My GMA Experiment

[Pilot172000]

The last couple of months, my three boys have been getting into collecting baseball cards which is super exciting for me. I only collect T206 or T205 cards now but had crates of cards from my younger days and decided to break them out. As I went through them and distributed them to the kids, I picked the really good ones for safe keeping and decided to have them graded and encapsulated just for posterity.

The graded T206 cards I have are a mix of BVG,PSA and SGC which hold their value and are trustworthy. I didn't want to plunk that kinda money down on cards I planned to keep so I sent them to GMA just for fun. The first batch I got back pretty quickly and was kinda surprised at the grades. I only got two 10s and two 9s the rest were 8.5 to 6.5 which I thought was pretty fair. The second group of cards I sent twelve cards including some T206 and T205 raw cards. I pulled a few HOF and the better conditioned cards from my collection to see how they would grade. I got them back today and was kinda shocked. Out of the 8 T-cards I got a two 4s, a 3.5, a 3, a 2.5, a 1.5 and two Authentic grades. I thought the grades were pretty fair except the two Authentics. One was a solid Homerun Baker that I figured was a solid 2 with creases and some stains on the back but no evidence of alterations. The second was a a T205 common with straight corners but had a burn mark on the back. I am just puzzled by the authentic grades from GMA. Why not grade them out as Ones? I guess the moral of the story is that all grading companies have quirks when it comes to vintage cards. At least they didn't all come back as 10s.