Audiogon Grading Scale - the gold standard?

Your seller is a crook. I had a similar experience and filed a fraud complaint with the feds after buying cables rated a 9/10, but seriously scuffed and not even working. Audiogon was not willing to give me much information about the seller, but he was taken off Audiogon pretty quickly -- he may well have defrauded others. Fraud is pretty rare on Audiogon, where I would say 80% of my experiences have been good. More common, I think, is grade inflation. The AGS is a very strict standard -- one major scratch gives a 6/10, and a few minor scratches give a 7/10. Somehow, though, everything seems to be a 9/10 -- there's quite a bit of puffery that doesn't quite rise to the level of fraud. To try to deal with this, I don't rely solely on the scale, but try to contact the seller and ask directly whether there are any marks or scratches, etc. Also, to create a paper trail, I'll make email offers subject to the piece being cosmetically perfect and free of blemishes. Good luck, and happy listening.

Wow, cosmetically perfect!!! I guess you better buy new. I do agree that the AGS has objective stds, but you can also detect inflation pretty easily. If they rate it a 9 but its 2 years old, they obviously don't follow the scale closely. However, a minor scratch or two or even three on a used piece that is sitting on a rack in a corner, that you bought at 1/2 retail shouldn't be a big issue, as long as its functionally complete.

I'd like to take a different view and applaud at least some of the Audiogon sellers for their rigorous adherence to the grading system. I've purchased two items on Audiogon where the sellers mentioned that the equipment had "minor blemishes", and were both marked 8/10. After careful inspection of both pieces, I was very hard pressed to find any trace of these defects. When I asked about one of them, I was directed to examine the upper corner of the unit where there was about 1/4 inch of mild discoloration, Likely, this was just a normal variation in the color of the paint, but the seller felt compelled to point it out in his ad, and explain that the unit wasn't "perfect".

My hat goes off to those folks that are willing to raise the bar for honesty, and make us all feel a bit easier about doing business on the web. Certainly there will always be dishonest people out there, but its good to know that there's some balance.

Cheers, Ken