Okay, I'm going to throw out another idea, and I'm borrowing it from the coin business:
As I've mentioned before I collect large cents, which are 150-220 year old copper coins. Copper generally does not hold up well over time, and a great many of the surviving coins suffer from some level of surface corrosion. The numismatic industry likewise uses numerical grades, such as Good 4, Fine 12, Very Fine 20, etc. But if a coin exhibits some corrosion the label might read "Fine Details- Corrosion." There is no numeric grade offered in this situation.
To apply this to baseball cards, maybe only cards that possess certain criteria can even qualify for a numerical grade. For example, if a card has some corner rounding and a light crease, and no other visible problems, it would qualify for a VG 3. Likewise, a sharper card with no creases might be an EX 5. However, if a card has a NR MT appearance but also a pinhole, it simply gets a "NR MT- pinhole" label and does not qualify for a number. An Old Judge with back damage could receive an "EX-MT- paper loss" label but also no number. The point is not every card necessarily would qualify for a number grade. And it would likely mean that those that did receive numbers would be more desirable (it's subjective of course) than ones that didn't.
I think in that respect the coin hobby has a better system than we do. Not every card merits a numerical grade, only those that are problem free. Cards with extraneous issues need to be treated differently. How do collectors feel about this idea?
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