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Posted By: Bruce Babcock

In the interest of increasing the post count . . .

Gilbert, I like the idea of the pixel count maps to provide a pedigree but, as you say, a huge price increase would be needed to incorporate this service. It does create an opportunity for an entrepreneur in the field of pixel map storage. (Smiley icon here).

Jim, I could not agree more with your 3:03 p.m. post.

Kevin’s recent posts have been very helpful and eye opening. The higher prices go the scarier this kind of alteration becomes.

I’ve been burned a few times with trimmed, colored and even fake cards . . . but then again, I’ve seen a lot of my cards increase in value so I'm ahead of the game overall.

The fact is that grading will always be very subjective, to say nothing of the fraud factor. When someone posts a raw card here and asks what we think it will grade, and five of us say PSA 5 and five of us say PSA 4, what does that mean? Is it a consensus 4.5? The market only validates a professional third party opinion, which might have been different last month, or may be different tomorrow, depending on the grading company and the faceless grader. He may be on his first day of work or he may be looking at the 112th card of his 1546th day. We expect him to be able to distinguish a “9” from a “10” or a “98” from a “96.” That’s a lot of expectation and pressure to live up to.

Five of the ten PSA grades have “mint” in the title. They are all great looking cards and I wouldn’t mind having some. However, I’m not willing to pay the premium prices associated with them so, I don’t own many. I just don’t have the kind of $$$ to play in that game.

I won this card in one of Barry’s auctions. It is SGC graded “A.” They thought it was trimmed. Barry didn’t. I don’t either. Can anyone say ever say with certainty that it was cut this way at the factory or later? I can live with the uncertainty. I’m happy to have the card and I’m happy with what I paid for it.