[Empty77]

Since everyone seems to like pics, I'll try to make the point that way, and by re-comparing the original card of interest: the following three '61 Topps team cards are all fresh certs, each sold for $30, via eBay, within the past two weeks, so they are as perfect a comparison as conceivable. It suggests that the marketplace is pricing the 8OC not as a straight 6 necessarily, but even as a straight 4.

-the easiest thing to recognize first is that the 6 sold for the same as the 4 b/c the 6's centering is not great whereas the 4 looks pretty good; any better attributes the 6 has in other categories were offset by market interests.

-now, if the 8OC was equally off-center as the 6, then it should have sold for more on account of its better attributes in other categories, but that's not what happened; it sold for the exact same.

-this suggests that it is being valued as a straight 4, plausibly b/c others (i.e., the market overall) is recognizing that if it were graded without qualifiers, it would grade out a straight 4 on account of the centering being so poor.

The card market seems to work not dissimilarly to an equity market, where items are rewarded for good qualities and penalized equally in price for poor qualities. That is not a bad thing for the wallet for the buyer if what traditionally counts as "poor" doesn't bother you, then its a buying opportunity, just like beat-up stocks sometimes.

But it does mean that the "2 grade" demotion "rule-of-thumb" is not a real thing, as I explained in another post above.