[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by benjulmag

Peter,

I will never forget an encounter I had in the mid-80s with an experienced collector/dealer who was looking for a particular '33 Goudey card for his personal collection. He was a high grade collector. He finally found the card at a show that I attended and showed it me. I remember taking note that while the condition was very nice, it clearly looked like a card 50+ years old. In my mind it was an ex-mt plus to maybe as high as nr-mt. It was not higher, and that was based on the more lenient grading standards of that era. This was before the advent of grading and high prices. I remember at the time asking Alan Rosen if he could find me a very high grade '33 Goudey set (minus Lajoie) and what he would charge. After thinking for a moment he told me how difficult it would be to find such a set and how expensive it would be, but if he could he would charge $4k.

That was the hobby then and what at least my expectations were as to what a high grade card would looked like. Compare that to what one sees today at shows/auctions as long with the tremendous price differential between grades and perhaps one can understand my skepticsm that such cards haven't been worked on.

I had that conversation with Mike Wheat back in the 90s. He was baffled as to where all the high grade PSA prewar cards were coming from. He said he had handled countless thousands of cards and only on rare occasions had he seen cards as nice as the slabbed ones that seemed to be in abundance even then.