Posted By:
honus3415Why not the best of all worlds?
I envision our cardboard entering into a totally sterile enviroment, the item is untouched by human hands. Initially scanned into a public database and assigned a serial number, forever linking it, in it's present form, to the data obtained in this process. A computer then records the weight and measurements of the card from thousands of direction (after all how hard can it be for a computer?) and analyzes the percentage of surface area present. Reporting the amount of missing area from flaws (corners, sides and holes). Borders are measured. The surface planes are then analyzed for variations (creases, holes, indentations......). A light analysis on the item is preformed and compared to know specimens for possible forgeries and alterations. The card is then vacuum slabbed and a microchip is embedded in the corner with all this information. This embedded chip is pressure sensative so any attempt to open the slab would release the data and invalidate the slabbing. You would also receive a personalized label upon which we could give our own numeric value to this item if we so desired. (It probably wouldn't take long before we knew which labels represented hobbyists and which represented materialists.)
This computerized process would take out the subjectivity of the human eye and whatever else might be affecting the numeric values in todays slabbing processes. So instead of 20 super-graders at cost of $750,000 per year, you have one robotic database super-computer running around the clock for hundreds of thousands less. I heard HAL was out of a job but then I heard he also collects T206's.
What!! You don't like to send your cards in? It's mobile and makes it's way around the county and like the blimp show up at every major event.
Best of all it would be only $5 a card and with one day turnarounds, two if really busy.
I can dream, can't I?
Really, All I ask for is encapsulation and a few unadulturated FACTS, not someone's opinion. Because as we all know, "opinions" are like noses, everybody has one......or something like that.