SGC no longer grading t206s?
 

Was in a discussion in a different group where a member there received an email from SGC stating they no longer are grading t206s. Can’t believe that’s real but the poster did share a screen shot if his email. Can anyone else confirm this to be so?

Thanks!

If true, this would be a serious gut punch.


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SGC NO LONGER GRADING t206
 

So we all know this isn’t the actual case but it’s true I was told this by SGC this am. Just shows the customer service and communication needs some serious work.

Holy moly…someone was released from the training program way too early. Andy, you’re right…big communication issues.


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Nothing new here sgc steady dropping the ball on communication and day to day business functions!!

SGC received and logged 12 T206s from me YESTERDAY

I believe the correct discussion here should evolve around whether SGC continues to accept and grade blank back T206s, or not?

This non graded card was part of a sub of over a dozen T206 cards they got graded.

That is a crazy response, I’ve spoken with Brent, not sure what he smoked before sending that email

Apparently they don't. Although they told me a month before I submitted them that they do. A catalogued t206 card that has been slabbed forever by SGC. Easy to tell as well. But I'm not salty :)

My guess is there is a typo in that email and that perhaps Brent was typing too fast an left out "blank back" or some prefix-statement to the phrase "T206's"

That said, its annoying if they are no longer slabbing blank backs. Not sure why they would stop; frankly, not sure how many unslabbed blank-backs are still out there. I

Josh,
I heard about your submission! That sucks man. I know a few whom plan to submit and keep trying to get them slabbed. If they hold strong to this, I’m wondering how they will treat a blank back re-holder? Can I still get a previously graded one in a new slab? Crappy ordeal

Great to see you take a good attitude about it though!

Cheers

Good point Ryan, probably not many, which makes the re-holder thought even more intriguing

I still think they don't know WTF they are doing and have little confidence in them anymore. Dismal knowledge if you ask me.
.

Check out the video that SGC put out showing their grading process. The graders look fresh out of college. This is what's grading our cards. I have been saying fow awhile now that there is a prejudice against vintage while modern gets all of the high grades. I am sort of a hypocrite because I still will be using SGC because I really hate PSA.

It’s not any different at PSA?

I'd be careful with passing judgment on someone simply because they're part of a particular age cohort. Our very own wazoo was born around the same time as those graders...and I would trust him to grade a T206 accurately.

I wouldn't be surprised at much of what they say or do anymore. SGC around the start of the bubble / pandemic tried to make a grab for market share based on new cards and new money. They left their legacy of being the small collector's vintage grader of choice behind. All the execs are young, and they want to be the next PSA. In the summer of 2020, I got valuable cards back slabbed with defective inserts that had plastic shards sticking into card edges. At that point, enough was enough. SGC slabs look great, and a properly graded vintage card from them is still (generally) a thing of beauty - but I'm done at this point.

Wow thanks Eric! Appreciate the kind words. Made my day :)

What would you expect? It's not like they're paying $40/hr to get 35-year old white collar workers.

Since most cards sell based on the flip, even with premiums for the high end of the grade in theory there should be some great opportunities out there. Sucks if you're submitting, is great if you're mostly a buyer.

I don’t know wazoo nor do I know anything about his expertise

I'm not picking on you or singling you out. However, our brief exchange reminded me of something. Pardon me for "thinking out loud" here.

With the recent influx of younger collectors into the hobby, it won't be long until there are large numbers of twenty-somethings with experience and expertise in vintage. Modern (and "ultra-modern") cards tend to be a gateway into older material. It stands to reason the boom of 2020 will lead to a significant increase in the amount of hobbyists who venture over to our side of the sandbox. If even a small fraction of these newcomers are in it for the long haul, it likely leads to at least two things:

1. A new generation of vintage collectors, which could theoretically keep the hobby going for decades
2. A new generation of experts on the horizon

Of course, this doesn't help SGC with T206 (or other vintage) cards right now. However, it does give me confidence in the long-term health of the vintage card market.

I think that's kinda the point...

Finally a thread about me! And it’s nice lol.

Totally agree with this. This is what got me to jump the fence from modern to vintage. Started at 12 — and still here!

When SGC started their money grab, they put out a call for job openings, including “graders”. Since then I have noticed a deterioration in the grading of vintage. I know the difference from a NM card compared to a vgex. It seems these graders don’t. I doubt they are all collectors but people looking for jobs. What I saw in the video where young people doing the grading. That’s a fact ,with no disparage meant to their age

My experience was similar. Also almost overnight, they became centering fanatics. And apparently didn't teach the new graders how to compute centering ratios. A 90/10 card that's otherwise NM should be downgraded, yes, but a 70/30 card that's otherwise perfect shouldn't be a 5. I busted a few SGC slabs like this last year where I felt like even PSA would have given the cards 7's.

Is there a huge influx of younger collectors. Leon's recent poll does not seem to show that. I don't run into too many under 30's when looking through vintage at shows

Eric,
I agree with everything you’ve said on this thread. And absolutely, we have multiple young members here with tons of expertise.

However, I do see both sides of the discussion.

The young members here (like Wazoo) have expertise because they have experience in dealing with vintage cards.

Irrelevant is someone’s age. If they have been dealing with T206s for ten years, they are qualified and typically will give a qualified opinion.

Tony’s point, as I see it, is that these young graders don’t have experience, hence they are not qualified.

Cheers All

Colton

Further, what I find funny, is that if Tony would have seen the same video of graders, but it would have been a room full of 60 and 70 year olds at the grading tables, I think there is a good chance he would have just assumed those older graders had experience.

However, the chance or % of the older graders being just as ignorant of vintage cards as the young ones, and just being there for the job, would probably be similar

Haha

Just my two cents

Hmmm, most of the collectors I see at shows are probably under 40 and many even younger. Though they might not be looking at vintage cards.... yet. A poll from within a group of predominantly vintage card collectors is not a good basis for predicting future collectors. It's just a snapshot of where we are and taken only from within a subset of a larger group. I'd be more concerned that younger collectors are not looking at baseball cards, but rather basketball or some other sport (or Pokemon).

It doesn't take a large percentage of card collectors to maintain interest in a small percentage of the card collecting realm (ie vintage). It's from the level of interest in baseball cards as a whole. The future is more related to whether they are into the cards or into the money that can be made as well as related to the level of interest in baseball in general. I do think that set collecting though for baseball cards will eventually go the way of the basketball card market, but I think that will also correlate to how baseball is being marketed.

Similar to other collecting areas (comics, books, records, dolls, cars, etc), people usually get introduced to current items. Those who continue to remain collectors usually work their way backwards.

I can't tell the difference between a shiny 8, a shiny 9 and a shiny 10.

So I would not be qualified as a modern grader, or would I?

Do all 10s require paying a grader's premium?

If so, I'll send in my application today.

Frank,
I want fries with my order of non-fungibles

:D

Taylor,

My point is about young VINTAGE collectors. Yes, most of the crowd at a show is young, but I see very few with an interest in vintage. It's more recent and it's more driven by making money as opposed to completing sets or building a collection.

You can theorize that the 20 year olds now will get into vintage, my point is did the 20 year olds of 10 years ago? I'm not seeing evidence that they did, nor that they are now

Bob

My bad. I went back an re-read your post in the context as a response to Eric's post. I believe we are thinking along the same lines but were talking about 2 different things. I wasn't looking at it as 20 year olds, per se. But as the next generation of vintage collectors, which for the most part doesn't kick in until the mid-30s or later due to nostalgia and having children.

I’m 30. I started collecting vintage at 8 or 9. Pre-war at like 10. Which means picking up a T206 every couple months, because I was a broke kid. I remained broke until I was 25, which is largely why my focus was non sport and boxing more than baseball. My broke ass could afford a T218 sometimes.

Lots of kind, older gentleman helped to educate me and get me going and I am proud to have as friends. And lots still insist I am always wrong because simply I’m younger than them. Card collectors and fallacious argument go together like peanut butter and jelly. I’ve found men of insight and men of idiocy in every age group and segment of society. I’ve yet to see any evidence that age has much to do with it.

Most younger people in cards are in it for the money. This is absolutely true. I’m young and hip enough (I’m not hip, fine) to have spent significant time in the younger centered communities, primarily the Discords. They are in it for the money, they are engaging in market manipulation openly and some of them don’t seem to understand what fraud is. They leave a strongly negative taste in my mouth, but that’s like, my opinion, man.

However, I’m not sure this will be perpetual. It takes time to go through college, to start a career and accumulate enough wealth that one may be a true collector instead of a flipper and profiteer. I am certainly less affluent than most here, but I sit in a position of extreme luck and privilege to talk about buying $1000 cards and not really caring what they are worth on a hypothetical resale I’m never going to make. 99% of 30 year olds are not so fortunate and lucky. I think, personally, this is one of the worst impacts of money taking over our hobby, we are making it increasingly difficult for people to even be collectors at all. When our 60 year old members were 30, vintage card collecting was doable on a relatively small budget. It really isn’t so now. Even a poor beater T206 common is $25. Todays flippers are largely flippers because they need money, they’re supplementing income to get themselves going so they may improve their life and build a family. They may become collectors when they are 50 and are more likely to be able to afford it. I’m disgusted by certain business practices common among this crowd, but I can’t hate ‘the game’ too much. When you’re two years out of college and making 40K after taxes in Silicon Valley, you can barely afford to live, much less have children. ‘Stack those racks’ kids.

Not to be dark, but I think it is reality that an influx of young collectors is needed or as the aging vintage collector base dies out they will get pennys for the dollar on their stuff. What happens in 20 years if there is no such influx, and all that generation is reaching the end and they or their families are liquidating collections? Personally, I want the prices to crash so I can collect more, but I suspect this is a very minority view here. I’m not so sure older vintage collectors are really all that different than the Gary Vee worshipping guys lining up at Wal Mart. Many “collectors” are pretty open that their cards are part of their retirement portfolio or an investment. It’s just a longer flip, and that longer flip is a gamble that this influx of younger folks will be interested.

Nice, well-thought out post.

The thing that turns me off about collecting now, is that the "investors" treat it as a zero sum game. They are looking to make money (which is fine) and to do so means that they are always looking to profit from someone else's lack of knowledge. It takes away the camaraderie that used to make collecting so much fun. I recently went into a new card store near the Patriots stadium in Foxboro. The two guys working there didn't even look up at me when I entered (there was no one else in the building). I asked if they had any tobacco cards and got a snarky response about "oh, you mean like the Honus Wagner? No." I turned around and walked right out...

Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder to find fellow collectors who are willing to just shoot the breeze and talk about the cards that they love.

Nice post G1911. Thank you

Regarding this statement "Not to be dark, but I think it is reality that an influx of young collectors is needed or as the aging vintage collector base dies out they will get pennys for the dollar on their stuff."

Here is what I know, why I disagree, and why I have put a good deal of money into very old and rare vintage cards over the past 6+ years: I started collecting in 1983 and lived through the junk wax era, eventually getting out bc things made no sense (like now). I got back into cards in 2000, sold out in 2003, and got back into cards in 2015 (and still actively collecting). That is almost 40 years in and out of the hobby. The one thing that is true over those 40 years is that the good cards are worth more today than were in the 1980s, many by multiples and multiples, and each time I got back into collecting the good cards were worth more than the last time I collected. By "good cards", I mean HOFers and rookie cards of retired stars and HOFers.

40 years spans is a pretty long time. And Ruths, Cobbs, T206s, as well as Nolan Ryans and Frank Robinsons are more expensive now then ever. If history is an indicator of the future, and it often is, the "good cards" will continue to retain value, and likely increase, over the next 40 years. Well, that's what I am betting on.

All that said, sometimes I find it very hard to look at what cards are selling for and not think "man, I should just sell everything." Especially when I consider your thesis may end up being correct. However, there are two reasons I do not (i) l I would rather have the cardboard than the paper, right now and (ii) I fear if I sell something I will never be able to get ot back (or it ma cost me triple to get it back).

I can totally agree with this.
And I'm coming from the opposite end of the hobby, it used to be - and fairly recently- that if I wanted a vintage HOF card badly enough that I could save up for it. (which I sadly didn't do) Some cards have appreciated so much in about the last 5 years that simply isn't even possible anymore.
And even many lesser HOF cards in major sets are enough to give me a bit of sticker shock. Like fairly common ones for around 300..... that were maybe 100 just 5 years ago.

Yes, I believe there has been. I also believe, for some of them, modern and ultra-modern cards will be a gateway into vintage.

Again, this doesn't help SGC with T206 (or other vintage) cards right now. However, it does give me confidence in the long-term health of the vintage card market.

With regard to the poll, it's not surprising. Net54 members are among the most knowledgeable vintage baseball card collectors on the planet. There are seasoned cardboard veterans here who have forgotten more than most people will ever learn. It stands to reason a majority of us are a bit long in the tooth.

It can be difficult to gain acceptance here. Hell, I've been around for almost ten years and I still feel like the new guy at times. To coin a phrase, this can be a "tough crowd" to newcomers.

I agree with you. There is a big difference between T206 Wagners, 52 Mantles and ‘normal cards’. That stuff I don’t doubt will continue to climb. But collections of 50’s material, T206 sets outside the top 10 cards, rare cards of common players, this is what I have doubts on.

T206 commons have generally climbed up, though after inflation adjustment it’s less than most think. I think this is so because there has been these generational influxes in past. My grandfather collected Goudeys and Zeenuts as a boy. His five sons all collected as kids in the 50’s to the early 70’s. My father bought me packs at Target in the 90’s as a young boy, and showed me the remnants of his collection (he sold most of it in the late 70’s to buy a stereo. Oops). We then collected together, to some extent still do (he doesn’t buy, but I show him my cards and we talk our childhood hobby every time we meet up). That’s almost a century of my family, father to son passing it along. I think that’s pretty normal.

I don’t think the next generation has this. They grew up without cards, or cards of Asian animated characters instead (not a criticism, just a different hobby). None of my classmates collected sports cards in my youth. Collecting physical things isn’t so popular in general among the youth, it’s a flipper flipping to a flipper who thinks it will go still higher, whether it’s cards, J’s, crypto or funkopops. Baseball continues to have its fan base age and other sports take the limelight. I don’t see a realistic scenario where your Wagner isn’t worth a fortune, but will anyone care about my T206 Joss once the collector generation ages out or sadly dies? I don’t know. In 25 years when todays Wal Mart flipper has achieved financial security and has surplus, they may look back fondly on their card flipping days and come to collect. Or they may not, just bouncing to the next buck to be made, how they got to cards. Will there be a market of younger people to take all the 52 Mantles that hit the block when that generation dies? I’m 100% sure there will be. But how about for 52 Sniders?

I don’t know the answer, and it’s different for me I suppose. A crash I don’t see as bad, I’m just spending beer money to buy the cards I really wanted when I was 12 and take a break from the serious things in life. I intend to keep everything but dupes until I die and my heirs dump my crap for $100 to a greasy pawn shop owner. But if I saw it as investment, I’d be dumping all my 50’s stuff, B tier cards etc. while there is a living market paying these huge prices for fairly common material. The marquee type cards, the top .01%, I’d hold, those are safe. I’d be pretty scared that it’s only the top 1% of 30 year olds that can even really get into vintage collecting much. The barriers to entry, large print runs of most stuff and that much of it will hit the market constantly when a generation ages away, would definitely give me pause. I think we’re coming up on the first generations that were not guided into cards by their fathers. I’m not sure there are enough new collectors to increase the size of the buyer pool as the current group of vintage card collectors begins to fade away in the next 20 years.

But then again, I’m wrong a lot. I’m the idiot who thought Clemente was overvalued already ten years ago.

I agree, personally I enjoy research and positive collectors helping each other, and don’t like the money side. It makes for a healthier, fun time when it’s done this way. It’s tough to find across generations I think, most collectors just want to talk about $$$. I like money because I don’t want to be homeless, I like cards because they take me back to my youth.

I helped break out several dozen cards of freshly graded vintage material from SGC. Not a single card graded above a 6 and most were 5s and 5.5s. In the submission there were obvious VG+ to VG-EX cards with light wrinkles and noticeable corner wear and then cards that were wrinkle free, well centered that most would deem NM+ to NM-MT and those were in 5s and 5.5s.

Don't care if PSA is $150 per card, there is no point paying $30 per card to be crushed like that. For a buyer of that stuff it is a dream come true but not if you are the seller. Selling an under graded SGC card for top dollar is nearly impossible right now.

Some very good points IMO.

One of the questions/concerns I've thought is with that perceived level of interest among the newer generations. If you think about it, the "boom" in the baseball card collecting hobby literally began and grew with the Baby Boomer generation, which coincided exactly with the emergence of Bowman and Topps as the major card producing companies. This was the beginning of an as then unique time because before, literally (with a few exceptions) every every other card set that had ever come out and been issued only survived for a year or two. Aside from maybe Exhibit cards, which are not normally thought of as actual mainstream baseball cards, and Zeenut cards, which were not of current MLB players, the previous longest running, ongoing card distributors of any truly significant level are the Goodwin & Co. Old Judge cards, from 1886-1890, the American Tobacco Co.'s (ATC) T206 cards from 1909-1911, Goudey and their on again, off again production of regular, main cards sets from 1933-1941 (am not counting the premiums, thum movies, etc.), and Playball cards from 1939-1941. WW II effectively took out Goudey and Playball, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act ultimately caused the discontinuance of T206 cards when it broke up the ATC, and (maybe somewhat ironically) the Old Judge cards stopped due to business decisions that resulted in the formation of the ATC. It wasn't until Bowman, beginning in 1948, and Topps, beginning in 1951, that we entered into an era where kids (the true heart and beginning of the baseball collecting hobby) could pretty much count on knowing there would be a another set of their beloved baseball players put out on similar cards year after year, by the same manufacturer. Bowman initially made it 8 straight years through 1955, when Topps bought them out, while Topps (for now) is still going strong, 70 years later.

Anyway, those Baby Boomer kids grew up being able to walk into virtually any corner, dime, or drug store, and always count on seeing a box with packs of their favorite baseball cards for sale, at extremely affordable prices. Sitting right out there on the counters, generally next to the register where you checked out and paid for everything. So you absolutely couldn't miss seeing them, and bugging Mom or Dad for a pack, and you got a stick of gum with each pack to boot.

Now fast forward to the '80s and all those Baby Boomers who grew up with those cards and memories, and are now heading into middle age. They start waxing (pun intended) nostalgic about their past youth, and all their cards their Moms had thrown out when they first left home. So now that they are older, and have jobs and some money, they jump back into cards trying to recapture even a small part of their youth and the wonderful memories of opening packs, playing with and trading their cards with others, and even the smell and taste of those crappy sticks of gum. And of course, ours being a capitalistic society, it also brought out all of the people and companies trying to take advantage to make as much money as they could off those Baby Boomer dreams and memories. Thus in the '80s started the "boom" in the card hobby, and have led us to today where cards are now big business and thought off more and more often as investments, as opposed to being tied to wonderful past memories of our youth. I've read that there is something like literally 10,000 Baby Boomers joining the retired ranks every single day, and by 2031, every single Baby Boomer will have reached full retirement age. It has been decades now since kids could walk into virtually any store and find packs of baseball cards for sale, let alone any affordable ones. Aside from the few card shops that may still be around, my understanding is that Target (and maybe Walmart) are the only two well-known retailers that may still sell baseball cards direct to the general public today. I was out last night doing some Christmas shopping, and stopped in my local Target store. Curious, I went looking to see if they were selling any cards, and finally found some for sale in a little out-of-the-way aisle display. What blew me away was that 90%+ of what was displayed was of things like Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh, cards. There were some Topps and Panini baseball and football cards (no basketball though) for sale, but what really stunned me was that they had single packs of some Topps 2021 baseball base set on sale for $14.99 a pack. That was the cheapest baseball item they had for sale, just a simple pack with like six cards in it, and no guarantee of at least getting one auto, game used, prism, refractor, numbered, or other non-base card in it. I was stunned and didn't realize how ridiculous these modern card prices have gotten. No wonder people don't try to buy packs to put together sets anymore. Heck, they could have at least put a piece of gum in the pack for that kind of price, right? What kids today are ever going to have the same experiences and memories that Baby Boomers did as kids buying packs of baseball cards. NONE!

So how does that bode for baseball cards as a true hobby in the future? Not so sure. The "boom" that started and was caused by the Baby Boomers in the '80s may have also triggered and started leading us down the path to what will ultimately be the "doom" of baseball card collecting as a true hobby. Oh, it will likely survive, but younger people won't necessarily be getting into it for memories and nostalgic reasons. It will likely be just as much, if not more so, about the benjamins, and people in future generations getting involved for investment and monetary reasons. And it is neither good or bad really, just what it more likely will be. And as the Baby Boomer generation that initially caused and started this phenomenon and fuss starts to leave us, I hope that baseball cards don't turn into another Dutch tulip bulb bubble that pops some day.

This is all very interesting, I really like where this thread has gone.

Same with all prognostications; some will be right and some will be wrong.

I am an optimist and think you can collect and have a lot of fun AND still care about the monetary aspect. Even wealthy people (not me) think about the the money. The problem is a lot of people ONLY look at the money.

I have a lot of SGC cards as they came that way but I doubt I will ever submit to them again.
.

Certainly can, I don’t mean to insinuate others cannot combine the too. It’s a personal thing, I don’t like that aspect and am not too confident there always going to be a large pool of collectors to sell too. Cards are my break from business, my hobby that serves as an escape from the calculating. If it stopped being that, I don’t think I’d enjoy it so much. But that’s an entirely personal and subjective thing

+1

I think this is much less true with vintage, especially prewar. Very few people are buying 100+ year old cards purely for profit, just like I dont think anyone buys a Monet or Picasso solely for profit. They may be investing in the art, but I bet every Monet-owner proudly displays their painting and looks at it often with pride and awe. Once you get to the cards we discuss here, you likely have an appreciation for them, their scarcity and history, their relevance, etc. I think those people who progress from modern to vintage are investors who learn to really appreciate what they are investing in, and thus, take on attributes of a collector. And I do think people (perhaps many), of all ages, will walk backwards down the number line from modern to vintage; this is exactly what happened to me 30+ years ago

Nicely said Ryan!

I'm very similar to Ryan within a year or two of each of his in and out of the hobby and I worked at a card shop at the beginning of what is now the junk wax era. I've seen the same things in that span. I also agree it becomes tougher to not see the dollar signs of the collection and liquidate. To me, though, the journey of set improvement is far more enjoyable than selling. I may change my tune, of course, in time, but for now and the foreseeable future, I'll stick to cardboard photos of dead guys that were pretty good at baseball.