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Posted By: Joann

Regarding the percent mistakes at PSA:

By using the total universe of the 100 million cards that they have graded as the divisor, we are understating the percent defective. Say they missed the ball on 10,000 cards. The problem with calculating success rate is that we don't know if those 10,000 mistakes were spread evenly over all of the cards and types they grade. I suspect they are not.

I really do believe that vintage cards present a slightly different challenge to graders - there are fewer of them in number, they are less familiar in type, and they tend to occupy the lower grading tiers that are probably less frequently used and less well known to the graders.

So if half the mistakes are in vintage, and the total number of vintage cards graded is more like 100,000 then it would be 5000/100,000 or 5%. I'm just making these numbers up - I have no clue how many they grade or how many mistakes there are.

I'm just saying that the success rate that we are concerned with here should be expressed as mistakes per opportunity within the vintage category and not mistakes in vintage compared to all 100 million cards of all types that they grade.

Joann