Sports Illustrated Blog # 140 on Our Way to 200 – CGC – Please Be Consistent
Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now. Consistency in grading is absolutely essential – essential to the future of the hobby as well as to every stakeholder/hobby enthusiast. Sellers, buyers, and graded hobby magazine collectors base their buying/investment decisions on the guarantee provided by the standard of the industry, CGC grading company. The assumption of every graded magazine stakeholder is that there is, and always will be, a consistency in grading parameters, throughout all options regardless of era. I am devoting this blog to one of the most, if not the most, important element of any collectable market – consistent, trusted product grading. As we are awaiting the entry of a new magazine grading company, I’m concerned the result will be an additional grading standard and new grading interpretations, sowing confusion between the two entities. After 30,000 graded SI magazines without a 9.9 or 10.0 grade, CGC has recently opened its standards so that these grades are now fairly common. I will bet they would not admit to any change in grading standards but a 30,000-magazine sample is enough to establish, with relative certainty, that barring the extreme exception, a 9.9 or a 10.0 was previously impossible. But now, not so much. No one knows what changes the new competition will bring but, at a minimum, there will be a new grading number system. How will a CGC 9.8 compare to PSA 10.0? How will the value of 10’s of thousands of CGC graded slabs be affected by the possible perceived grading differences between grading companies? I don’t have the answers to these questions but, I hope the grading companies are reading this blog (they’re on the distribution). We depend on their dedication to the collectibles markets to maintain a consistent standard no matter who, no matter what, and no matter when. This responsibility is the backbone and conscience of the entire industry. We are thrilled with the competition and hope two grading companies prove way better than one. I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of SI, SPORT, and BASEBALL magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting. Great collecting to you in our second century of blogs and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/SPORT/BASEBALL magazines. For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit www.sportsillustrated98.com |