A card’s grade can make or break a sale

We’ve all done it. Some type of collectible — a baseball card, a comic book, a painting, a doll, whatever — lands into our lap for whatever reason, and it’s the first thing we ask:

How much is it worth? Some type of price guide or expert in the field tells us — in some cases — it’s worth hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands. It’s a simple way of determining value of an item many years old or in limited supply.

In most cases, the older it is, the more value is attached to it. We’re all wrong. It’s only as valuable as a person is willing to pay for it.

Which brings us to a story that raised eyebrows during a weekend filled with Kevin Love’s injury and Indians’ struggling bullpen updates.

On May 25, ESPN.com reported a 1993 Derek Jeter rookie card was sold on Ebay.com for more than $99,000. According to ESPN.com business reporter Darren Rovell, it’s a record sale for a modernday baseball card.

In collectors’ industry circles, a modern-day card is anything from 1986 or later. Modern-day cards are also known for being massively over-produced and, for the most part, having little to no value.

Which begs my No. 1 question about this news — was this a scam by the two parties involved with the sale? Maybe. Maybe not.

Let’s first review the story. Here’s how the sale went down, according to ESPN.com.

PWCC, created in 1998, conducted the sale. The abbreviations stand for Pre-War Card Collectors. It states on its website it provides “buyers and sellers of investment-caliber trading cards with an efficient, honest, and predictable marketplace.”

The winning bidder was Adrian Proietti, who after the auction paid the company a reported $99,100 for the 1993 Upper Deck SP Jeter card. Proietti said he has more than 20 of the Jeter card he just bought, but could never find one that graded as a perfect 10.

Here’s where my suspicious mind signals red alert.

According to the story, almost 20,000 of that Jeter rookie card have been graded. There are reportedly 8,308 of those cards with a grade of an 8, and 10,560 with a 9. Only 22 graded out a perfect 10.

There are two big-time sports card graders in the industry — Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) and Beckett.

A graded vs. a non-graded card makes a huge difference in the selling and buying of them.

Last summer, I was stunned when a 2017 Topps baseball card pack landed me an Aaron Judge autographed rookie card. The same card graded was going for hundreds of dollars more than a non-graded one on eBay. It was marked as 1 of 99 so the rarity of the card itself is far greater than ’93 Jeter rookie card that sold for almost $100K.

So what gives? The best answer: It’s all in the grading system, and the trust collectors have in them.

The process of a getting a trading card PSA graded begins when a collector sends his/her card to the company and pays a fee. Weeks later it’s returned in a case with a marking of the grade on the case. Criteria includes the card’s surface, the coloring, the corners, and — arguably the No. 1 criteria — if the photo on the card is centered.

Opinions vary. What you see with your eyes could be entirely different than what the grader sees. It’s a crapshoot.

The 39th National Sports Collectors Convention comes to Cleveland in August, and I’m curious about responses I’ll get from dealers on the record sale of the Jeter card, and the trust factor of the grading process.

Spend a few minutes online visiting message boards and other forums, and it’s safe to say PSA and Beckett have their critics.

The Jeter card sale still pales in comparison to three bonanza payouts for three modern-day NBA and NFL sports cards. According to ESPN.com, a LeBron James rookie card sold publicly for $312,000 in 2016. This year, Tom Brady rookie cards sold for $250,000 and more than $100,000.

There are other stories. In 2011, a perfectly graded Michael Jordan 198687 Fleer rookie card sold for more than $100,000. Those wondering why Jordan’s rookie card is from that year (his rookie season was 1984-85) is because no basketball cards were produced by the big trading card companies from 1982 until 1986.

The oddity of modern-day sports cards with huge sale figures is they’re not rare at all. Upper Deck produced huge amounts of its product in the 1990s, and there’s reportedly more than 14,000 Jordan rookie cards in existence, and probably more.

It’s the grading system that creates the scarcity.

It’s up to the collectors if they believe the grades.

It makes you think long and hard, doesn’t it?