Question about Larry Fritsch Cards

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Posted By: TBob

Has anyone had any experience with his grading of vintage cards? I received a catalogue recently and although the prices were not cheap, there were some interesting caramel cards in it. The problem, to me, is that my idea of what is a G, GVG, VG or VGEX card might be quite different than the seller's.
Any help here? Thanks.
tbob

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Posted By: Chris B.

Its a crapshoot with Larry and his grades, but he has a very fair return policy. I have bought cards from him several times -- kept some, and returned some as well with no problem. If he has something you really want, its worth a try IMO.

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Posted By: leon

I just sent money for about 6 cards to him. He grades 1-3 grades high (usually) for what is considered today standards. If you think of it as 2 grades high you will be close. I have bought from him numerous times and each and every time returned 40%-50% of what I bought. No hassles on the returns....good luck (your 150 series is in the mail)...

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Posted By: brian p

They are very loose on grading--the majority of the cards I have received over the years I feel were overgraded by a 1/2 to a full grade. Being a lower grade collector, I have never minded much, and the return policy is good, so it is worth trying them if you really want a card and are willing to pay the price.

Brian

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Posted By: Jason

Just like every other vintage dealer I know he is way overpriced and grades about 1-3 grades higher.

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Posted By: Scott Elkins

I have bought a ton of caramels from him over the past year. Unfortunately for me, and my attempts to complete E101 and Dockman sets, I have had to return around 50%. No problems with returns - usually get an apology letter from Larry and the receipt where he refunded my credit card. 95% of his grades are AT LEAST 2-3 grades high!

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Posted By: dstudeba

I hope to never have to buy from him again. I got a card graded G/VG that had a 1.5 inch tear in the middle of it. Unfortunately I didn't open the package until after the return time had expired.

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Posted By: runscott

I hear the "old school" collectors complain about slabbing and longing for the "good old days" when you could simply trust your card-collecting buddy dealers to accurately grade the items you purchased from them by mail. But whenever one of these guys comes up for discussion on the board, everyone either clams up or says the dealer in question over-grades. Is over-grading a new phenomenon among these guys?

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Posted By: Scott Elkins

Even with their mistakes, at least the three top grading companies (PSA, GAI and SGC) aren't wrong 100% of the time in the dealer's favor! In fact, over half the time (unless a major auction house submitted the card), they tend to undergrade in the collector's favor!

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Posted By: JimB

Scotts, Thank you for making an important and infrequently stated reminder of what it was like most of the time buying cards from dealers before third party grading. Yes, third party graders make mistakes, but I would guess that about 95% of the time I agree with their assessments. That is a much higher percentage than it seems people agree with most dealers on ungraded cards. And to a large extent they have standardized grading in a way that did not exist before. People have a much clearer idea of what an ex card is like or vg card, regardless of whether or not it is in a holder. Don't get me wrong, I buy a lot of ungraded cards (in person at shows and at shops), but in dealing through the mail, I find it frustrating most of the time unless I know the dealer well.
Jim

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Posted By: Gary B.

Pretty much all baseball card shops or online sellers (not auctions) tend to be so highly priced to begin with, but when you take into consideration that if they say excellent you have to assume it's very good, and if they say very good you have to consider it's good, then it just becomes a waste of time for me. At least on ebay you can usually see a scan, and even if there are slight imprefections that the scan doesn't catch and the description doesn't mention, I've rarely been dissapointed, especially considering what I'm paying. Card shows are of course great in that you get to see the card in person, but good deals there can often be hard to come by, but the good news is you can often haggle for a reasonable price. I sure wish I could buy cards at bb card shops or through online vendors, but it's the VERY rare exception that I see a desired item at anything close to what I consider to be a reasonable price - sorry!

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Posted By: Gary B.

I've also found that Net54 is an excellent way to buy things since like ebay you're buying from collectors, or even when you're buying from dealers, they generally are not completely out of touch with reality, meaning they know what something is worth, but more importantly, what a decent, reasonable price is in a range people will actually pay. Just because something books for $400, if it sells on ebay in the $175-$200 range, I just won't pay $400 when I know I can do better - it's just not realistic.

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

Completely agree with the comments made on this thread of the over-graded vintage cards sold by Fritsch. In my experience it was an average of 2 grades higher than the recognized standards of today.

This grading deception is a lucrative philosophy. The buyer is being charged about twice the actual current value for the card(s) that he/she receives. Chances are many of the ordered cards, or perhaps parts of the order, will "stick". A generous profit for the seller.

An unhappy customer that decides to return an order pays the mailing cost for shipping and insuring the package. No financial loss for the seller.

This was my first and last transaction with Fritsch. The cost of returning the cards was $59.00.

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Posted By: Todd

Saw some scarce cards in Fritsch's one-of-a kind catalogue, priced at 3-4 times nm book. Forget the book on this issue I thought/think. Still, the cards are graded by him as vg-ex, ex or, in some cases ex+. I called and asked about grading, said I really didn't like creases, and was told that anything below ex+ might have creases. So do I pay in essence 8x book for a so-called ex+ card, which people here say would likely top out at least one grade less and probably more?

This may be the first time in my recent memory where I successfully fought off that "gotta have it now" fever.

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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

If there are not many cards which you are interested in, ask for an exact description (or gosh, a scan). If this is too much trouble, perhaps he is as well.

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Posted By: Howie

If they are scarce cards my guess the NM price in the price guide is a joke, and the condition typically found is VG, and even that will sell for many multiples of book price for grade. Don't confuse a high price with overgrading. The price may be right for the card but the dealer's grade or overgrading of the card may be off. Grading standards vary from dealer to dealer and with each grading company. None of them are always right or wrong because it comes down to applying your own standards when looking at the card, and figuring what it's worth to you. If somebody grades differently than you, learn their standards and buy accordingly. The only bad dealer in a circumstance like this is one with a no return policy. You can call yourself an expert grader but customers are the final judge, and their standards are all over the place.

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Posted By: runscott

The dealers know what they are, we know what they are. The complaint is over dealers trying to skim a little extra by over-grading and hoping they don't get asked for a return. You can be certain that when the dealer buys the cards, they know the standard hobby grades and do their dealing based on that.

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Posted By: hankron

You know there's a problem when a dealer has two grading criteria, one for buying and one for selling.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

I think the problem with saying Fritsch is trying to make extra by overgrading is most of the old cards he has hes had for a long time.I have a 12 year old catalogue from him with the same cards and prices as his current catalogue,and i mean the exact card not just a different copy of it.It might be true for other people but not him,im willing to bet on some cards hes making 5000 percent profits on them,which is nice unless it takes 20 years to make that profit

As i told tbob,ive bought about 15 cards from him and all of them were about 1 grade too high,none were graded correct but after the first 2 i knew that and took it into consideration

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Posted By: DD

John,
You just solved a long running question for me of who would buy from him in the first place? I mean this in regards to his prices. I have been seeing his for sale ads since the early 70's and could never fathom why people would pay so much more for merchandise that was readily available for less money from other dealers.

Clearly his inventory is phenomenal, as are his ethics for he allows returns. It's just his prices that have always boggled my mind. No wonder his catalog has not changed much.

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Posted By: mike

This thread is informative. And interesting. Ah yes, the old generosity in the selling grade and misery in buying grade.

There are those entrepreneurs that live on turnover and there are those that live on inventory. The dealer in question appears to be able to live on inventory; my bro used to buy the special sets and reprints; back then, I could never afford the inventory. One comfort may be my 10 year catalog is still useful (On the other hand, wasn't 1994 a market peak in raw cards?). A discomfort arises if I suspect the seller is no longer selling that card but another card from the bottom inventory. It's probably the same card!

To comment on one of the above posts, grading interpretation has always been between the buyer and the seller. That was a problem; even after SCD published standards, they were not followed by the advertisers. Sellers still sold cards around book for cards but delivered overgraded, thus overpriced, things. That is dishonest in my book. The "old-timers" still do it in my limited buying & budget constrained experiences. My bad, for continuing to buy from them, on occasion. Another issue has been the undisclosed modification of lower grade cards so to achieve a higher price sale. I'll pay a higher price for a lower grade as long as I think the lower grade card is not altered.

Grading interpretation and modification issues continue since raw cards do not sell for the premium 3rd party graded cards receive. I suspect sour grapes by some about the discussions in these boards about PSA and SGC: many cards that appear high grade are relegated to 3rd tier holders if graded at all.

imo, better to pay the high prices for 3rd (legitimate) party graded cards; smaller problem with the grade and the price; no muss no fuss, very likely no need to return the card.

Standardization increases the liquidity for cards sold by me, when necessary, too. Nobody knows me, but the cards sell for better than the old days buy prices.

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Posted By: taslegal

still, what's interesting in my situation is that Larry had these m101-6s for sale now and in his last one-of-a-kind catalog. Google search 101-6 and you can see the last catalogue ad for these. He moved roughly half of them from last time until now. He must have sold more than he thought he would, and thereby thought he had cheated himself,because he now has actually RAISED the price on many of those that didn't sell the first time. Interesting strategy, although its his choice to make, and he's been doing this long enough that far be it for me to tell him how to run his business.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Specifics: I returned a big chunk of what I ordered, kept the rest. I receive the catalogyue all the time, I never ordered again. I guess it depends on your point of view: if you are paying the grade price you are bound to be disappointed; if you are paying a very low price, not.

General: I agree that the "old school" dealers all overgrade their stuff on sale and all undergrade on purchase. That's how dealers used to make money. I got so disgusted in the mid-1990s that I completely stopped buying via mail order. So in that regard, I am not as misty-eyed for the good ol' days as others may be, simply because I remember being cheated over and over.

Now, the best route to profit is to have a good enough eye to cherry pick raw cards and have them slabbed for resale. One or two really choice commons can pay for an entire deal.

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Posted By: Tbob

They really helped. I decided to pass because the prices quoted for the caramel cards were a little pricey at the grade given, they are certainly overpriced for a grade or two lower and I'd hate to see a VG card wind up as a G or even worse.
TB

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Posted By: Julie

to them that even when I called to find out what a Colgans they had really LOOKED like, the people answering the phones weren't where the cards were. I got a personal note from Fritsch saying "Why don't you send me a list of those you have, and I will suggest some we have in stock that might interest you. OBOY! (Fritsch personally has the biggest Colgans collection on earth, and often sells them in his one-of-a-kind catalogue). So I laborously copied the names and teams of all the Colgans i had--maybe about a hundred, or a few more, at the time, and sent them to Larry Fritsch. Two months later I got a short note from him saying "sorry, i don't need any of these cards." I even WROTE on the list why I was sending it, and reminding him of his earlier note.

Grrr.

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Posted By: Scott Elkins

too busy buying T206 Doyle variations for micropennies on the dollar????

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Posted By: murcerfan

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Posted By: dennis

but really funny!

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Nice card, but prove the point: both overgraded

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Posted By: Julie

unlike the previous one--so--did you have something to say to me about someone else's cards?