Does it make any difference if I grade this?
 

I'm not sure if it makes any difference to grade this. It's not nice so it might grade 1. I've heard postally used gets an A at PSA and anything written on is a 1 at SGC. The authenticity is probably OK base on the postmark. So my question for people smarter than me is -Would you bother?

I don't have any future plans for it and my wife does know not to put it in a dollar box.

Just curious, what does it cost to slab something like that?

A slab, IMHO, will protect it and make it easier to sell if/when the time comes. However, if you have no plans to sell it and your wife knows not to give it away, then why bother with the slab?

Edited to add - I like the postally used cards, just like yours.

I don’t see the point of getting it graded. Like you said it’s in poor condition and it’s already authenticated by the Post Office. If you want to protect it get it professionally framed. I agree with Fred, I like postcards with writing because I think it adds alot of character and uniqueness to the postcard.

If no question on authenticity and no intent to sell, it doesn't make sense to me to slab most cards these days.

I would slab it. It will be slabbed only "Authentic" but to me it would be worth the expense to do it especially if you are not in a big hurry to get it back if you submit to PSA or if you would like to get it back quickly, send it to SGC and you will have it back in your hands in a few weeks.

I’m different and weird. I grade stuff not based on if it may or may not be “worth it”.

I like the encapsulation, the authentication and the look of a labeled slab. Makes it a helluva lot easier to sell later too when I’m gone.

I also would not bother. The postmark and cancellation would be enough for me.

Id slab because everything is for sale/negotiable at some point.

Depends on motivation/intent.

If you plan on selling it, I would absolutely grade it- SGC so you get a numerical grade.

If you are just going to keep it indefinitely, then whatever makes you happy.

Nice card BTW. And know that some PC collectors prefer the postal stamp and appreciate the content if the writing

If it's cheap enough (and the wait isn't long...hello, SGC) to grade it, I say definitely do it. Like other have said, it protects it, plus it's easier to take out and show people this cool piece from 1909 when it's sitting protected in a slab.

Like everyone is saying it just depends on if you want to. I would because I like how the holders look uniform and have a little label stating what the card is. I like that look better than a top loader. If that has no appeal to you, then there's no real reason. Then the only consideration is, eventually someone will probably grade it and sell it. Would it be cheaper to get that done now?

There's no downside in having it graded.

+1 agree if the intent is to sell it then it would be worth getting it graded. Easier to sell and it protects it.
I also like that it has writing on it adds character to it

I remember getting a good shudder from post #4 in this thread: https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=295781

I haven't had anything graded in a while. What is the cost of grading something like this post card? PSA? SGC?

I agree. There is no downside - other than the grading fee and shipping/insurance costs. The upside is: (1) You can easily store it with your other slabbed cards; (2) It is better protected; and (3) surely, the slab will clue your family in that it has value when yougo to that big card show in the sky one day.

Great card by the way!

Thanks everybody for the great advice! I found this in a box with my other postcards recently and had forgotten I had it. When I looked up a value for SGC I was surprised.

We decided not to grade it. I can keep it between a couple graded Cobb Exhibit cards and it will be safe. When the time comes for my wife to sell it, she has an old dealer friend who can help.

Grading at SGC looks like 275 including return shipping. Getting it there is the hard part. USPS lost the last card I sold and insurance was a struggle. I don't want that again!

Anyway thanks again. You guys helped a lot!

1) Cost. I realize you may make it back when you sell, but if he is not planning on selling

2) Not having the item in your possession for X months

3) Getting lost or damaged in mail or by grading company

You may feel the upside well compensates for these, and you are probably right (if planning to sell), but downsides do exist.

1. Being worth a thousand dollars more than the grading fees when slabbed.
2. SGC is turning cards around in two weeks or less.
3. USPS registered mail is 99.99999% safe with full insurance for the item. They don't lose these because someone in the postal service has to sign off on the package at each stage of the shipment and whoever signs is personally responsible for the package at that stage.

1. Yes, but if he's not looking to sell he could use the grading fee to afford more cards.

2. Also yes, but if doing the grading to sell, most people feel PSA graded items sell for more than other TPG graded items, so using SGC may not be considered a good grading option.

3. Yes once more, but you can only control that when sending to the TPG. What about when it is being back to you? Can you dictate to any/all the TPGs you may use how they have to return it to you?

Sorry - Double post.

Remember, if you have it slabbed, you can no longer do this to your card.

Brian (not my fingers, not my toes)

Exactly - you can't touch it any more! You could only view it through the plastic condom. :p

Just think, a little more pressure and you'd have a card that would allow you to practice removing a crease from the card.

Admittedly, I have MANY slabbed cards but at least you can let a 4 year old play with them and not worry too much about them.

Exactly - you can't touch it any more! You could only view it through the plastic condom. :p

Just think, a little more pressure and you'd have a card that would allow you to practice removing a crease from the card.

Admittedly, I have MANY slabbed cards but at least you can let a 4 year old play with them and not worry too much about them.

Good points. In the old days, the grading companies used USPS registered mail for return delivery with insurance but I no longer grade cards so they may well use FedEX and UPS exclusively in today's world so your 3rd point is well taken.

Randy, just so you know, was not trying to put your points down at all, they are all good points. It is just that there are other conflicting points that also can be valid in questions of grading or not grading, and deciding which TPG to use if you do go the grading route. There is no right or wrong answer, and it is ultimately up to the person that owns the card to decide what they, and they alone, are comfortable in doing.

And when asked by someone like the OP, the best we can do is try to present and give as many different options, along with the pros and cons of each, to the various alternatives and choices available so the person asking has as much info as possible to make the best informed decision for themself that they can. All good, and hopefully whatever the OP chooses and ends up doing satisfies and makes him happy.

I totally agree. The owner always makes the decision and the good thing about this forum is there are varying expert opinions for virtually any question. I certainly took no offense at your points. Again, I buy some graded cards but stopped grading myself because obviously I cannot see well enough with a 10 power loupe to find the defects that always caused my expected 7's to be actual 5's.

LOL

I hear you. I don't send anything in to be graded either. Only once submitted some items directly to SGC at a show to get them authenticated. And also like you, I've bought a lot of graded cards over the years. Not necessarily because I wanted to, but because no comparable raw versions were readily available at the time.

I ruined a card two years ago that I was too lazy to slab. It hurts to think about. Don't risk your wife's future lottery ticket. Slab it!

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I would probably, not positively, grade it for protection.
.

I would have it graded if it were mine.

Aren’t some of these that are graded on the Heritage Fall Auction? I’d definitely get it graded

Another reason not to grade, if one is not planning to sell in the short term, is that you may need to regrade later to get your profit. There is a price differential for older graded cards already, and it is a very real possibility the market changes significantly in the next few years. With CSG rising, the almost inevitability of AI based grading removing the viewer from the occasion, if you're selling in 10-15+ years that PSA slab you have right now may not be the slab you or your heirs will want to sell it in. You might need to crack and submit to someone else or an AI service, or send back in and pay a fee to get it into a modern holder (though the serial would still give it away it's an older grade with different standards).

Unless I’m totally off my rocker, a card with writing, a stamp, and a postmark on it like this is probably going to grade as authentic or 1. Unless the grading standards change between now and then, I suspect that a different grading system isn’t going to result in much of a difference that way.

If we were talking about a different piece with a potential for a higher grade, then I totally agree.

I suppose there’s still always the possibility that you raise that the most valuable case today might change over the next 15-20 years or more, so that might be reason enough to wait just to see where the market goes.

I mean obviously this exact card is a 1 in any real system. I never contradicted that at all. The recent posts have been giving reasons to or not to grade cards one doesn't immediately plan to sell. I never said this card might be a 2 in 10-15 years... The market shifts with new slabs and new companies. In 15 years if AI grading is the rage, people won't want PSA. Obviously this card is a 1. Set registries and people wanting the current thing will have the same impact; if people have moved away from PSA and into AI, then they won't want PSA eye graded slabs. Others even want the current gen slab regardless of the number. A slab is not a card, it is following the herd to whatever the hot thing of the moment is. That hot thing probably won't be the same in the future. Thus it is a waste of cash to pay to grade twice if one is not selling in the next few years.

Do you feel like the market places a premium on newer slabs simply because they are newer/shinier?

Or is it because there is a perception that older slabs have less stringent grading?

Or maybe both?!

In this specific case, if the reason for the difference is due to changing grading standards, then maybe there wouldn’t be a difference, simply because this is a 1/auth either way.

Naturally, if it’s a situation where a shiny new case is more valuable simply because it’s new and shiny, and you’re decades away from selling, then waiting makes total sense.

Effectively both. It begins with the perception that todays standards are better, and people gravitate to that. Whether it is true or not doesn't seem to matter. It pushes down into the lower grades as the thing to have (a 1 from 20 years ago doesn't fetch the same as a 1 graded now, and a 1 graded by PSA sells higher than a 1 from SGC or a raw 1 even if a card is very obviously authentic and a 1).

If there wasn't a slab difference for 1's, people wouldn't need to grade 1's for money at all. I think the grading game is a silly absurdity of a measuring contest and crack all my graded cards (except for a few in my trade bait box that I have raw versions of) personally, but it is what it is. If you're trying to make money, people want the new slab of the time you sell it, and of the top grader at that time. PSA's dominance doesn't look assured with the rise of more serious competition and the clear future direction of computer grading. The money you might save by grading now rather than later as prices increase over time and gambling nothing changes in the future seems more risky than to just hold raw and grade right before you sell off.

I would just do what YOU want to do, and not let others’ perceptions or herd-like mentality dictate what you do with your card. It’s a nifty one, whether or not you give your money over to a grader who thinks it’s a “1” at best.

I would definitely get it slabbed. Mostly because I like the looks of stuff like that in an SGC tuxedo, but also it's easier to move down the road if you decide to sell it. I've told myself multiple times that certain cards are "mine forever", but then I moved them a month later.

Thanks for all the advice! I like it better slabbed, and other than a few anxious moments due to the idiots at USPS it was painless. Best of all, if something happens it will be easier for the wife.Attachment 543471

How much did it cost to have encapsulated?

I haven't had anything graded in a while and if I'm hearing correctly, the grading fee may be dependent upon the value of the card. I kind of get that, but what happens if you have a card that you think is an "8" and at that valuation it is $10K, but when you receive it, the label indicates "7" and the value of the card at that grade is half. Does that mean you paid a higher grading fee for the card? I'm totally lost these days when it comes to grading.

Looks great and I am glad you did it!!

In your case, yes. You would still pay the grading fee for a $9999 value card even if after grading it is only worth $4,000. Your extra benefit was that it took 2 less days at PSA's headquarters than if you had estimated it at $4,000 in the first place.

Most people underestimate their grades by about 1 number and submit with that projected valuation. Sometimes that will lead to them underpaying and getting a good grade. Sometimes PSA will upcharge them to the $9999 level since they have to underwrite the return shipping costs and that is also part of the service level.

I agree with this. I would get it graded even if no immediate plans to sell personally. But only you can answer if it would be worth the expense to you.

me too! Good choice [emoji106]

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It was 250 plus return shipping. If you value it higher than it grades, you paid too much. If you think it's a 7 and it gets an 8, you pay an upcharge sometimes but it's worth paying the extra. For me the only question was A or1. I was happy with either.

Thank you for the responses. Wow - I'm totally blown away at the cost of grading these days. With the high valuations of cards, the grading companies must be making a lot of money.

What a racket. With card prices as high as they are now the fees must be ridiculous. Just curious, IF someone had a T206 Wagner that was raw and about VG condition, how much would it cost to have it graded?

Is there some MAX fee for the TPGs? At some point, it's just ridiculous. Do they also charge these crazy fees for new/shiny 1 of 1 cards that people are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for?

I don't know about PSA. SGC rises incrementally, charging up to $3,750 for a $100K card, and then says to add an additional $375 per $10k of value above that. So say you had a card that you value at around $500K. That would be $3,750 + $375(40) = $18,750? $1M = $37,500. The $12M Rosen Mantle 9.5 - $450K? Now, the guy that consigned it I really hope didn't pay that much to have it graded, because he didn't know what it was going to sell for. That is a unique pricing situation. When he bought it from Al Rosen, it was just in one of those thick screw-down cases.

I would have to imagine that if you have a Wagner or something of that caliber you are going to send to them, you would call and negotiate a price for the grading first. I don't know about the lower grade prewar stuff, but look at how much publicity SGC got at the National out of that Mantle.

I don't speak for anyone else but for me to have that card in a slab and harder for me to mess it up and easier for me wife to not get cheated later is well worth the cost.

Back in 2020 I listed a Jordan card on ebay for $20. No takers, offers, etc. Graded a 10 at PSA, sold immediately for 1500. It's a crazy 'hobby"

I think PSA has a walk thru service. I can't afford those cards so I don't know what it costs. lots!

I think you made the right decision. Looks great in the holder and might even bring more than the "average" 1 if you decide to sell. There is such a variance in condition for cards in that grade, and I would consider your Cobb a higher end 1.