Grading - Canada 22 / 116

Greetings SCF.

Been lurking and reading. There is a tonne of info on this site!

I'm trying to understand the grading part of this activity.

Pulling a quick examples what are your thoughts?

Canada - 22 - 1c Queen Victoria - 1868
- Never cancelled
- Hinged
- Some perfs look roughed up
- Centered a little up / right



Canada- 116 - 10c King George V - 1916
- Never cancelled
- Hinged
- Perfs look pretty nice
- Centered high / left


Thoughts?

Red-Mark, welcome to the Stamp Community Forum!

Regarding grading, if you are asking about the components of grading for a certification agency such as PSE or PSAG, there are a number of attributes that are checked.

Centering is one of them, but other attributes are condition (type and severity of faults).

The top stamp appears to have fine (F70) centering (design clears all of the perforations), but there may be perforation faults including bends/creases and toning, and you would need to check for creases, thins and other faults as well. Also, the top stamp may not be unused as it appears to have a light black smudge on the upper part. So I think the grade would be less than F70 based on the other characteristics.

The bottom stamp has a nice color to it (yes, freshness vs. dull, washed-out, faded, etc. also is taken into consideration), and appears to have average to fine centering, as the perforations are touching to slightly in to the design on two sides. It also may have toned paper color. So I think the grade would be VG50 or VGF60 if it is with sound condition.

Since catalog values like Scott's are based upon VF (80) stamps it makes little sense to grade anything that you suspect will be lower.

These links from PSE are very informative:

http://psestamp.com/intro.chtml

http://psestamp.com/photo_guide/

Thanks both!

The links help. Lots more to learn. :)

From what I've seen of local auctions here in Canada, #22 would be described as Fine with a mention of a 'short perf' at the top. Even though it isn't fine, bidders will usually see it as such since actual 'perfect' examples are not usually seen for sale.

I'd agree with the VG grade on the bottom stamp. Centering like that is pretty noticeable, but the colour is post office fresh. Better centred examples with good colour are not hard to find.

Thanks DeeBee. These sort of comments help me provide some context from those that know much more than I.

I had been tempted to put both of them towards the VG end of the spectrum, but what do I know.

I'm assuming, had the centering been better on 116 it would have likely pushed it up to F.