I love the binder talk. All of my 1957-75 sets are in binders, and for countless years I've been trying to upgrade them by going to shows and hitting ebay, etc., knocking off a card here and there. I absolutely love the tactile feel of the cards and the wonderfully musty, nostalgic aroma of the old cardboard comes through whenever you leaf through a binder. But it's come to the point now where virtually everything I buy is graded. The main reasons for that are two or threefold:
First, when the time comes to sell my cards, having them in slabs will be quite a leg up for establishing perceived value and whatnot.
Two, if I'm looking for something on ebay, it is virtually guaranteed that ungraded HOF'er cards will have such inflated prices that it'll be more than prudent to spend a little more and get a really nice one that's already graded. That's what happened when I was finishing off my 1961 high numbers. $70 bucks for an ungraded All Star to put in the binder, or around $100 (and less during ebay coupon days) to grab one up in PSA 8? I enthusiastically went with the latter. (The same sort of thing happened with 1967 high number, Rocky Colavito.)
Lastly, I gotta be honest, when I see really nice ungraded HOF'ers from the 60's being sold by dealers who specialize in graded cards, I often wonder, "Why didn't he get this one graded? There must be something going on. Maybe it's trimmed and/or was rejected by PSA or something??" Granted, there are plenty of other reasons why a card hasn't been graded, but it never hurts to be careful.
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