Nice grab! I had that one on my watchlist. It's a beauty!

Dead centered and slightly soft corners is a nice presentation.

Thanks, I was watching it for a while....in the end just such a nice mid grade example.

My 53 Bowman set ranges from a few cards in vg to near mint, with the majority in either vg/ex to excellent condition. I'm trying to upgrade my vg/ex cards to excellent but as the gap price-wise seems to be widening, my major stars will have to remain untouched unless I can either sell other parts of my collection and try to wrangle some trades.

Finally found a nicely centered copy, and honestly could care less on grade.

https://i.ibb.co/qd22PKx/DC19-AF3-D-...DC7-D243-A.jpg

Congrats! That one is very difficult to find nicely centered. I used to have a 6, but it was off about as much as a 6 could be off left to right.

Thanks, I’ve been looking for about 18 months, ran across a few but either I missed them or they seemed to be trimmed so passed on them. But in terms of anything a PSA 4 or lower I think this has been one of the only I’ve seen so couldn’t pass up. Plus the last one need for his basic topps run which is nice!

Congrats on finishing the run, that's neat. Yeah the conformities of professional grading aside, eye appeal can be different things to different people. In fact - that is mainly what this thread is about. That's a beautiful card!

I love your kind of collecting , its collecting in its purest form. Slab collecting can be adapted to any range of condition or pricing. I buy both..Great stuff out there in lower range. I believe most people are focused on centering over all other attributes ( my view ) but old fashioned eye appeal works for me best..

Centering went from a preferences thing to a hard hobby condition judgment point in the early 2000's with the rise of TPG popularity. In the 80's and early 90's before grading, most collectors looked for cards with sharp corners over and above centering unless a card was just badly OC or miscut. Funny how times have changed. I'm not a centering freak, I guess in part because this is the era I came up in. I will generally go for a card with a better surface and image and coloring that's mildly OC, over one that is perfectly centered but lesser in those areas.

You are right though, sometimes you just have to eyeball a particular card and see how you feel about it. This is what too many slab-only collectors today seem to have lost the ability to do, in some cases it seems to me.

I've decided to get more into collecting lower grade vintage as it's a lot easier on my wallet and can get more for the money. Been debating though about a paper loss 57 Mantle, under a 100 dollars but the paper loss is on the front but none of the text or image of Mantle is fine and otherwise it's a great looking card. I've been okay with back paper loss if it's nothing major if it's not a blank back. But on cards like this it's tempting on something i might not otherwise get into my collection.

Centering is important to me, but mid grades is the way for me
 

On my budget I need to use lower grades. I have a 58 All Star of Williams that's really nice and it's a 6. So I will keep looking for at least 5s and 6s. I grew up in late 50s and 60s and I'd like to have a nice collection of the players I enjoyed back in the day. Now if someone would let me know how to post my pics I'd sure appreciate it.

Brian (southeast Iowa's largest Yankee fan)

If it doesn't bother you, go for it. A '57 Mantle #95 for less than $100? That's basically a thing of the past.

Mid-Grade Collectors
 

Some recent lower-mid pickups that spoke to me. All technically lower grade, but I think they do well in the eye appeal department. In keeping with our theme here, all of these cost me a fraction of the price of graded examples that probably would have been only a few notches higher - mainly due to technicalities & small issues:

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...e59a0b0431.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...50cb472d0e.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...8f24c1becc.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...f6a2e9fc45.jpg
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...20f108cb96.jpg




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great group of cards, well done!!

Might need to find me some low grade eye candy Koufax in raw form soon!

Good stuff, John! That's the way to do it!

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

I have a 1961 topps SGC Hector Lopez coming, hoping tomorrow. Also have a Banks graded a 6 PSA.

That 69T Mantle is sweet!
RayB

Great thread. I really enjoy looking at all of these great cards. Here are some of my favorite mid grades from my collection.
https://i.ibb.co/m0tZKzb/64-Rose.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/pRYbVLV/68-Rose.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/6XwK2my/69-Bench.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/QjrKvsG/69-Jackson-RC.jpghttps://i.ibb.co/58xsdzy/67-Aaron.jpg

I've been having a good time looking for mid grade cards for my collection.

How is that 67T Aaron miscut but the 64T Rose isn't??

Oh man, I love that Berra. That card is high on my priority list and you've got a great example right there. I think that's my favorite Berra card by a lot.

I posted this Musial in the pickups section, but I think it deserves a spot in this thread. I think it's a very nice example of a "mid-grade" card!

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...512b8fa7_c.jpg1952_Bowman_Musial_1 by boosandpearl, on Flickr

Some great stuff here. I've learned more and more to appreciate mid-grade vintage. Here's a few of mine.

https://i.imgur.com/BbJzNrK.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/YISiW6e.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/uRhagLR.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/7nlo7es.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/q3rsGuR.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/QQVGiu3.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/yNs8cjz.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/Hoh5xNY.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/821mEJg.jpeg

Wow, that was a STRONG group of cards right there. This guy gets it!

Help
 

Have I offended??? I've been hoping someone would tell me how to put in my scans for my few mid-grades. Can't get it done please give me some help.

Thank you.

Bammer

This is something I posted awhile ago, so I dug it up. Hopefully it helps...

Do you have scans, pics ready to post? If so, try to get their sizes pretty small (like about 1MB or smaller) so they will readily load up on the site. Then (as you are typing your message) click the 'paper clip' icon on the page as so (highlighted in blue)...

Attachment 465865

Which will bring up this window...

Attachment 465866

Hit "Choose File" and find the image(s) on your computer that you want to post (the screenshot shows that I had already uploaded the 'stepone' graphic) and then hit "Upload."

When the file uploads, go back to where you were typing the message...

Attachment 465867

And then hit that paper clip again to choose the file you want to add to your post...

Attachment 465868

And BOOM!! that's it. There are other ways to upload pics, but this is the most straightforward.

(Technical note for clarity: a couple of minor revisions were made to the text after I took screenshots, so some of it doesn't match exactly.) (Of course, now everyone reading this is trying to find those differences. Ha ha.)

If you are on a computer, you can attach a .jpg or other picture file if it's not too large. Just click on the paper clip symbol above where you are typing. A "Manage Your Attachment" box will open. Then you click "Choose File" where you will select a file off your computer. Pick your file and click "Open". Once you click "Open" then your file name chosen will appear next to the "Choose File" button. Click "Upload" and the file should upload. You can then Preview Post or Submit Reply if you feel like it's correct. I hope this helps. You may also be able to do a search of previous threads discussing how to post or attach pictures.

There's the post. Thanks Darren. You posted that while I was typing.

attach my banks
 

Here is my Banks, graded 6.

Thanks to all who sent me directions. I was hoping to do it this way, but darn I couldn't figure it out. Thanks everyone for your gracious help.

Brian

Great cards everyone. Glad to see this thread continuing to get some love. There's nothing better than old cards that show some patina but are still beautiful, IMO. Keep 'um coming!

Thanks Ray. I was so busy looking at the ding on the lower left which probably keeps it at VG, that I didn't notice when I bought it how well centered it was. Most '69 Mantles - even in higher grade - have trouble in that dept.

Nobody here bought that $30K Monte Irvin right? Just checking...;)

I'm more of an "opportunist" than mid grade collector. I can like anything for the right price. Picked these two up at estate auction that I attended with my kid. He was after a Hulk #1 and wound up the underbidder. While we were waiting for that book to come up to the block I grabbed these 2 mid grade cards for cheap.

Nice!

Not a star card but fits the theme.
Picked up at a local cards show last weekend.

Typically this is my domain. I generally collect raw/graded in the 3-6 range mainly due to my wallet. Some higher/lower.

I collect mid grade for two reasons. Obviously budget is the biggest, but the second is I think there's more value in mid grade cards. There is often very little visible difference between 5s and 8s or even 9s. I've got 5s and 6s that look significantly better than higher graded versions of the same card. I've yet to see a better looking version of this card in any higher grade, and I probably paid a fraction of what a registry collector paid for an 8 or 9.

There is certainly more variability in eye appeal in the mid-range and lower. PSA 2 through about 6 are good examples. My favorite place to play right now is a card that looks like a 6 or so with nice corners, but only got a 3 or 4 because of a wrinkle or hairline crease or some other surface issue that's difficult to see. I recently got a '66 Jim Palmer RC in a 4. Card looks like a 6 - the grade is due to a wax stain that you can't even really tell is there.

I don’t mind lower to mid grade cards at all.

I hope it’s okay for me to bump this thread. I just got back into the hobby a couple of months ago after being away for over 3 decades. I’m basically starting all over again. I sold off almost all of my collection over 30 years ago, except for a few of my favorite cards. It has been quite a learning experience getting up to speed with where the hobby is now. Things sure have changed since I was in the hobby back in the late 1980s.

This thread about mid-grade collecting is definitely one of the best things that I have found in my hobby re-education so far. I started out again in collecting by looking at higher grade cards and I quickly found it to be kind of stressful. I wanted to make sure that I was fine with any flaws that I could find in a card graded at something like a PSA 8 before I potentially spent money on the card. That was no fun at all.

After reading this thread and few others similar to it, I decided to settle into mid-grade cards in the 3-6 range, with an occasional 7, for cards from the 50s through 70s. It’s been more fun since then. A nicely centered card with nice color and registration in that grade range is a nice looking card and a heck of lot easier on the wallet and stress level. I can also get what seems to be infinitely more cards that way versus focusing on high graded cards.

Anyway, hello to you all from Ohio.

Michael

Hey, welcome aboard!!!

So many of us who used to seek out prime examples of cards had to develop a whole different game plan when the pandemic saw the prices on everything shoot into the stratosphere. That was a sea change of a "WTF??!!!" moment, and caused collectors to start making much 'better' purchase decisions with their budgets.

Good luck with your collecting rebirth, you'll definitely have fun here on Net54!!!

Thanks, Elm! This is easily the best forum I’ve found for baseball card collecting.

(Spelling edit. Mea culpa, Elm)

Mid-Grade Collectors
 

Always! Welcome aboard!

Apparently I started this thread 6 years and 2 days ago, lol. Mid and lower grade vintage is the lifeblood of many in this hobby, I remain convinced. Many of us here are far more interested in baseball and baseball history as far as our collections are concerned, over and above our cards being "investment pieces" which might some day help us retire. It was with that notion that I asked that question 6 years ago...

This isn't even midgrade, but here is today's pickup. I'm so proud of this damn thing this is the 3rd thread I think I've posted it in, LOL.

Good to hear from you, Michael!

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...852e8716b3.jpg

Some mid grades.

Thanks, John.

It’s been a lot of fun getting back into collecting again with the opportunity to revisit all the baseball history and memories. Every card really has its own story to tell and collecting more cards by targeting middle grade cards means more history to relive and enjoy for me all over again.

Those are some real beauties you posted there!

Those are some really beautiful cards!

Thanks Michael. I feel like the mid-grades represent the best value in card collecting..

Love all these mid grade cards. Only thing I love more than a pretty mid grade card is a pretty low grade card :)

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...606b6ce3_b.jpg

No fair bringing in prewar. Great card though. ;)

The post-WWII cards that I could only dream about getting as a kid in the back in the 70s are now within grasp in the mid-grade range. Mid-grade cards just open up many more interesting collecting possibilities for me personally that collecting only high grade cards would not. Same for lower grade prewar cards.

It might not be fair bringing in that low grade Ruth 1933 Goudey, but personally I can live with it. 😉

Fantastic looking card, Matt. Just beautiful.

Awesome thread! Very, very cool.

How do you guys store large amounts of cards, let’s say complete runs of 1951-1959 topps? In binders? Top loader in boxes? Is it necessary to penny sleeve every card or just put in a top loader? Store then raw? What do you guys suggest? Thanks