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Posted By: Fred C

I don't see anything wrong with grading services encapsulating skinned cards as long as they document the alteration (SKINNED) on the LABEL. You know that there will be people selling encapsulated material that is skinned and the seller will not reveal the reason for the AUTH designation. The buyer may not like skinned material but the seller (ok, a bad seller) could indicate that it was "professionally graded" (the biggest misconception in our hobby) and therefore not covered under their refund policy.

The hobby should take a stand and let the grading services know that they should SET A STANDARD. If the card is AUTHENTIC then put AUTH on the label. If it is ALTERED then put ALT-Type of alteration on the label For example, "ALT-Skinned" or "ALT-Trimmed". If there is paper loss then label it "AUTH-P.L.". What's so hard about that? I don't think grading companies should assign numeric grades. Leave that out of the equation and let the actual eye appeal of the card dictate the price (kind of like it used to be). One collectors Ex-Mt is another collectors Vg-Ex.

It's pretty pathetic right now because PSA is really bad about following their grading criteria on centering. For example, they can't even provide a fixed number on centering for a PSA7 card. Look at their web site:

Centering must be approximately 70/30 to 75/25

Why not just say it must be 75/25 or better. On top of that if the card is 80/20 it can still get a FULL PSA7 grade. The moron grader will just say that the other attributes of the card warrant the grade. Horse crap.

Does anyone really think they break out the calipers to determine centering? I doubt it. This is what makes grading a joke to some. This is why the grading services should leave the determination of value up to the true collectors and not some stupid number that some idiot assigns to it.

This is just my opinion (yet again) and my apologies to those that believe in registry sets and wanting to have the HIGHEST rated set on the planet, even if someone else may actually have a better set (that isn't encapsulated in plastic).




(LL, thanks for the barfing smiley )