Grading questions (various) with photos

[vthobby]

To answer your original question. With the gum residue on the back and the centering, your Carew is a 3 at best. I have submitted hundreds of cards to PSA, Beckett, and SGC. The residue is not good, the centering is very bad. McCovey is a 4. Munson is a 5 or 6.

Mike

[Mesquite]

How do you distinguish between a PSA 9 and 10? Other than a slight difference in centering allowance for those 2 grades, it doesn't seem there's much difference, especially for newer cards from a factory set where there's no chance of staining.

I've looked at many 9's vs 10's on ebay and I'm not able to conclude much.

What percentage of a just-opened factory sets would likely be 10's versus 9's (Is it the case that a newly-opened set--if centering is good--would have no card that would grade lower than 9?)

PS, and just curious, anyone know the number of cards that are submitted for grading each year across all card grading services? Do you think it's over a million cards?

[swarmee]

http://www.psacard.com/ shows that they've graded/certified 24 million items since '98. So a million cards a year just through PSA wouldn't be surprising.

There might be minor edge/corner wear on a 9 compared to a 10. Base cards from a modern factory set should all be 9s or 10s unless they have some kind of defect. I saw a modern card with a smeared numbering stamp that was awarded a 3.5 recently. Not sure why someone sent it in for grading in the first place.

Modern cards can also have surface issues that might knock them down, or they may have gotten dinged in the packing process. Cards with windows to see the jersey/bat sometimes have creasing around the window area, that knocks them down to about 6s.