Grading Has Clouded Our Minds...

[Empty77]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

It's unfortunate that the TPG's handle 'problems' so weirdly, though. If a card is an 8 and is OC, just call it what it is, PSA 8 OC.

I understand your point of view and where you're coming from, but I have to take the opportunity to make the case for the other side of the debate and say that I just fundamentally disagree with how you're thinking about the qualifiers and rather think it's the other way around.

To me, calling it "what it is" as you phrased it, would in fact be calling it a 6 in your example---since the grading standards were written before the concept of permitting voluntary qualifiers, if something has centering worse than is permitted for 8s, then it's not an 8. End of story. There can be no such thing as "this is an 8 except for this one thing that makes it not an 8", to me, that's what adds all the frustrating confusions.

For instance, almost nothing is more annoying in my mind than someone advertising a 9oc card with the description something like "It's like a 9! Only one graded higher", meanwhile in my head I'm saying, 'No, you have what would be a straight 7, which is bested by a hundred or so straight 8s, a dozen straight 9s, and one GEM, and it is very, very much not "like" as good as any of those'...

Whatever its original intent, the whole voluntary qualifier thing seems now in practice like a gimmick to draw different people in and perpetuate the nuisance of resubmitting and re-slabbing. If my power to dictate, I would end the practice entirely (well, with ultimate power I would go back in time and undo all that had been done and never let that door open in the first place)--and be left saying to someone, 'look, you've got a card that has a variety of characteristics that make it a 6, and that's that.'