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E, DanielI wouldn't collect cards without grading. I don't need to buy them graded, but they all end up snuggling in black silhouette frames as art on my walls. As an 8 year old my cards sat in stacks 3-4 inches high, held together by thin rubber strips and ordered by team. My favourite player was no more featured than the guy who'd never played for the first team and completing my set was all that was important.
Today at age 40 cards mean very different things to me.
I still love the chase but I don't need sets or to collect every player from that issue, and because they become framed on my walls - the use of a grading slab creates a new 'set' aesthetic. They look like they belong together though I am a type/hof collector and look stunning when arranged thus.
In the same way that some dinged up rusty arrow head is interesting when found on the side of a hill in the Kansas plains amongst other old debris, place it under a beautifully fashioned case with appropriate lighting and see the way the piece comes alive. The experience for me is so hightened and furthered by the SGC holder I simply wouldn't collect any other way. To be Frank, as so many others candidly are when dismissing people who enjoy graded cards, unslabbed t206's in 9 pocket holders look absolutely pedestrian to me and hold no more interest than my 94' coca cola set. For me. But I wouldn't think to insist anyone else sees them that way......
Other reasons to enjoy grading:
Like Al I really appreciate the way it allows me to handle the cards, passing them around to my 4 and 6 year olds and any friends who show interest without any worry for care or damage.
The easy and ready identification on a flip so that my eyes can drift across the issue years and names and enjoy the historical reference. I don't even need to always look underneath at the player themself.
The grading itself - of which amongst the approx. 200 sgc/bgs cards I own I agree within a half grade almost uniformly - gives any viewer (including myselft) an idea of a card's condition and the very system used to describe that condition. One can also clearly look at cards sitting side by side in approx. similar condition (corners are mostly present, no obvious tears or paper loss) but with very different grades, and after noting the different grades really close in on the smaller condition issues affecting paper - you gain a finer 'eye' to understanding condition as a whole. Even the gaining of that knowledge and the stated condition of the card is enjoyable and re-inforces perspective and expertise.
Once a card is graded and listed in a population report, I value enormously the VERY rough representation of extant copies of cards that have been slabbed, and by extention some VERY rough idea of total surviving examples. I actually really enjoy owning things that not many others can/do or choose to, and the concept of what it took for these items to survive all these years.
I like to buy and sell based on terms and grading concepts that can be understood by all, and largely agreed upon by most. I don't want to be cheated when buying a card whose value can be in the multiples when the grades change from vg to excellent, and I similarly don't want to cheat anyone else either when I decide to move cards on to other buyers.
There are other reasons as well I'm sure I could come up, but these come readily to hand.
I would ask respectfully that those who post and piss on grading and the collectors who choose graded cards to be a little more reflective.
I promise you I do every time another 'holy' thread begins on the minutiae of the t206.
Sincerely
Daniel