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

Congrats SewallH, you found my acquisition, lot 219! Thanks to this acquisition, which I waited quite a while for the right copy/price, I am only missing one electronics omit out of all of them, which I refuse to buy (c86c). The c86c is a technicality of vermillion presence, and I believe should be a c86var, because I have never seen one with the vermillion fully intact. Scott should change it's stance on it. Anyway- back to topic-

` I routinely see auction houses list catalogue values for a stamp that are as if the stamp is Very Fine and Extremely Fine when in fact the stamp is actually only Good. It is all a scam - an attempt to have collectors overpay for inferior merchandise`

I don't think this is the scam. Showing the SCV, is about saving you a step for looking things up. There is no misrepresentation here. The SCV is for you to then make a determination based on the sample photos, how it lives up to the SCV ideal. Quality and grade all factor in, but so does supply and demand.

Collectors are responsible for their own buys. If a seller is misrepresenting their items, (hiding repairs, or other faults) then that is a seller issue. If a seller purports a stamp as superb, without documentation, it is on the buyer to rate the sale "as-is" and judge for themselves if it is at that level. Taking the word of a seller, in a forum such as ebay is highly subjective. There is no substitute for due diligence in any transaction. Inexperienced buyers lacking expertise should avoid stamps that don't have supporting documentation, with the understanding that the documentation then requires a premium in price.

The real scam is fleecing customers with shoddy merchandise. Reselling counterfeits and stamps that previously came back with faulty certs is garbage. To me it is akin to lemon laws with regard to car buying. The other scam, is dealers who engage in making sales with conversed expectations of future returns. Every stamp transaction is atomic, and should carry no expectation a reward is guaranteed in the future.

Don, let's not let facts ruin a good story...

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Pictures, words, prices (not-yet-realized) ... an auction catalog is not The Catalog? Who knew?




No, it's not.

The dichotomy offered is "of value to you" versus "marketing ploy".

Who's winning?




It "creates value" in your collection, perhaps.

But in the marketplace?




Just what I said, to wit:




One point on which we agree is that centering software can supply a buyer with a grunch of numbers that can be used to beat a seller's price down - a purchasing ploy, so to speak - and, by your own tales, this is precisely the purpose to which you have put, and the benefit that your have derived, from centering software.

But when the centering ploy succeeds, perhaps it is because the seller lowered a price that s/he already knew was self-generous ... which is not the same thing as proof that you got a bargain, or created value.

That you choose to always begin with centering does not obviate the fact that thins can trump centering, tears can trump centering, fading can trump centering, cancels can obliterate centering ...

Q/ Was that a GREAT and beautifully on-point Ben Franklin, blindfolded & gagged, or what?

I suspect that I am like most people. I begin with what strikes me about the stamp (or just about anything else). That can be any of its positives (blood flowing) or any of its negatives (reflux flowing), at which point either nature or research take their course.

Lastly, you ask:




Because the human eye can, and software can not yet, evaluate thins, folds, bends, fades, hinges, curls, cancels ...

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

The human eys can also be used to grade stamps, PROVIDED one takes the time to train it to do so. Most people do not, so most people cannot. There are some people who are VERY good at eyeball grades, with years of successful buying and selling to prove it. But very few.

I'll summarize my opinion. Marketing ploy. 0 value. Doesn't change anything as to how `I` approach the hobby.
I get why people need to market a stamp as superior.
A numbering system or "jumbo" or gem is overkill.
Centering is the only component of grade imho
Condition is a separate qualifier/quantifer that brings up or down the value, independent of centering
Grade + Condition reflect total value. I should be able to have a "VF", with a tear. It might make it worth 10% of scv but I digress.
It's not an ideal world that can be quantified. Live and love.

3rd party grading began with coins before stamps and is much more prevalent than with stamps. There are complete auctions with ONLY graded coins. Years ago, coin grading companies introduced laser/computer-automated grading and the grading quickly ended up with another decimal digit of 'accuracy'. Mint State coins had been graded between 60 and 70 with increments of 1. I was hard-pressed to see a difference between an MS64 and an MS65, but there is a HUGE difference in the value. With the (then) new-fangled laser/computer-automated grading available, the software could (apparently) grade coins in 0.1 increments. The rationale was that since there was a large value difference between, say, an MS64 and an MS65, that splitting the grades into tenths would allow buyers to feel more confident that they were getting the proper coin at the proper price. The logic makes sense. In the end, though, this 'micro-grading' didn't take. 20 years later, coin grades are at increments of 1, and not 0.1, probably because cooler heads prevailed. Even coin professionals are probably only 90% accurate when grading in increments of 1. I suspect NO ONE (human) can detect the difference (much less self-grade) an MS64.5 and an MS64.6. If the pros can't do it, then the collectors certainly can't. The technology is more than capable, but the humans (or the GREAT majority, anyway) don't care at all, so it just died away.

I believe there is a lesson to be learned for the world of stamps. Although technology supports increments of 1 (and probably 0.1) in stamp grading, aside from an extreme minority, most of us have no interest in knowing whether a stamp is mathematically an 82 or an 83. There are so MANY more factors that come into valuation of a stamp that the greatest value-impactors are the condition factors (gum quality, print quality, freshness, perf condition, etc, etc, etc), rather than increments of 1. At some point, we (most of us, anyway) simply don't care because we care MORE about all the other things. My old boss had a saying that I think is appropriate: "You are just trying to pick the flysh*t out of the pepper." I can imagine this leading to a "centering centric" collection, with few stamps with exceptional freshness, gum quality, impression, or particularly pleasing cancel qualities. I'll be the guy paying a little more than the 'calculated value' for the stamp with a light face-free cancel, because, to me, the subjective things make a big difference. FWIW, I can self-grade with over 90% accuracy to PSE or PF grading. My 10%-ish inaccuracy (all of that by 1 grading increment) is more than made up for by the intangibles that cause me to buy the stamp, anyway. To each his own, OF COURSE, but at some point I don't care about the fly-sh*t.

Topic? Although I have graded stamps/certs in my collection, I do think the whole idea is a marketing ploy. It's a great way for a dealer to turn a Superb 1930's commem, worth $5, into a hand-picked graded 98-100 (insert your marketing adjective here) GEM and sell it for $200. For most of what I buy, though, grading doesn't make sense because the purchase is made for those intangibles, and the hobby's history is such that they have been bought and sold for 100-150 years for exactly those qualities.

For those of you who protest that grading is only for bragging rights/ego of the rich, there are many stamps that are graded below the nose bleed levels sought by those who are chasing the best known examples. A grade by a recognized authority allows you to buy a stamp and know the dealer can't later tell you it has a lower grade than he sold it to you as.

For those of you that keep protesting about high prices for common modern stamps, that market dried up long ago.

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Automated grading? Consider grills.

You've got the centering of the grill, which must be measured on both the horizontal axis and the vertical axis.

But is the displacement to be measured linearly (a millimeter is a millimeter is a millimeter)?

Or, is the displacement to be measured non-linearly (each additional millimeter of displacement counts more heavily than the last)?

(Non-linear weighting is probably closer to the behavior of the human eye and the preferences of human collectors.)

And, are there thresholds to that non-linearity? For example, does the grading curve get steeper when the points touch the perfs?

Then you've got the distribution of point depths, from full to shallow to MIA ... a curve that is easy to construct, but how shall it be scored?

You could compute the standard deviation of the point depths, for example, or you could use integral calculus to compute the area under the curve.

But you also want an arithmetic measure the uniformity of the point depths, because a 'bar bell' (half of the points you can easily see, and half of the points might as well not be there at all) is a very different grill than all of the points are more or less of the same depth.

So, some algorithm, written by some person (in China?), is going to combine:
- a non-linear value for horizontal displacement
- a non-linear value for vertical displacement
- the aggregate depths of all of the points
- the uniformity of the depths of the points

And how are these four factors to be combined? Are they weighted equally, eg, 25% each?

To the Post Office Department, the depths were much more important than the displacements, because the purpose of the grill was to absorb the killer's ink.

To collectors (and the collecting marketplace), however, centering always matters ... so the weighting of depth-vs-displacement is not a trivial, or a particularly arithmetic question.

Now apply all of these thoughts to the ridiculous idea that some algorithm has reduced stamp design centering, objectively & mathematically, to a letter score.

Q/ Are the displacements scored linearly or non-linearly?

Q/ If non-linear, are there threshold values, such as when the design comes within less than one perf's diameter of the perfs?

Q/ How is the distribution of the displacement weighted? (Clearly, 1mm X displacement with 1mm Y displacement is very different than 2mm X-only or 2mm Y-only)

Q/ And, lastly, how does this objective, mathematical, super-realistic centering score reflect the fact that the top edge of the stamp is the edge that most collectors see first and, therefor, objectively more important than the other three? Or, is it?

We reduce stamp design centering to a single-number score by constructing that single number and, yes, how we construct that number actually matters.

To outsmart the whole world by relying on a number about which you know very little is to outsmart no one but yourself.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

ikey,
The current offerings of 'centering' software also omits other things which can affect a true stamp grade.

Consider a two pass stamp with a vignette; the overall stamp design could be perfectly centered but the vignette poorly centered. No software currently handles this situation. The software would dutifully 'grade' the centering while ignoring the visual appeal of the stamp.

Or consider modern stamps with many colors. The stamp could be perfectly centered but the color registration very poorly aligned, making for a blurry looking stamp. Who would want to buy this stamp 'graded' as a 100 but it looks awful? No software currently handles the 'overall appearance' of a stamp.
Don

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Don, please allow me to turn a point-of-agreement into a difference of opinion.

Q/ Which of these is mere visual appeal?

- vignette centering

- color registration

- design-to-perf centering

A/ ALL OF THEM.

Q/ Which of these is an objective fault?

- vignette touches the frame

- colored items overlap or lose adjacency

- perfs invade the design

A/ ALL OF THEM.

And, they can all be ascribed a numeric score "to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

BTW I love frame touching vignettes. I try to grab these and other misregistration s when folks don't realize they've stepped from bad into great EFO.

Shift-based EFOs are a really good example of a non-linear effect on pricing: as the shift worsens, the price decreases until - POP Goes The Weasel - the price increases.

Someday, we can have a really good quibble about whether/not touching is the price turning point.

https://goscf.com/t/65237#567280

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Q/ Which of these is an objective fault?
- vignette touches the frame
- colored items overlap or lose adjacency
- perfs invade the design

Actually, none of these are "faults", objective or otherwise. For sure they make a stamp less attractive, and they usually have a serious negative effect on value, but the stamps are still sound. The word fault should really only be used for stamps with some kind of physical damage, otherwise it gets confusing, especally to the less experienced collector.

agree with Rev's last post

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Point taken.

Though perhaps I should be more pedantic (for a change) ... I checked four online glossaries, and the word 'fault' appears in none of them!

But I am okay with using different words, to wit:

- defects are things that were wrong with a stamp before it was sold, versus

- faults are things that went wrong with a stamp after it was sold.

Q/ Does that work for everyone?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who got over-invested in defeating the alleged objectivity of centering-based stamp-grading algorithms)