Something can be subjective, without being a scam.
Are you suggesting they are deliberately misleading people, or are you saying grading is not consistent and is subjective based on circumstance around when the item is graded.
The service being sold is the objectivity of the grading process, otherwise anyone could just decide they have a high grade item.
This sort of thing happens all the time in grading – a later reveal shows that earlier gradings were obviously incorrect in the mind of any collector. That means that they have such a poor objective process as to be no better than subjective analysis.
Graders ultimately sell reputation. Like currency, grading only works if you believe in it. Don't believe the grader? Then their word isn't worth anything. This means as more and more of these issues happen, graders will struggle to retain that trust, and when it disappears it disappears rapidly.
> my understanding was that the point of grading a card was to have a verified, objective rating of the card's condition.
> If grading is subjective, then I don't see the value of the process
This made me curious to check the PSA grading standards, turns out it's both.[0]
Personally, as a very young kid I collected baseball cards, unfortunately for me, this was the very late 80's & early 90's. While I have some cards that are my favorites, would be pointless to grade cards that are practically worthless.
>> While it's true that a large part of grading is objective (locating print defects, staining, surface wrinkles, measuring centering, etc.), the other component of grading is somewhat subjective. The best way to define the subjective element is to do so by posing a question: What will the market accept for this particular issue?
>> Again, the vast majority of grading is applied with a basic, objective standard but no one can ignore the small (yet sometimes significant) subjective element. ... The key point to remember is that the graders reserve the right, based on the strength or weakness of the eye appeal, to make a judgment call on the grade of a particular card.
Are you suggesting they are deliberately misleading people, or are you saying grading is not consistent and is subjective based on circumstance around when the item is graded.