Psa no longer putting qualifiers on labels

[JustinD]

I can see your viewpoint.

Personally I would prefer just the straight grade as in my mind it is simply the exact same thing. They are both 7s.

The idea of removing the largest flaw and grading a card without it makes no logical sense in my mind accept to garner some feel good sentiment for the submitter. If you walked on the car lot and saw two of the exact same cars, one with overall general wear and tear, but one with a perfect interior but completely covered in rust is one actually superior because it has one better trait than the other with overall wear? Would you listen to a salesman tell you to just ignore the rust and be impressed by the interior?

It’s not a perfect analogy at all, but that’s basically how I picture a qualifier.

Grade a card on the “sum” of its parts, not “some” of its parts.

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Grade a card on the “sum” of its parts, not “some” of its parts.

Justin, IMHO, you hit the nail on the head!

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Grade a card on the “sum” of its parts, not “some” of its parts.

I certainly agree with that sentiment, but the problem is PSA has been giving qualifiers since the beginning, so that's where the train goes off the tracks. If there never were any qualifiers given, then the 'sum' method would have been perfect, but unfortunately that's not the case. Now, like the 1972 Ryan example, there could be two realities. A highly off-centered card could be both a PSA 7 and a PSA 9OC at the same time, with the only difference being whether or not the submitter checks the 'no qualifiers' box on the form (I have no idea if that was actually the case here with regard to the graded Ryans, as I'm using it more of a general example). That's why this whole scenario is problematic for those of us who were fully expecting to get qualifiers on our cards.

Here are the 1972 Ryans with the grades exposed...

1972ryan595mockupa.jpg

[Johnny630]

Is Grading An Addiction ?

All these cards I’ve seen from you guys are great, regardless what PSA thinks.

[Rich Klein]

My point, and this is strictly from a BUSINESS point of view, is the removal of qualifiers is long overdue on PSA's part.

Why?

Even with all the people they have hired, they are still churning through their massive backlog and anything which slows the process, even by micro-seconds in typing, as putting a qualifier on cards is not worth the time at this point.

Plus, for the graders, again, even it saves micro seconds that time adds up.

So this is a decision, on the business level which is overdue. You had to think of this from the business point of view, NOT our collector point of view.

Rich

[bxb]

I also prefer no qualifiers.

I can judge for myself the centering on a card or if it is out of focus.

[swarmee]

According to the blowout post, MC and MK would still remain. I'm not a big fan of this change, and don't think it really saves that much time.
My best guess is that this is a Nat Turner-ism where he and his buddies decided to get rid of it, since the market largely ignores cards with qualifiers; at one point, they were trading around 3 grades lower than the same grade.

If they were consistent with their grading standards and gave all Mint conditioned cards with 90/10 centering on front a PSA 3 with no qualifiers, then I'll be interested in seeing how those cards are treated on the secondary market. Because the assumption on the buyer's part is that they're damaged (surface wrinkles), and the centering is incidental. However, if they got a 9(OC) they would be worth a 7 on the registry and a 6 or so in sales price.

[Republicaninmass]

I used to like sgc slabs for this reason just grade the freaking card. Now they have shifted to psa like, where a mint card 90/10 is an sgc 3. I dont get it