[drcy]

Agreed. Photos and trading cards are different things.

Photos commonly come with photographer's or newspaper's editors notes on back, date stamps, paper captions, cropping marks, paper caption remnants. That's part of what they are. Just as game used jerseys come with grass stains and game used bats come with ball and clete marks and pine tar residue. A grass stain on your baseball card is undesirable, but it's desirable on game used jersey. If someone is selling a 'game used' jersey in 'Gem Mint form the factor condition,' you will question if it is authentic. Baseball cards and jerseys are different things and different genres, and a 1910 UP photo of Ty Cobb is not not a 1991 Donruss Sammy Sosa.

You clearly wouldn't expect Beckett or PSA to grade baseballs using the same exact criterion as they use to grade baseball cards. How do you grade the corners of a baseball when a baseball has no corners? There's not such thing as a baseball with corner dings or trimmed edges.

It's known as comparing apples to oranges. Or, in the case of baseball cards and game used jerseys, apples to aardvarks. What lowers the value on a baseball card (pine tar stains), raises the value on a games used bat. What lower's the technical grade on a baseball card (photographer's notes and date stamps on back), raises the value of a photograph.

This all helps explains why PSA/DNA judges trading cards, game used bats, coins and photos using different rules.