Posted By:
Al Crisafulli"Just my two cents on the injustice of the grading system we are now forced to use"
I guess there are a couple ways of looking at this. While it's always a drag to have a card come back with a grade you don't like, I'm also very pleased as a collector to know that I'm not going to buy a raw card that's been graded EX by a dealer, only to find out that it's got paper loss, or a crease or whatever.
So I don't really consider it to be an injustice that I'm forced to use a grading system I don't like. I'm more apt to think of it as an industry standard that I have to adopt if I want to stay current with the hobby.
Case in point - I recently saw a well-known, fairly reputable dealer of raw cards that had listed a 1930s HOFer on Ebay, describing the card as "EX". Looking at the scan, it was obvious that the card would not have graded better than a 2, perhaps even lower. But the dealer had the card listed with a price that would correspond with an "EX" card. That kind of thing used to hurt us as consumers 20 years ago.
That card looks very nice, but I'm pretty sure that the grading companies aren't in the business of putting EX cards in G holders. Once in a while they make a mistake, but usually there's a reason why a card gets downgraded.
-Al