centred cards were given a higher rating.

I'd be curious about the final selling price comparison between a PSA 8.5 and the same cars in PSA 8 with an HE sticker.

Gotta hand it to them, they have created a platform to get higher returns for the consignors with their HE designation. But just like the Solo Star Wars movie in relation to the Star Wars brand, just because they had a hit with HE doesn't mean the PQ designation will be a hit too.

Very unfortunate in this situation as I liked Solo but despised The Last Jedi.

Origin stories are fun. I liked Solo, but did the movie really need the giant spaceship eating octopus? Perhaps that is the PQ equivalent.

Doesn't PWCC post here?