Beware Non Certified Classic Stamps On Ebay

This is not in accordance with what PSE say. A PSE grading certificate takes in soundness and centring. A guide to their grading is on their website:

http://www.psestamp.com/intro.chtml

To quote the intro:

It is important to appreciate that a stamp can achieve a grade through two very different paths. The stamp can be completely sound (fautless) and have it's design close to the perforations and achieve a grade of fine. Conversely the stamp may have near perfect centring, yet have a fault such as a crease, thin, etc and still have a net grade of fine.

The grade of a stamp has two compenents, soundness (the presence or absence of faults) and centring. "This is the heart of the PSE grading system."

The PSE website has tables of soundness with what they class as major/minor faults etc.

Although I agree that they tend to put more weight on centring.

Balf

Hi Balf....

That's news to me....appearently these companies are free to create their own definitions.

There has been an ongiong debate about standardizing definitions since about 1920....if memory serves.......maybe it's time has finally arrived.

The purpose of the original posting was not to blame either seller or expertizer. It was merely to indicate my experience which is that there is often a fairly frequent disconnect between stamps sold as sound and those same stamps sent for certification might show. It might be thought that perhaps I am not as good a grader as I should be. That's entirely possible. I would like to see a part of this forum where members submit images of stamps to the board for their opinions ,particularly those that have been subsequently certified to how accurate our grading skills actually are. Tom I sent you some poor photos of recent non cert items for your input. In response to another members question I would get a cert on any unused 19th century us stamp or any stamp from 1847 to the Washington franklins costing more than $100.

funcitypapa.....

saw the photos......can't see well enough to give an opinion.