REA fall auction preview - Old Slabs
 

REA has been doing a fall preview on social media of some the cards in their fall auction. Two cards caught my eye:

1933 Goudey Mel Ott psa 9
T205 Brown psa 8

Both are great cards, but both are in psa slabs from 20-30 years ago. Very old grading.

Discussion from these cards:

1. Do auctioneers give recommendations to consignors about presentation of cards? Ie, to reholder? Or do they simply take what they get with no comment?

2. If you were bidding, would you have any concerns with old slabs? Or does that matter at all?

To me if the slab is nice no bad scratching no cracking no issues I’m fine with keeping in the old slab. Reholdering high value cards to me is a big gamble especially if I didn’t submit the card raw myself....I’d rather not play especially if the Holder is in fine shape other then old.

To me these two cards look fine in these older slabs.

I normally wouldn't be too concerned and would leave them as-is.

But that T205 3-Finger Brown sure has a lot of "cushion" between the top border and the bumper. That thing could rattle around a lot, and the whiteness along the top edge might indicate some micro-trimming. During the height of the PSA Trimming Revelation, people were calling these "Maraca Cards".

I know it's far better to inspect in-person, but I might steer clear of that one.

I don't love the top edge, but it's in an 8 holder.

Biggest problem is that usually it’s overgraded relative to today. Prefer newer slabs under current grading standards.

It blows my mind that anyone even considers buying these cards with old cert numbers. Every single one of them is overgraded, some by 2 or 3 full grades. And a TON of them are trimmed. The majority of PSA's early bulk submitters were known trimmers.