Stamp Grading - Of Value To You Or A Marketing Ploy?

It is NOT a substitute for personal philatelic knowledge and market savvy. What are your thoughts?

A well-intentioned effort to bring some quantitative objectivity to the previously very subjective grading scale of F-VF-XF etc. that has created an out-of-control fetish market.

Well written description of the issue.

hoosierboy
well said.

It was created to be a revenue stream for grading companies. It never really caught on in the mainstream as envisioned but it has enough acolytes to stay relevant. I am not a fan but for certain people I can see the attraction of assigning a number related to an items level of perfection for lack of a better term when trading in these items. And it does generate buzz when a $10 cv stamp sells for many hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The biggest negative is when any sense of propriety goes out the window and a multiple of significance to philately is butchered to create a 100J.

'Good used', 'fine used' and 'very fine used'.... I am still struggling to determine between good and fine, fine and very fine, you have this problem?

Professional stamp grading tends to focus solely on centering, ignoring color, impression, freshness, quality of perfs, etc. PSE and PF certs should say "XF-S 95 Centering" rather than just "XF-S 95" since they really only focus on the centering.

Grading of all types, whether numeric PSE/PF grading, or so-called "dealer grading", e.g., "Fine", "XF", "Superb:, etc. are all subjective.

Personally, when I sell, I rarely if ever use superlatives, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The merchandise speaks for itself; it's up to the buyer to determine what the quality is, not the seller.

I know that there are many high-volume sellers that use flowery adjectives and marketing speak where everything is superb, and I guess that method works for them. I refuse to go that route.

Centering terminology along with pictures are detailed in the front of the Scott catalogues.

Graded certs are irrelevant when it comes to certain collecting areas - covers, usages, cancels (color, type, etc), or most foreign stamps. Many advanced collectors collect along those lines. Another aspect in which graded certs fail miserably is the jumbo market. The # of the grade generally has to do with the absolute centering of the stamp, without a corresponding 'grade' for the 'severity' of the 'jumbo-ness'. If the stamp has, say, 2 mm margins all around, it may get the Jumbo attribute. Another of the same issue may have 4 mm margins, and would also get the Jumbo attribute. At that point, the two very differently valued stamps would have the same grade, say 95J. At auction, I've seen it dozens of times, the bigger stamp will sell for a LOT more than the other of the same grade. Unlike graded coins (mostly), graded stamps are NOT designed to sell sight unseen. Take into account cancels, 'sharpness', severity of hinging, and even shades, and graded certs don't paint the whole picture at all. Because of the variety of stamps, the SMQ valueations can be almost irrelevant. A novice, feeling security in the knowledge of getting a graded cert with his purchase, will tend to get the 'most vanilla' of a particular issue and grade because he won't understand why he should pay more for another (better because of its ungraded attributes) of the 'same' stamp.

Having said all that, generally, at least for higher grades (like 85+), I find that stamps with graded certs tend to sell for more than similar stamps without. I find that ungraded certs have the same effect. There is an amount of peace-of-mind that comes with a cert, graded or not. I suspect they allow dealers to move material more quickly, but that's only a hunch.


Edited to add: Looks like I prattled on so long that revenuecollector said almost everything I did earlier!!

Slightly heavy but clear Maltese cross cancellations on penny blacks are more often than not termed as fine used, but so are lightly cancelled ones which do not obliterate the head. To me fine used is something quite subjective. I personally prefer stamps with very light cancellations unless they appear on a cover. Some dealers are of the opinion that a clearly struck Maltese cross on a penny black is better than a lightly cancelled one.

"... personal philatelic knowledge and market savvy ..." take time, work & confidence.

If we never bought a stamp until we had see many dozens of copies of that individual stamp ... where would we be?

A cert lets buyers with little confidence buy with a little (more) confidence.

The whole hobby is an ad hoc amateur effort; to expect much more of the grading & certing 'system' would be, uh, optimistic.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who would agree to make jumboing a criminal offense if he thought that would make the world a better place)

This has been a hot button topic for many years. I recall the Frajola board rife with heated arguments several years ago. Nick Kirke was one of the earliest gung-ho proponents of grading and invested heavily in superior items that were of the highest grade or would garner a high grade. I believe he spent hundreds of thousand of dollars on certs alone!

A large pct of items offered at Siegel and other high end auction houses, are now graded. And the PSE has, for better or worse, brilliantly cornered the market.

Do I like them, or not? In my main collecting interests (1847's, 3c 1851's, Lebanon, Xmas Seals), I have no interest in them - I would prefer an ungraded cert, if any at all.

A side interest of mine, though, is 'just plain pretty' stamps of all eras, like a perfectly centered 1930's commem, for example. I love to buy collections and cull out the best-of-the-best and send them in for a graded cert. I love to buy an ungraded Superb stamp that has potential to be 98-100, and send it in. I hang on to them, too. I don't flip them. Only about 5% of my budget goes in that direction. I suppose I am part of the problem, but the stamps I like, in this category, tend to either be graded or very grade-able, so I play the game. After I die, hopefully 50 years from now (at 107!!!), the graded certs will still mean something, but we will see. Are they a fad? Do they have a lifetime? Or are they here to stay? What will the graded market look like in 49 years when I am taking my last breaths?? It'll be interesting to see.

Yet another thought from me: I think the habit of breaking up multiples of early US imperfs to get a 100Jumbo verges on (and I am being generous, at that...) criminal! This has been discussed here in other topics. We are losing museum-quality multiples to 'prospectors' that value money more than history/legacy.

Is it also true that they won't grade stamps with any number of natural straight edges ?

If so, it is seems stupid and I wholeheartedly endorse them do that...

It just leaves some nice stamps for people like me to go after !

They grade imperforate stamps for some ood reason..........$$$$$