General Forum

The source I use is a short write-up on Dean's Cards, from whom I've purchased a few cards. They claim to be very hard graders and according to them "A good card may have scratching, scuffing, light staining, or chipping of enamel on obverse." AND a grade of good to them is not good. I'd check their pricing on the same card as a comparison.

Ooooh, I'm sorry Commish. I have a thing against Dean's Cards. Their prices seem about double what's reasonable. I even play a game to see if I can predict when an overpriced card is theirs. I often win. I'll never buy from them. And I don't trust their grading either. But to each his own. 

V3

And this whole thread sums up why I would never have cards graded.  The standards between companies who grade vary one from another.  Many times they are not even consistent within their company. I especially have a problem when a company is both inthe business of buying and selling cards asw ell as grading them. If you ask me what grade all of my cards are because you wish to buy them, they are all NM-Mt.  But yours I wish to buy are no better than Ex; after all your paw prints are all over them.

In short, the only person that needs to grade cards I own or am interested in is myself. I will never buy a card in a hard sealed plastic case (the few I have came in a large lot purchase). And I definitely won't pay someone who just came off the street and became a "professional" card grader to tell me the condition of my card. I've you to find an accredited course on Card Grading or Appraising Sports Cards. Have you met these professional graders?? What qualified them as Card Graders??

Those questions are why I even bothered to look into grading myself. I wondered how does one become a grader, and can I become one.

i agree with you wholeheartedly, and unfortunately we have what we have as a standard, which varies rather significantly. I may be wrong on this, but I believe for the most part all those with whom I've traded care for their cards and I am assured of getting cards in return that are as high quality as what I send. The spirit of the hobby overcomes.

V3 and I are different people, but apparently play the same same game (and didn't know it until just now).

I don't trust Dean's Cards at all considering what kinds of prices they list their cards at.

I've used search lists on ebay for years. I've actually filtered out Deans from my searches so their garbage won't clutter up my results.

Vvvergeer wrote:

Ooooh, I'm sorry Commish. I have a thing against Dean's Cards. Their prices seem about double what's reasonable. I even play a game to see if I can predict when an overpriced card is theirs. I often win. I'll never buy from them. And I don't trust their grading either. But to each his own. 

V3

Sportzcommish wrote:

The source I use is a short write-up on Dean's Cards, from whom I've purchased a few cards. They claim to be very hard graders and according to them "A good card may have scratching, scuffing, light staining, or chipping of enamel on obverse." AND a grade of good to them is not good. I'd check their pricing on the same card as a comparison.

Dean's Cards is not living on the same planet as the rest of the baseball card collecting world.  They are typically extremely high priced and seem to have an arbitrary grading system.  Centering doesn't seem to be much of a consideration to them when grading cards.  Surprisely, I have purchased 1 or 2 decently-priced cards from them over the past year on Ebay.  Before that, it's been at least 10 years since I found anything worth buying from their website.    

From a Bonifide Slabcracker.  

So for the record my point was that they provided a written documentation of their interpretation of a scale the PSA scale. The cards I bought from them were on par with whatever else I found on EBay, Amazon, Beckett, etc. I'm not pushing them above anyone, but I liked their writeup and use it to basically judge my own collection. It was the most concisely written and informative exposition of grading that I found. Ebay has a written explanation, too, somewhere, but I didn't find it as helpful.

In general I believe we as collectors are just as good as anyone but without the "credentials" to put a label on a card that will boost its price.

I've got a detailed write-up posted on my blog that is mostly based on Beckett's standards.  It's been personalized it to my own baseball card collecting experiences, and remains a living document (or in constant revision): http://baseballsince1987topps.blogspot.com/p/grading-pricing.html

I shall check it out.

If it doesn't meet minimum sizing requirements, it could come back graded as "Authentic - Trimmed" and won't get a numerical grade.  I've never sent anything in, so not sure what that entails.  You'll see some of those listed on eBay.  Card trimming vintage stuff was fairly widespread in the 80s to make corners look sharp.