Bring it on. I would happily take a hit in the value of my collection if it means the prices of all the stuff I still want go down. This rare back bubble we're in is absurd.

All valid points, Pete, and please understand, my post is not to ruffle feathers, more for informational purposes. Just seems to be a very fine line between what should be deemed as fraudulent activity. One can only wonder what an AH does deliberately or not. Unfortunately, when buying, my mind set is almost that of "trust no one" which is why I am really only sticking to graded items-that leaves a lot of guessing out of the equation.

Really? I have been burned far worse by graded cards that never should have made it into slabs than I have by raw cards, and that's a fact.

Ditto - nothing like busting open a psa4 to find a bunch of surface scratches that the case hid...I trust my own eye more than any TPG any day.

I don't like the money-centric part of the hobby, with PSA and news outlets announcing "new price records" and all that shallowness. However, many of the buyers are genuine collectors, so that's not that big of a deal. As long as the items themselves are left alone and still exist, I can live with it.

I'm not even saying things are too expensive. I just think that judging things like baseball cards and movies by their financial level is shallow, and what shallow people do. A baseball card sale will appear as a story on CNN or ESPN, but only if it sells for a lot of money. Which just says CNN and ESPN are shallow. And, of course, CNN's coverage of movies is largely based on box office receipts. As I say, you can't judge the quality of a movie by the box office receipts, in part because people buy the ticket before they watch the movie.

That wasn't a political statement. You can switch FoxNews for CNN if you wish.

Any real collector knows a wonderful item can be worth only $1 on the open market and that doesn't take away from its wonderfulness. Just as no one here, other than studio stock holders, requires box office records to pick their top 10 favorite movies.

You know, I'd call 2001: A Space Odyssey an artistic masterpiece, and I have no idea where it ranked in the 1968 box office list. Learning that Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo or the McGwire 70 Home Run ball turned a better profit won't alter my opinion. That doesn't mean I won't find 2001's box office ranking uninteresting. I like facts and figures just like the the next guy. I'm a baseball fan after all.

what the graded slabs do is lull the customer to sleep and they dont have to take a good hard look at the card, they just trust the tpa. and if the tpa is slabbed altered/trimmed cards, then why again is the tpa better at detecting these alterations over the concerned collector?

I really only look at PSA and SGC online...can't speak for the other TPG's. And online, it seems if it's not graded, there is a pretty darn good reason for it. Above all, yes, I trust my eyes as well, but overall, if they can't see it under their scrutiny, with the exception of a clear error, in all honesty, I'll take their word for it a lot more often than not. It's only human to be biased towards "your" cards, especially when selling, and again I'm not such a conspiracy theorist that they are in bed with a handful of dealers.

Barry
 

Wow thanks Barry. Means something coming from a guy like you.

Z Wheat