The curious evolution of SGC grading

[BobC]

Originally Posted by T205 GB

Now that’s a board I would push hard to be some part of.

To try and stave off any unwelcome comments about how I may approach that. Just because I don’t like TPGs doesn’t mean that I can’t stay neutral. I have to do it every day with my job. I like some contractors in despise some others but I have strict criteria for inspections regardless of whether I like them. I have to be fair and neutral to both to ensure compliance. Doesn’t mean I always like it but you have to have some standard of morals and a keen distaste for dishonesty.

What I quoted is exactly what CPAs and CPA firms have to abide by. And you know what, the ONLY thing that CPAs do that no one else can do, is give their "opinion" on financial statements. Much in the same way TPGs give their "opinions" on authenticating and grading cards. Everything that this hobby has let these for-profit grading companies get away with is disgusting. From their ability to set their own standards, and apparently change it at will, to their utter lack of even an attempt to at least try to look independent, is appalling. They answer to no one, but their own pocketbooks. And at this point, they really don't have to worry because the mindless masses for the most part have drunk the Kool-Aid and bought into them hook, line, and sinker.

There are too many people/companies with wealth and influence that have way too much money or their businesses tied up in graded cards to ever let any kind of grass roots movement or organization get even the slightest of footholds into reigning in the TPGs, so once and for all we have one single grading standard for ALL cards and graders. For to do so could potentially put at risk much of the value people have accumulated in their graded cards. And I sincerely doubt most people that do have significant investments in graded cards would ever really want to risk that. And I do mean investments, for even someone that is a collector at heart cannot completely ignore the way the market and values for a lot of their cards and collectibles have grown into what they are today. This hobby has become a big industry, controlled by different factions and enterprises that are not at all really worried about cards and collectibles, just how they can make the most money possible off people that do worry about and collect such things.

Andrew, like you, I would look to be part of such a board myself. The question is, how do you start one and get people in the hobby to buy into it? And then, how do you force the TPGs to go along with it? I guess one possible way to start would be to create some kind of card collecting club or organization that would seek collectors to join. And as more and more joined, they would assert their own standards and such, as agreed upon by the membership, not the TPGs, AHs, dealers, etc. For something like this to actually work, it would have really needed to have started at least about the same time the TPG companies got going, so as to catch them when they were just starting out, and force their acquiescence to being overseen and answering to the members of the hobby itself, not the other way around. One can always hope for a positive change to things though, right?