The Grade Is In On The Strasburg 1/1 Red Auto

Im dumbfounded as to why someone would grade a card like the Strasburg 1/1 auto out of 2010 Bowman. Because the card is "worth" so much money to people who would pay the price of a down payment on a house to own it, grading it would seem to be the worst possible idea. If it comes back anything less than a 9.5 you have already chopped some of the value off it, and if it comes back 9.5 or above, the card was already worth more than the risk to have it graded.

Funny enough, that’s exactly what happened. The guy who pulled it put it into an auction house display, and had it graded through Beckett, of course. Aside from the fact that he trusted a 20,000 dollar card to other people for any period of time, it came back a 9. There are multiple explanations that I will discuss, but I just wanted to share my half-LOL over the grade. That’s what you get. If it is indeed a protection thing, which for an auction house may be required, just get it authenticated and call it a day. Then you have the protection but not the ugly look of the completed grade. It takes away from the presentation without a doubt, either way, but at least there is no silver tag on it.

Now, onto the discussion about the grade itself.

Beckett obviously knew the importance of getting this card done the way it NEEDS to get done, instead of simply grading a card a 9.5 just because of the high profile nature of it. The problem with the controversial Strasburg Superfractor is that us "expert" graders felt that just about every aspect of the grade itself was inflated to get Beckett the publicity. If it were graded a 9 or an 8.5 like it should have been, people wouldn’t have had the reaction Beckett wanted them to have. Obviously, it backfired on them and they got smoked.

This card looks A LOT better than the Superfractor, but it got a lower grade because of the subgrades for corners and surface. Honestly, I don’t see how it could be less "super-mega-pristine-mint" than the Superfractor. Its most likely a lesser because Beckett didn’t want egg on their face for the millionth time this decade, and this is the one time that I actually see them in a no-win situation. If they grade it a 9.5, we call them out again for fucking up the Strasburg 1/1 auto AND the Strasburg Super. That’s a track record that hurts business. If they grade it anything less, its because they knew what would happen if they didn’t. Basically, there is not a way they could do it right. Even if for some god forsaken reason they hold true to their arbitrary standards and give it the grade it deserves, it doesn’t matter because they screwed, scratch that, RAPED the pooch on the previous card.

It is this argument that I have stated NUMEROUS times when going over the grading business not service. This business that Beckett has brought to the forefront of the hobby is an unregulated paid service that generates them more money than their magazine at this point. Even though Beckett has constantly addressed that their public figureheads have nothing to do with BGS, the company still has to answer for the mistakes of both. The video explaining the grade for the Super was a big mistake, the grade itself was an even bigger mistake, and it actually calls a lot of stuff into question for a lot of collectors who may not have questioned that stuff in any other scenario. If the Super was graded a 9, and this was graded a 9, you have no problem with people who don’t usually get involved. But because you have the inferior super at 9.5 and the superior red at 9, people start to question everything about everything.

Personally, this is just one card in a series of thousands that I would question. Without getting into my disregard for the entire grading process, its impossible to do it right with humans and human tendencies running the show. That’s the bottom line. To say that the graders themselves have no idea what type of shit storm they are handling each time they do a card like the Super or the red auto, is ridiculous. They know exactly what is going on and they have specific instructions. You know why? Because no regulatory body will ever question what they say. They have established themselves as THE graders, and they have also made it abundantly clear that we have NO right to question them. Well, no. Fuck them.

This is where your questions and concerns finally show them that they are not an unquestionable titan.