Great Condition Alpha set on eBay

tap4black · Post by **tap4black** » Wed May 30, 2012 7:41 pm

tryst wrote:Grading is a scam.
None of my (admittedly modest) wins will ever be graded.
tryst

It's no more a scam than paying $50 or $100 for a piece of cardboard. Different folks collect different things and if someone is willing to pay 5x or 10x more than what an ungraded card sells for because an impartial 3rd party says the card is truly mint or gem mint, whats to stop them from doing so?

Blood · Post by **Blood** » Wed May 30, 2012 11:28 pm

tap4black wrote:It's no more a scam than paying $50 or $100 for a piece of cardboard. Different folks collect different things and if someone is willing to pay 5x or 10x more than what an ungraded card sells for because an impartial 3rd party says the card is truly mint or gem mint, whats to stop them from doing so?

Well if the grading was actually done accurately and identically for every card, then it would be much less of a scam. The fluctuation you see in the grades turns alot of people off.

Hayden · Post by **Hayden** » Thu May 31, 2012 12:12 am

Blood wrote:
tap4black wrote:It's no more a scam than paying $50 or $100 for a piece of cardboard. Different folks collect different things and if someone is willing to pay 5x or 10x more than what an ungraded card sells for because an impartial 3rd party says the card is truly mint or gem mint, whats to stop them from doing so?
Well if the grading was actually done accurately and identically for every card, then it would be much less of a scam. The fluctuation you see in the grades turns alot of people off.

Grading at minimum confirms if a card is genuine which to the avg buyer (who does not have the same expertise to spot fakes that we have) means peace of mind. I follow this buyers caution when buying high value cards from people I do not know (when I can't hold the physical raw card before purchase), and I follow it even more religiously in my comic collecting where restoration (rather than fakes) is what you really need to watch out for.

So I see great value in grading even if their standards may appear off as you say (which I have yet to see for myself with the multitude of graded cards that have passed through my hands).

Besides having a super Mint Summer Underground Sea in a BGS 9.5 case is just nice to hold and look at sometimes $:-\'$

GlobalBoosterHunter · Post by **GlobalBoosterHunter** » Thu May 31, 2012 4:11 am

I have seen grading and slabbing moving into the coin and banknote hobby.

It hasn't really taken off in Australia or the United Kingdom, it is seen as a way for people who don't know anything about the hobby to get a foothold into the hobby and is generally reserved for newbies looking for an investment vehicle without needing to put in the research.

It doesn't make the coin or banknote or magic card any better, it is exactly the same object in the same condition. All you are adding is a layer of security between yourself and the buyer, they may not know or trust me but they know the grading company.

I would only grade them as a way of value adding to the item or if I wanted to sell it online.

Tha_Gunslinga · Post by **Tha_Gunslinga** » Thu May 31, 2012 4:30 am

I don't deal with graded cards at all. I refuse to buy them, and I refuse to get any of mine graded. I have a few random PSA-8 Beta commons that are good for drink coasters, and a PSA-6 crimped Beta Demonic Tutor that I picked up a while back, but that's it. I have seen mislabeled graded cards, mis-graded cards, and at least one graded fake card.

Magic was intended as a game to be played, and I play my cards. You cannot play graded cards. They are worse than fake cards, since at least those can be played, in theory. I love playing misprints and rarities, and I don't ever see myself wanting to get cards graded.

tap4black · Post by **tap4black** » Thu May 31, 2012 6:50 am

You are doing yourself a disservice Ben. There are easily more "fake" misprints out there than misgraded cards, be they sun bleached, sheet cut off center etc.

Magic was marketed as a CCG and you seem to be forgetting that first C stands for collectible. There is ALOT of money to be made in high grade Alpha and Beta's and there are many many people who will beat a path to your door to get those cards if you are offering them for sale!

tryst · Post by **tryst** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:02 pm

Blood wrote:Well if the grading was actually done accurately and identically for every card, then it would be much less of a scam. The fluctuation you see in the grades turns alot of people off.

This is what I meant. Sorry for my original, short, heated comment.

I purchased a Mox Ruby without a scan because it was graded Near Mint (7). It is nowhere near Near Mint. Now I need to see scans of graded cards!?!

Dmitri Young, the seller of the $2.5 million baseball card collection on May 22, admits to resending cards to PSA until he got the grade he was looking for. Oh, by the way, PSA just happened to underwrite the Dmitri Young baseball card auction...

I'm also not opposed to people grading cards. If it makes them feel better, great. Mr. Young admits to getting through some hard times in his life by being able to just sit down and admire his PSA 10 rookie cards. I can understand that. I like to sit down sometimes and admire my beat-up Alpha Gaea's Liege, but I'd rather not have a piece of plastic between it and myself.

tryst

GlobalBoosterHunter · Post by **GlobalBoosterHunter** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:36 pm

Cracking slabs is also a passtime for coin collectors, just resubmit until you get the grade you were looking for. When there are $100s difference it is well worth the effort.

Coin graders also make mistakes...http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/350570999555

mystical_tutor · Post by **mystical_tutor** » Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:04 pm

I think grading has a place. For one thing there is someone saying that the card is real and that someone has a reputation to uphold so their effort and experience will count. Will they make mistakes? Only if they are human.

What I don't like about grading is the prices people ask for a graded card verses an ungraded one. I feel that adding the price of the grading service is appropriate--doubling the price is not right.

Having said that, though, anything is worth what the buyer will pay.... so I can't speak for anyone but myself and I haven't bought any graded stuff.

Gary

magicmisprints · Post by **magicmisprints** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 7:40 am

mystical_tutor wrote:I think grading has a place. For one thing there is someone saying that the card is real and that someone has a reputation to uphold so their effort and experience will count. Will they make mistakes? Only if they are human.

What I don't like about grading is the prices people ask for a graded card verses an ungraded one. I feel that adding the price of the grading service is appropriate--doubling the price is not right.

Having said that, though, anything is worth what the buyer will pay.... so I can't speak for anyone but myself and I haven't bought any graded stuff.

Gary

When the system works as intended (ie, consistent grading of authentic cards, no serial resubmission, good-faith behavior generally on both sides), price spiking for rare cards in high-outlier conditions is the whole point. You send your finest, most of which turns out to not impress them much, but the ones that are really closest to perfect come back with max grades and are immediately marketable to those trying to put together max grade sets because the populations are smaller than their market (at least, for Alpha Magic cards). The grading process is moderately expensive and a bit tedious, so if one could only receive the price of grading, or even double that value, in addition to the base raw value of the card, few would bother because relatively few cards get max grades. The high prices pay back card submitters for all the grades that fetch no better than high raw-value - 8s for Magic, or even lower marks for old sports cards (because observed max grade drops a bit when you're talking about baseball cards that were printed before anyone had ever heard of a ground rule double) and maybe enough on the other side to make you happy enough to spend more money grading.

dry cereal · Post by **dry cereal** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 4:46 pm

this can't be difficult to automate with a computer. You can very easily do edge detection to identify the centering (I did this myself, not hard). Also, you can do edge detection on the actual card edges to see if there are any abberations between it and a straight line (also, easy). Then, you can take an image at an angle with a light on it so that you can test the sheen. This is really easy stuff. The most difficult part is using a hough transform to straighten the image, which isn't that hard....

I wonder why they still do this by hand...

magicmisprints · Post by **magicmisprints** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 5:56 pm

dry cereal wrote:this can't be difficult to automate with a computer. You can very easily do edge detection to identify the centering (I did this myself, not hard). Also, you can do edge detection on the actual card edges to see if there are any abberations between it and a straight line (also, easy). Then, you can take an image at an angle with a light on it so that you can test the sheen. This is really easy stuff. The most difficult part is using a hough transform to straighten the image, which isn't that hard....

I wonder why they still do this by hand...

I'm guessing no one with the will and know-how to eliminate those jobs has gotten to it yet.
Even if this service were to be automated, do you suppose they'd actually reduce the price of the service without outside price pressure? I'm guessing they'd just pocket the difference. More generally, many things can be automated and have been. Many more will be soon, up to and including things doctors and lawyers currently do, but fortunately for PSA graders and those supported by their paychecks, I don't think card grading is one of them.. yet.

dry cereal · Post by **dry cereal** » Sun Jun 03, 2012 7:42 pm

there are some niceties about being objective if you want to have a business model that is differentiated from the other services

Alien_Starfighter_Pilot · Post by **Alien_Starfighter_Pilot** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 5:23 am

Umm, looking forward to receiving that Alpha Pirate Ship, Preston!

Clay

phiswiz · Post by **phiswiz** » Fri Jun 15, 2012 3:17 pm

tryst wrote:
Blood wrote:Well if the grading was actually done accurately and identically for every card, then it would be much less of a scam. The fluctuation you see in the grades turns alot of people off.
This is what I meant. Sorry for my original, short, heated comment.

I purchased a Mox Ruby without a scan because it was graded Near Mint (7). It is nowhere near Near Mint. Now I need to see scans of graded cards!?!

Dmitri Young, the seller of the $2.5 million baseball card collection on May 22, admits to resending cards to PSA until he got the grade he was looking for. Oh, by the way, PSA just happened to underwrite the Dmitri Young baseball card auction...

I'm also not opposed to people grading cards. If it makes them feel better, great. Mr. Young admits to getting through some hard times in his life by being able to just sit down and admire his PSA 10 rookie cards. I can understand that. I like to sit down sometimes and admire my beat-up Alpha Gaea's Liege, but I'd rather not have a piece of plastic between it and myself.

tryst

The constant resibmission for a higher grade only works for PSA. It will not work for BGS. BGS is much more consistent/reliable than PSA. This is one of many reasons I will not touch a PSA card.

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Great Condition Alpha set on eBay

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