Understanding difficulty to grade - T17, Ampharos etc.

General
1

I’m fascinated by the fact that certain cards are much more difficult to grade than others, even within the same set.

Now, I understand that certain cards, e.g. in Neo, are very prone to print lines which is why the grading ratios are so poor, but why would a T17 be much more likely to have print lines than a T18? What about a Feraligatr 5 vs. a Feraligatr 4? Or a Meganium 10 vs. a Meganium 11? I’ve used these examples because the cards are very similar in a lot of ways, but you can see the same thing with many other cards from many other sets.

Would appreciate any insight as to why certain cards were more prone to printing quality issues than others, despite the fact that they presumably came from the same sheets (and factories/equipment).

2

Color certainly makes a difference in some cases. For example, T17 has a much lighter holo pattern than T18, so printing issues are a lot more noticeable.

I don’t think that’s the only reason, but it’s one of them. That’s also one of the reasons why Base Set Chansey is so hard to grade as well as Jungle Vaporeon, Dark Magneton, etc.

3

Thanks @mjs61290, great answer!

I guess a follow up question would be whether anyone knows if there’s a systematic reason why some sets were more prone to issues? E.g. what happened at WOTC factories around 2000/01 that led to Neos have such bad print lines; or fossil/jungle to be so prone to silvering