SGC - what is NM?

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Posted By: T206Collector

...are confusing at best and a waste of time at worst. They are like saying, "This card would be mint, except for that horrible paper loss on the back" in a listing. A card with horrible paper loss is in poor condition.

You could have a qualifier for everything, including:

MINT CR (meaning, mint condition except the card has a crease)
MINT CR2 (meaning, mint condition except the card has 2 creases)
MINT CORN1FUZZY (meaning, mint condition except one corner is fuzzy)
MINT CORN2DINGFUZZY (meanig, mint condition except one corner is dinged and another corner is fuzzy).

SGC intelligently builds into the grading scale the condition of the card on the whole, without exceptions or qualifiers. PSA missed the boat on this one a long time ago and have been making the same dumb decisions on cards ever since. Perhaps Beckett got it right when they started to include sub-grades for corners, surface, centering, etc. But even they decided to list a final over all grade and all the centering in the world never made up for one big thick ugly crease across the face of your favorite card.

Buy the card, not the holder. All 7 NM are not alike, no matter how many qualifiers you put on the label.