SGC's grading back in the early days was much more forgiving that it has been the past 10+ years.
I think that they (tacitly) considered the set/issue and curbed the grading standards accordingly. PSA not so much but certainly a little.
At one point I had an SGC 98 T202 -- I'm not sure that it would get a PSA 8 (or an SGC 8) now.
As to Old Judge cards I think that the TPGs don't consider the strength of the image -- so there are some rather obscured N172s with high grades and some beautiful ones with low grades based on the back of the card. As a middling Old Judge collector for 25+ years I've always cared much more about the image than the back. Same with Mayo's where the slightest absence of black on the reverse is nearly fatal to the grade of an otherwise beautiful front image.
I have a high PSA grade (7) Old Judge that has a pink front. It used to be that the pink was a big problem for Old Judge collectors -- I don't think the TPGs considered it one way or the other.
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