[glynparson]

They were slabbing cards and putting in packs back around 2000. You are late to the game sir. I also do not see PSA as price manipulation, shilling yes, simply slab bing not even close. Psa advertising crazy prices for their cards is just good business, after all that's what they are a business. To answer the original question it depends, not if you want certain cards or issues but if you just wanted nicer raw and were not overly focused yes you could still build a decent raw collection. I do feel there would be more altered cards in the average nice raw card collection than would be in holders. I know I have seen collections of many people over the years that ripped grading. All too frequently there collections were not as high end as they thought and very often had a number of trimmed or worse cards in the collection.