Smarty pants.
But yes, you could call weak 9.8s "9.7"
And eventually....they will.
Not weak books just weak GRADERS.
Once again you will never see 9.7 or 9.5, unless your that stupid company called Wizard.
When the 9.7s and 9.5s come out...ignore Wiztard, that has nothing to do with this....will you come back and say "ok, RMA was right"....?
(And whether it's a weak book, or weak graders, the end result is still the same.)
It doesn;t make sense to break down the grading scale anymore.
It's not going to happen.
The book is the same the end result is determined by the grader.
Sure, it doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't make sense to a lot of people.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to the market...especially with the vast differences paid between the uber grades.
MS61, MS62, MS64...those grades didn't make sense to a lot of people, either.
Look, CGC didn't really HAVE to have a 9.9, did they? I mean, 9.8 and 10 would have worked fine, right....?
So why do they have a 9.9?
And wouldn't a 9.7 alleviate some of the problems with cracking and resubbing, hoping for 9.8s?
The one difference is that 9.8 and below did correlate to the traditional OS grading designations. 9.9 is the only creation off the grading scale.
Did Overstreet use both Split Grades and the +/- Grades before CGC showed up? (Haven't bought one in a long time).