The Philatelic Foundation Grading Upgrade

I agree with Revcollector on PF being more persnickety on grading. PF will not grade anything below a 75. As far as I know, not counting Jumbo sub grades, there is grading given at 100, 98, 95, 90, 85, etc are world of the posibilities. There is no 91 grade ever given as I believe having these break points reduces subjectivity to a service already full of prejudice. In my opinion, PSE plays games and I refuse to use their services after my expeiences.

You mean like F - VF - XF?

What "games" does PSE play? Nobody has been specific about what is so bad about PSE other than that they were successful in standardizing stamp grading.

What "games" does PSE play? All the complaints are vague. What, specifically, have they done that is unethical or shady other than being successful in creating a standardized grading method?

PSE plays favorites in my opinion and is terrible with paperwork detailing final fees.

The value of a 95 vs 98 is substantial and they are conflicted with large volume submitters/repeat customers. For an indiviual, PSE will grade a stamp at 95 for what looks like a "perfect" stamp and therefore the individual gets back a stamp with a SMQ value of say $100. Contrast to a big submitter, who PSE knows they need to keep happy, give the "exact same" stamp a 98, SMQ jumps to say $300! That's real value and 100% in PSE hands (black box). You can't prove this given no two stamps are the same but they don't seem to put on their "blinders" when grading from what I can tell.

Let me ask the group, how many 100's has PSE issued (too many I believe!), I never seen a 100 out of PF, does this even happen?

PF is non-profit and ethical from all my dealings.

PSE is for profit and seems to select which customers they want to create value for, they also don't have a good paper trail of the final fees they charge, making it impossible to know if you have been charged correctly, by contrast, PF paperwork is very clear.

I only know that I have heard multiple complaints from both dealers and collectors who have used PSE on an occasional basis that stamps they have had graded did not get numbers as high as equal stamps from major players. At times, although not always, I agreed with them if I had a chance to do a comparison. Most of this was years ago; I have not heard anything recently.
I also have seen numerous revenue certs over the last 10 or 12 years that I disagree with (since they started doing everything in house). Since I do have experience with expertising I feel my disagreements are valid.

About "centering" vs. "grading": All I can say is that I have seen many stamps, for example sold at Siegel, that had a very high grade, but had obvious problems with the perforation tips. The quality of a stamp is not only centering, but all the other things I mentioned: color, paper, perforation, impression. There is no objective way to get all these things together in a detailed grading. So, indeed, the old criteria like "fine" and so on, that work in other countries as well, would be fine.

To be clear, I don't have anything against the high value of well centered stamps, I just don't like the approach that they don't call it "centering", but "grading". Grading in its real way has always something of subjective, and to handle this, the steps of grading should be larger (XF and so on). We can't handle them in opposite when it comes to 75 vs. 80 vs. 85. So I actually don't see when this began to get the wrong direction and was called "grading". To repeat, I understand absolutely that well centered stamps are worth much more in the USA, and this would be even good for the hobby, as it's real value.

When I started sending stamps in for certs a few years ago, I used PSE. They were the least expensive and were friendly and helpful when I called them. I met Randy Shoemaker at a show and found him to be super nice and helpful, so I used PSAG for a couple batches of certs. I heard that the PF was the "gold standard" and I like that they are a non-profit. I emailed them and explained that I liked PSE, but wondered what differentiated the PF from PSE, since the PF is a little more expensive. I got back a very rude reply that said I should just stick with PSE. If I can find the name of the guy and the email, I'll post it here, but that rude old guy put me off of PF for a while. Now I send to both PF and PSE. PSE is WAY faster. And the folks at PSE have been very helpful and friendly any time I talk to them. For those two reasons, I prefer PSE. But I send maybe a quarter of the stamps I send for certs to the PF (been waiting a few months to see if I have a genuine KC Roulette cover!) I don't generally collect 98s or 100s (I have no 100s). I like quality stamps, but for me 90s are just fine. I try to collect at least 80/VF, but I don't get graded certs just to tell me how nice my stamps are, I get them for the high-value ones that are likely to grade high because part of the hobby I enjoy is finding deals and fantasizing that maybe some of my stamps will eventually sell for more than I paid for them.

I do not own any graded stamps and have no desired to own any. If am not in it for the money, collecting is more disposable entertainment expense like many leisure activities.

Owning graded stamps does not necessarily mean you are "in it for the money". If you saw a stamp that you liked and it had a graded cert would you pass on it because it had a graded cert? Is it truly disposable entertainment expense or would you feel slighted if somebody offered you $50 for a stamp that you paid $200 for? Would you sell it for $50?

I think it matters more of course upon the what stamps we are talking about. You can absorb the hit on a $10 stamp but would you truly not care about recouping your money when selling a $1000 stamp? Would that be fair to your heirs?

These are fair questions and I am curious what the answers are.

Alas, it all depends on what the $1000 stamp is. Perhaps you got a bargain. Perhaps you overpaid for it because you needed it for an exhibit and it was the only example you found after looking for a long time. Perhaps it is in an area so highly specialized that few collectors know or understand why it is so valuable. Simply saying "a $1000 stamp" is too broad.

I also believed there was a big difference in non-profit versus profit business models in stuff like this. As a result I favor PF. However, PF has had it's own corruption issues (albeit back 20 yrs ago+).
Only perfect model is for computers/AI to grade the stamps based on centering/perfs/etc. and no human contact.

I honestly believe PSE centering standards have changed and I believe some older PSE grades from 10-15 yrs ago were graded at different standards. There also appear some time periods where perhaps a grader was lenient for a year or harder.

Computers and AI cannot assess eye appeal. Impression, color etc.. or can AI do so?

Each issue is different.

Color will be hard for AI because scanners & cameras differ & age.

For stamps that do not come on the market too often, there will not be a pile of consistent images with which to train.

Eye appeal will be hard for AI because the inputs are an image & an impression.

The AI module can learn to replicate human judgement but, in the case of eye appeal, human judgement differs.

Some folks like light cancels that just grab a corner and do not impinge on any element of the design they consider critical; others collect SOTN and want to read the city name; others collect fancy cancels.

Yes, you could train three different AI modules and get each one to judge SOTNs as SOTNs, fancies as fancies, precancels as precancels, etc ... but, still, the grades that the software will learn to replicate will be human grades, and vary with how taste have changed and how well the grader's breakfast digested.

(Studies have looked at how harshly judges sentence criminals before versus after lunch, and found consistent bias, so this is no joke.)

But, yes, with a large, cleanish data set for each variety of each stamp you can train AI to grade for color & eye appeal.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who took his first & only shot at AI using Fortran and an 8K core)

As a casual observer of this thread (and someone who has seen the grading bug in prior areas I collected like baseball cards and coins), I'm not sure that those who collect graded stamps or those who avoid them will ever sway the other side no matter what the arguments given.

Personally I have no interest in them and feel that the speculators graded stamps draw in will ultimately be the ones who damage the hobby's reputation when they move on. Legitimate collectors who pursue graded stamps have their reasons as mentioned several times already in this thread.

The fact that multiples are being sacrificed for the sake of one 'high grade' single is a loss for us all.

I will keep on poking around in the lower end of the spectrum, enjoying myself every step of the way.

Just my two cents.

Dale