Posted By:
Matt GoebelBarry, great idea for a thread and I am curious to hear everyone's opinion.
I think in a perfect world, a grading company would assign a grade for the overall state of preservation that the card is in, and then the subjective factors such as image quality would effect the market price. Alas, we don't live in a perfect world and, in my opinion, the price at which a card sells is usually much to dependant upon the grade on the holder. And I'm a grading advocate! That being said, the more information given regarding the grade the better, which is why I liked the Beckett system of grading individual categories like corners, edges, surface, etc. And I really like the idea of giving the image quality a +, - or neutral, at least that would be a start. Ultimately, it's going to come down to an individual's preference which is how it should be anyway.
My favorite set, the 1923-24 Billikens, are just like the Old Judges in that they are little photographs so the single most important characteristic is the image quality. I have an extreme example with two cards of the same player - one is graded an SGC 86 which is the highest grade for any card from the set and the other is an SGC 10 which is the lowest grade. The SGC 10 has been given the grade (correctly I might add) due to a single bughole in an unobtrusive location, however it has on of the best images I have seen. Therefore, I would take this card over the SGC 86 any day of the week. I know there are those who would think I'm crazy, but I guess that difference is what makes this hobby great, everyone can collect whatever they like.
BTW, it is my understanding that SGC does take the overall eye appeal of a card into consideration when assigning a grade.
BTW again, this topic is a great example of why I think it's okay to use the much maligned "looks very nice for the grade" description when someone is selling a card. If it's true.