Two US Caramel Hornsbys in HA last night

[oldjudge]

Corey: In all honesty, I trust my opinion of a card more than either PSAs or SGCs (as I’m sure you do) and do not rely on either to tell me if a card is good. My reasons for slabbing a card would be protection and/or resale value and with those criteria I think PSA is the clear winner.
As for knowledge, I think SGC is worse at detecting trimming, and they both miss more other things than they should.

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Corey: In all honesty, I trust my opinion of a card more than either PSAs or SGCs (as I’m sure you do) and do not rely on either to tell me if a card is good. My reasons for slabbing a card would be protection and/or resale value and with those criteria I think PSA is the clear winner.

That's fair, and certainly in regard to CdVs, cabinet and trade cards, if I was to rely on anyone other than myself as to questions of authenticity or alteration, it would not be a grading company.

Where we differ pertains to more conventional baseball cards. Being more a memorabilia collector than a card collector and not handling that many cards, I do not regard myself as having more expertise in detecting fakes/alterations than an experienced card grader. And rightly or wrongly I perceive SGC to have more experienced and knowledgeable graders than PSA. So for those conventional-type baseball cards in this era of high values and prolific counterfeiting and alteration, I probably would feel more comfortable having SGC look at it than relying solely on my own opinion.

[oldjudge]

I understand that. My collecting interests are so limited that it is easy to “know” what I collect very well. Not that I can’t be fooled, I can be. I just think it is less likely that I will be fooled that a TPG being fooled.