[chlanman]

How do you guys decide what cards to send to be graded?
We all know that 9s are a pretty standard good grade.. and want the 9.5/10s
How do you decide what cards to send?

I have access to a microscope at work(probably better then becketts,sorry)

What can i examine them for?

Thanks

[altz11]

I'd say the first thing to do is become familiar with Beckett's "grading criteria" which can be found in the grading faq's section under the grading tab. This will tell you how Beckett determines what grade a card will receive.
I try and break the overall grade down (like BGS does) through the four subgrades; centering, surface, edges and corners. Grade each category on a 1-10 scale (going off of BGS' grading criteria as much as possible).
A tool that some people use is a loupe or magnifying glass which can be especially helpful when looking at corners and surface. You want corners to be very sharp with no color loss, no dings/rounded corners.
Surface should have very little to no obvious scratches, scuffs, finger prints, print lines or print dots or ink transfers/ink spots. As well as no surface indents.
For centering, some people actually measure it and that's probably the best way if you have precise measuring tools. this is the most obvious subgrade. If the card is noticeably o.c. (Off center) then it probably won't grade high.
Imo, edges are the least worrisome of the four categories, but it also depends on the year of the card and company brand (vintage cards were cut differently than modern and therefore have rougher edges generally speaking. Also, a company like "opeechee" was notorious for rough edges.)

This may sound silly but even just practicing grading cards at home may help strengthen your grading eye. The more you send cards in to get graded by BGS or psa or whoever, the more you will learn about what the graders are looking at/for.
Hope this helps, sorry for long reply I'm just trying to help a fellow collector. If you ever want to get an opinion on a card, post a scan and people here will tell you what they think. Good luck!

[chlanman]

Thats amazing! Thanks!
That helps a lot.. Im going to bring some cards into work and have some fun with my work microscope.
I should post up some photos with it

[chlanman]

1 question.
For centering, how do you determine its centered by measuring ?
Is it just a measurement of the width and length ?

[altz11]

1 question.
For centering, how do you determine its centered by measuring ?
Is it just a measurement of the width and length ?

You don't have to measure it (I never have), but that's probably the most precise way to find the centering grade. As you see more and more cards and become more comfortable with grading cards you'll be able to eyeball the centering and have a pretty good guess about how the centering will grade. I believe professional graders measure the centering.
I'm not exactly sure what unit of measurement is used for determining centering, I think it's in millimeters or centimeters (someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
The centering on a card is how much space is along the entire border of a card. Think of the border of a card or the centering like a picture frame. If the picture frame is even on all four sides, that would be 50/50 left to right and top to bottom perfect centering.
Just in case your unsure, 50/50 means 50% even on the left and right borders, 50% even on the top and bottom borders.

Later tonight I will post some scans of cards with different centering so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.

[sonic311]

Another good reference tool is to find samples of the same card previously graded.
You can check the population of graded cards by Beckett and PSA. Good luck and have fun Inspecting/Selecting cards to submit for grading. Hope you find some Gem Mints.
I've submitted over 200 cards to Beckett for Grading and I still have cards some back 8 and 8.5. Remember Grading is subjective so be critical/selective.
Who or what do you collect by the way?

[altz11]

Here are a few different graded cards from BGS and PSA.

---

Here are some more cards including some raw (ungraded) cards.

sorry about the raw cards being cropped at the top. I scanned them twice but apparently I don't know how to scan raw cards.

Anyway, just look at the white border around each card and see and can tell that some are much better than others.
I tried to give you an idea of a 9 centering (ripken), 9.5 centering (Griffey), and 10 (Iverson) just so you could kind of compare them.

[chlanman]

Thanks guys!!
I mostly collect hockey, and some football.

I'll post up some pictures later tonight of some of my collection.

I brought in a couple of my cards to work to play around with them on the microscope. I'll post some pictures

[chlanman]

Had fun today with some of my work equipment.

This is a Sammy Watkins auto RC topps RC

My one microscope was way too powerful to examine the cards, we measure things in microns on it..

So i used it on our 3D micoscope, can turn images into 3D to measure/examine

[altz11]

That's pretty cool.