Grading and market perceptions

[jlynch1960]

The thread about the Cobb going from an SGC 88 to Authentic got me thinking. Most of the posts seemed to want to blame either the collector or SGC for making a costly mistake. All I know is two (or more) humans were involved and, that being said, an error is not surprising.

I think the real issue is that we are collectively driven to place way too much emphasis on grading. The market sets price bands around various grades and, when that happens, we stop looking at the card itself and are driven by the grades (with some exceptions). I see graded cards all the time that look way undersized yet they fetch the price they do because they're slabbed. In this case, ten plus thousand dollars of value was "lost" because a third person said "whoops, my bad," yet the consensus seems to be that the card looks fine. How perverse is that! In a way, we're all to blame because we've been forced, largely I think by the internet, to surrender our individual judgments about the value of a card to the graders.

To my way of thinking, it's an opportunity to get a fantastic looking Cobb at a fraction of the price you'd pay for one that had, perhaps, another 1/64 of an inch of border. I don't like trimming as much as the next guy, but I do like cards with great eye appeal.

Come to think of it, I'll probably bid on it.

Happy Thanksgiving!