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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1375814, member: 27832&quot;]It looks to me like all the arguments here against machine grading boil down to the importance of <i>subjective</i> judgement. For a collector, that&#039;s what it <i>should</i> boil down to -- does the coin appeal to you enough for you to buy at the asked price, or does it appeal too much for you to sell at the offered price?</p><p><br /></p><p>For TPGs, though, it&#039;s not working out. We&#039;re getting inconsistency, &quot;market grading&quot;, grade inflation, CAC second-guess stickers, and the &quot;re-submit until you luck into a higher grade&quot; syndrome, which over time will produce a preponderance of overgraded coins (because an undergraded or accurately-graded coin will always tempt someone to try for an upgrade, but once the coin is clearly overgraded, it&#039;ll never be submitted again). Some people (hi, Doug!) have already given up on TPG &quot;standards&quot; as a result; if today&#039;s trends continue, more and more people will do the same.</p><p><br /></p><p>Automated grading may be one way to put a stop to it. There are reasons it may never happen; I&#039;m sure TPGs <i>love</i> being able to count on a string of resubmissions, and I&#039;m sure customers love the promise of landing an upgrade. But I don&#039;t think there are insurmountable technical barriers.</p><p><br /></p><p>Humans can&#039;t always explain subjective factors, even if they can <i>evaluate</i> them consistently. <i>But that doesn&#039;t matter</i> when you&#039;re building an automated system. You just <i>train</i> it until it produce results consistent with your trusted evaluators. At that point, you <i>still</i> don&#039;t necessarily know how to explain those (formerly) &quot;subjective factors&quot; -- but you have a machine, which you can back up, duplicate, and sell, that will evaluate them consistently every time.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some of you are probably 100% convinced that it&#039;s not possible to train an automated system in this way. You <i>may</i> be right -- but I&#039;m just about certain that you&#039;re wrong, and I&#039;m more certain about it with each year of technological advancement. It&#039;s not something that I have the resources to prove (by demonstrating it), but I can&#039;t imagine any way to <i>disprove</i>​ it (prove that it&#039;s impossible).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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