Can anyone explain grading and paperloss?

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Posted By: Patrick McHugh

After thinking about this i wanted to know what everyone else thinks. A card with a spot of paperloss on back is downgraded to a 2 or 1. And yet as an example a t205 with border chipping can be a 4-6. Am i missing something? Is not the missing gold border also paperloss? Discus.

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Posted By: Rob

are often underrgraded, as I have seen back paper loss get 3's and 4's, so the grading companies are quite inconsistent on this. 2 options: resubmit or refuse to take a price not less than a "4" (where there is minimal back paper loss and card presents as a "7" or better).

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Posted By: barrysloate

That's an excellent point Patrick, and I would go so far as to say the paper loss to the gold border is more significant than a similar amount of loss to the back. But I think you need to bring this up with one of the professional graders. They have a policy and it's fair for you to ask them to explain it.

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Posted By: JK

I agree that chipping on the gold borders is, essentially, paperloss. For some reason however, the graders do not treat chips the same as paperloss elsewhere on a card.

That said, I would disagree with Rob's comment above about grading companies being inconsistent. The three main grading companies (SGC, PSA and GAI) are inconsistent compared to each other. SGC and GAI are very consistent internally in how they treat paperloss. PSA, is very inconsisitent internally. To explain:

SGC - very consistently will give a card with minor paperloss on the reverse no better than a 30. If the paperloss is greater than "minor" it will get a 10.

GAI - generally minimizes the penalty for paperloss. GAI consistently gives cards with minor paperloss grades as high as 3 or 4. Take a look at the back of the E95 cobb sold by Manontherock for an example.

PSA - all over the map. Normally, they will give a card with minor paperloss on the reverse a 2 (like SGC). However, Ive owned cards graded as high as psa 4 and 5 with paperloss on the reverse.

Personally, I do not think any card with paperloss should grade higher than a 2 or a 30, even if it looks mint (and I have many cards in such condition). Originally a PSA 3:

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Posted By: boxingcardman

A small chip in an unprinted area on an otherwise really nice card should not automatically drop the card to good or worse. The same small chip across the guy's eyes should drop it to a fair at best or even poor grade. I happen to think that the graders at SGC have been consistently inconsistent on chips. Here are three cards with chips. Guess the grades:



T227 Coulon: SGC 60
T205 Marquard: SGC 40
T206 Tinker: SGC 20

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Posted By: Steve f

My guess, The gold border is simply brittle paint. No paper loss involved. I had a Marquard with chipped edges and it scored an SGC 60.

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Posted By: Dylan

It's probably an issue of practicality. If the grading companies were to treat border chipping the same as paper loss the already condition difficult sets like T205 and T210, for instance, would rarely have a card graded above good. It would be very discouraging.

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Posted By: Bob

There are some really beautiful E93s in circulation in the hobby which appear like 5s and 6s which have some minor (and I do mean minor) paper chipping in their borders which SGC graded as 10s.
Josh- For some reason I thought you might have owned a few of these, the Joss maybe? In any event I would rather have an exmt looking card with some white border chipping than another 10 which looks like it has been burned, ripped, torn up and crumbled in to a ball and got a 10. As someone said in a post here recently, all 10s are most definitely not created equal.

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Posted By: Jimmy Piccuito

back damage is not as bad than having some on the front, I know SGC lowers the grade a bit more than PSA does - stated above it really depends on were the paper loss is located - remember you are buying the card and if it looks good and is nice for display - there is nothing wrong with buying a 1 or 2 graded card

Take Care

Jimmy

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Posted By: Dave F

I'll take these kind of cards all day long. Great looking cards IMO I can get cheap.

This one looks like a 6 to me...but, there is still some glue residue on the back...no paperloss. I guess if I wanted to try to remove the glue I could do so....but why?



This one, still has a spot of paper from the album it was removed from, or whatever it was removed from...again, no paperloss..if I could get the spot off the back cleanly...this one looks like a 5 to me.

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Posted By: JK

tbob - you are correct. There are quite a few nice looking e93s with minor chipping or back damage. You also have a good memory as I own or have owned many of the cards you are thinking about. The Joss and Griffith (no longer own) have minor back damage:



These may be the cards tbob was specifically referring to. I dont own them any longer, but the Joss, Lajoie and Tinker shown below all graded a 10 due to the chipping but all looked much nicer: