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Posted By: barrysloate

The most important point made on this thread is that eye appeal has very little impact on a final grade, while technical flaws such as minor paper loss receive an enormous amount of weight. This is most prominent with Old Judges, where photo quality and contrast are almost irrelevant, but a little paper loss to the blank back might knock an 84 down to a 20.

While it is true that grading has done more good than bad for the hobby, there is no reason to think that it is perfect. Far from it, there are poor decisions made by the graders on many occasions. Regarding Old Judges, I think photo quality should be at least 75% of what constitutes the grade, and reverse paper loss maybe 25%. But my guess is it is the opposite.

Corey made a very important point that it is the marketplace, not the numerical grade, that determines the price of a card. However, I think the one place that may not be true is the set registry, since the only way you can have the #1 set is by having the highest average weighted grade. Eye appeal is not even factored into that.

Eye appeal, of course, is subjective, and not all of us like the same thing. So while I agree it should be an important part of the final grade, how do you achieve a consensus of opinion regarding what constitutes great eye appeal?

So to sum up my point, it wouldn't hurt the hobby if the grading services simply rendered an opinion of whether or not a card is authentic, and whether or not it has been altered. Beyond that, there are too many variables, and the numeric grades are simply not universally embraced by the collecting community.