I just looked at my lotting letter for the Feb/Mar NAFA auction coming up.
I find it interesting that the NAFA graders always grade my marten as a
"clarity" of 3. Very rarely a 2.

Then I looked at my past FHA results and their graders will grade my marten
from a 1 to 3 on clarity.

So what the heck is "clarity" and why the vast difference between auction houses in
their standard of grading?

A clarity of 3 must not be bad because I sure have a lot of select skins and enough
of those silly Top Lot papers to wallpaper the outhouse!

Clarity is the overall sharpness of the color, You give the pelt a color for example pale, what the clarity means after the color is how clear the actual color is.

Size grade color clarity

XL *I LBR 3

A 3 is slightly off, color was light brown.

Another way to look at it is the way you can buy light bulbs, some are sharper in color than others.

Will be at the sale Sunday and will ask the marten grader.
Jim

Gibb, while you’re at it ask the coyote grader what his deal was with grading so hard this year compared to the past 3 years. Thanks bro!

Jim,
Thanks. What I find interesting it that my marten from NAFA graders are always a 3 for clarity!
For example I have 40 on this sale coming up and all of them are a 3.

As opposed to FHA graders where I'll have a range of 1-3 with about 1/3 going into each "clarity"
category.

Not that it matters as long as I receive a good average, still baffling the wide difference between
auction house graders.

Maybe NAFA graders need to change their light bulbs ?

It might depend what they are selling in the overall collection.
NAFA has Russian sable for sale,those are likely the 1-2 clarities.From my understanding they have a slate blue underfur blending into a dark guard hair coverage.

Well at least they are consistent all my marten graded 3 and a couple of 4 clarity. I will ask when I get down there. More important to me is that they are consistent, could just be a graders preference.
You would think that you would have a range in clarity other than just 3.

NAFA shows no clarity for some colors. What's up with that?

This is from page #5 of the Heavies.

I find clarity is most noticeable in coyotes, and the easiest to explain using them as an example.
Coyotes with that nice grayish fluffy under fur are 1-2. Coyotes with wooly brownish under fur are 3-4.
Hope that makes sense. I find it very hard to tell the difference between the under fur of a Fisher or Marten.
That being said, if you put a I* and a SEL* beside each other, the difference is obvious.

Spruce

I know very little about grading marten. I do know mine from northern Maine will grade 1 or better if they are killed after mid-November. The page I copied shows no clarity for the LBN's & BN's, but shows clarity #3 for the P-XP's. All are graded *SEL. What's up with that?

I have no idea. The devil will be in the details once they are sold. Open the summary tab once they are sold, it will tell you what is going on.

Spruce

The clarity is the same all the way down the string but it is only designated on the first lot of the string.