Phil said it was a completely different question.

"How about another question,"

Huh?

The answer to Phil's question has nothing to do with the answer to the OP's question. Phil himself said it was a completely different question. You are drawing a false inconsistency in post 100. Sorry if my prior post was not clear.

Fallacies of Inconsistency

Fallacies of inconsistency are cases where something inconsistent, self-contradictory or self-defeating is presented.

ie: - “One thing that we know for certain is that nothing is ever true or false.” – If there is something we know for certain, then there is at least one truth that we know. So it can’t be the case that nothing is true or false.

Just seemed to me that if the big boys were calling the shots on grading in general, they would certainly be calling them on the cards on which they make the most money for themselves and their clients. Where's the inconsistency there?

There's no point debating this further. If you choose to believe it's a level playing field, may the force be with you.

There are two groups of submitters described here. You are using data from the masses to disprove results of the few.

I don’t have solid proof without whistleblowers, however there is certainly enough circumstantial smoke to lean toward preferential grading for premier newsworthy items and mass submitters. The amount of high grades on borderline cards from places like 4 Sharp certainly raises some curiosity. I’ll play it safe on my statements, but I would say to make your own observations.

Money talks EVERYWHERE. Why naively think it doesn't happen with cards?

I don't believe. I just can't believe it. Can you provide evidence or some kind of proof to your assertion?

No one wants all the BS that comes with providing proof. I used to call out a lot of the crooks in our hobby. I have had a fellow member have his lawyer send me a nice letter, I have had a fellow member and several of his friends attack my ebay account by buying everything I had listed and then on the last day possible they all filed returns, I have had a fellow member straight up call me many many horrible names and say he can and will do anything he wants to the cards he sells, and that is just a small portion of what I have personally endured from calling out hobby scum. Now and for several years I just figure F the morons buying their altered crap and don't feel sorry for those being taken advantage of in the least.:)

Fellow (current) members or former members?

Uh… who’s Jason Taytum? Did he trim the Honus?

He is a pro athlete. I believe Peter is saying Mr Tatum would be able to get an appointment almost instantly when most of us it would be several months away at the soonest. Not everything is even in life, heck really very little is.

I think the answer to the original question is yes, but I can't prove it. I also agree with the assertion that there are certain cards that PSA refuses to grade any more 10's of in order to keep the PSA10 a rarity (think key 1980's rookie cards). However, I also can't offer proof of this. It's more of an observation. I can only point to the number of examples submitted versus the number of PSA10's graded.

How about those collectors that are at the top of their set or player registry of top vintage sets or top vintage players. I absolutely believe they get preferential treatment. Maybe not all the time, but often enough.

I can assure you from personal experience, that is not true.

Can’t speak for all of us registry goons, but 95% of my Mays collection was purchased already graded. The small handful of pieces that are impossible to find already graded that I have purchased raw and then submitted have mostly graded at 1, with a few that pop all the way up to 3 or 4 on rare occasions.

I did the same thing when I started collecting Kobe rookie cards. I knew I would never get the grade I wanted if I submitted it myself, so I just bought cards already graded.

Ok lets spin this a different way

Does the tier ie cost of grading impact the grade. When I had my store I had a customer tell me that if I would up charge the card he had heard the grades come back higher.

So this $500 card I could grade at the $50 or the $100 level. Does the level ie price paid to grade the card impact the grades...

James G

I do think there's a small correlation there, but not for the reason you might think.

I do think the higher price point tends to mean that your piece will get directed to the people who know what they're doing, particularly with vintage grading, and are able to take a few extra seconds checking out your piece, whereas the bulk price point tends to be populated by newer graders who haven't graded as much vintage, and have about 3 seconds to formulate their opinion on the grade.

Is the Pope Catholic?

Good scenario James. You might get a more reliable PSA grader & reviewer.

From my experience, PSA is just as inconsistent at the $10k value level as the 20 card bulk sub. I've heard mixed results at the $25k value level.