Your Collecting Thoughts on Grading Companies

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Mbjerry

I listened to a podcast the other day where they presented statistics on a study where they resubmitted the same cards to the same companies multiple times. 45% of the time the card came back as a higher grade.

Yep. Even 3 decades into professional grading, so much of the actual service remains a gimmick. A scale that at the end of the day is tied to eye appeal can never be anything more than subjective, no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise. In the mostly midgrade vintage world I play in, I could submit the same "EX" raw card 10 times, and sometimes it would get a 5, sometimes it would get a 6, and sometimes it might get a 4. There might be the outlier where it gets a 3 or a 1 because of something a grader thought they saw only under magnification. Bottom line - you know the "range" of your raw cards and which ones are nicer than others, and even with the nicer ones what their micro flaws might be. These things don't change. But if you play the slab game, the grade can and often will. I'm just at a point in my collecting career where I would rather focus on the card only and appreciate it for what it is. This is why I don't sweat grading anymore. For protection if I buy graded online, I don't focus on the grade. I have some 5's nicer than other 6's, and some 6's that look better than 7's. It's just the reality of how the game works in practice.