Quote:
Originally Posted by 68Hawk
I'm all for you starting up your own grading company Steve, problem will lie in who you employ.  |
I think generally the companies do an ok job.
I don't worry too much about the actual grade, no matter what grade it gets some percentage of people will think it's wrong. I was never much into centering, and didn't like that cards that were very well preserved got downgraded because the centering was off.
I've sort of come around...
And failures are expected occasionally
I'm really not impressed with the sheer number of failures they've had with cards graded by particular customers. Some of what came out was probably in the range of 80% missed alterations in a batch. To me that at best points to someone who shouldn't be doing it. At worst, someone who is part of the problem.
One of the kids I worked with at the bicycle shop (who was a fantastic mechanic even at 14) has gone on to become an auto mechanic for range rover. At high end places these days most of the mechanics are excellent and have multiple certifications plus factory training. I worked for a while for a Chrysler dealer in the late 80's early 90's and things were pretty much the way you describe, except everyone was responsible for their own work. That led to variable speed and quality of work. Ok... ish... for Chrysler Plymouth, maybe not for Mercedes.
In my less sane moments I have considered doing some sort of grading, mostly as just myself. Patterned after stamp expertisers. In the US, it's similar to card grading, three main companies, and a handful of specialized groups.
Europe however has individual experts or groups that handle specific areas.
I don't think any of them do grades, they all pretty much refuse to have specified turn around times. And only recently have moved away from simply marking the stamp and towards a certificate with a photo on it.
One company did/does do slabs... not all that successfully, as they're fighting 180 years of keeping stamps in albums.
I've talked to a couple guys that do that as experts for one company or another, and the stuff they just know is amazing. like last time I learned that one way of telling the 1879 paper from the earlier paper is that one reacts just slightly to shortwave UV... I've never seen that in any book.
But I have a few other projects, and I'm hopelessly disorganized. Having people send me batches of expensive cards would be a very bad idea.