Increase in low grade cards being graded
 

In the past two years, at shows and online sales, I have seen a large increase in low grade cards being slabbed. These cards are valued at between $40-$150.

For example, at a recent show, I saw a guy with a handful of common T206s graded 1 - 2. Same with late 50s - early 60s cards. One that caught my eye was a 59 banks in a 1.5.

I remember years ago these cards would have never been graded. 60s cards would have never been slabbed unless they got at least a 5. But I guess times change. Any thoughts on why? Collectors looking for authenticity? Or people trying to maximize value of these cards?

Just trying to make more money. What I noticed in T210s is sellers taking $40-$100 cards and sending them to PSA. Then trying to sell the same exact cards for $200-$400. I just laugh and pass when they tell me how they are low POP cards.

1. Sellers trying to entice newer collectors who are only used to buying slabbed material to buy their stuff BECAUSE it's slabbed (and now being offered at beyond full retail value).

2. Sellers who are only used to offering shiny stuff who think that everything needs to be slabbed in order to sell.

3. Collectors new to vintage but just used to slabs for their modern material, who think everything needs to be slabbed in order to be considered collectible.

I have never and will never understand this fixation with slabbing ("But it makes you more monnneyyy!!! It's impossible to sell anything without a slab!" If I have to hear this one more time...). I have over 150,000 autographed items that could fit in slabs. Forget about the cost, or that I'm more comfortable with my own knowledge over that of whoever determines if my signed item gets slabbed...can you imagine having 150,000 plastic clunkers in your possession? You'd have to buy a second house.

I only got serious into grading for maybe 2 years at the most. I remember my first big submission. What I sent to SGC in a small box came back in 2 huge boxes. They must have both been easily two foot square.

All of these are good points. It also makes it easier the family of a collector understand what they have and the probably value.

newbies to older cards tend to fear the alterations and trimming that are hard for them to detect...the slab gives them a sense (perhaps false...not trying to debate that) that the cards are legit.

Edited to add: i have heard from many that also like the increased safety or preservation of having the card slabbed.

i like 'em raw but have plenty of slabs, so i see the value both ways.

Fits quite well with substitute good theory. High grade cards are out of reach for most collectors, so they ratchet down the grades to get in on a card, and having the card in a slab makes the substitute good feel more like the item it replaces. Case in point:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...%20Mantle.jpeg

Would have never considered that, but I like it.

I attended two card shows last weekend in NY and most of the vintage slabbed cards I saw were in the 3-7 range, and they were selling well, which is something I would never have thought possible 10 years ago.

I have quite a few older cards that are slabbed. Mine are slabbed for preservation and display purposes as I like to pich them up and look at them. Currently in the process of upgrading about 30 cards that are SGC 10 or 20. Different people have different reasons for slabbing and it is not always about money.

I like the preservation aspect. As an example, I have no qualms letting my 10 year old nephew (who is absolutely ate up with baseball but still perhaps a little clumsy) handle my ‘54 Aaron.

Mark


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Another possible reason there are more low-grade cards in slabs:

People overestimating the condition of the card(s) they're submitting.

I have to buy most of my cards remotely, so I prefer graded cards even in low grades or for inexpensive cards.

Lots of good points made so far. I'll add that perhaps newer or modern collectors aren't as comfortable grading cards that are in lower grade and look to an "expert opinion".

Maybe they can tell the difference between a 9 and a 10 ultra modern card (I can't, so good for them!) but don't feel comfortable judging the difference between a 1 and a 2, or a fair vs. poor (for the record, I'm bad at that too).

I agree with this one. I own several cards from the 1950's that I'd love to have in a PSA 7, but that's outside of my collecting budget. So I have them in 4's with good eye appeal.

I submit certain low grade prewar cards for the simple fact as i don’t want them to get damaged anymore than they are.

I think the biggest reason is the quality of low grade cards is way higher than it used to be. I see many 1-3s that look really nice and would have graded 4-5 years ago.

If that's your primary concern, there used to be a much cheaper alternative wherein PSA would slab cards for $1 each without any flips. No grading done; just something they offered if people were only interested in preservation, such as yourself. It was never advertised as far as I recall, but they would do it on request. You probably had to give them a lot of material in order to facilitate such an arrangement. This was also a very long time ago and it's a safe bet they have far too much business to be bothered with this anymore.

If this sounds like it's of interest, you may wish to place phone calls to the various TPGs and inquire if any are still willing to do this at a reduced rate. I'm thinking they're all too tied up to consider it, but no harm in asking.

I have been slabbing a lot of cards lately. The main reason is for estate planning purposes. I believe it will be a much easier/orderly/profitable way to liquidate if they are in slabs even in lower grades. VCP is a great way to track inventory as well.

i prefer low graded slabbed cards prior to the 1980s. more reasonable value wise, and also like the aged look on the cards from 1900 to 1950s. and much easier to display in the slabs versus putting a raw card in a card saver.

Raw card collecting seems to have dried up, at least on the pre war side. A few years ago there were a lot of people building binder sets of T206s and collecting type cards and that seems to have changed. Also, newer collectors seem to be worried about getting a numeric grade versus authentic, leading to sellers grading more.

Sadly I have a low percentage of buying raw that goes back to the early 2000 on eBay. First was a fake Jordan rookie and a corner colored in Nolan Ryan rookie. I was not as active in the market since the mid-90s. Got my first job and wanted to “treat myself” to a few cards I always wanted. Several years later I sent them to PSA and 0-2. Education dollars. I still have both, the Jordan and the submission to remind myself. One of the first pieces of advice I got on this site, someone suggested sending the Ryan card to his foundation to get signed. That is one of my favorite items, so made lemonade.

That said, I did not learn my lesson as I bought a Marsan Cuban card at a show a year ago and submitted it to SGC at the show and it came back trimmed. I was just happy to find one as I never see them at shows.

Anyway, sometimes it is helpful to reduce a risk even though they are not always correct. Yes, I agree you pay a premium too, so it does come down to risk tolerance.

Psa UNDER estimating:)

People love the excitement of grading. I think the reason for the increase in grading numbers across all companies is due to the large amount of raw cards being sold at shows. I would guess many more sell at shows that are not graded than are graded.

Great points made. I still like raw cards but they are getting harder to find. And some, I just don't want to slab as they came from original collections. I have 0 concern of alterations on these (shown many times before). Now, if I go to sell them, I would be stupid not to have them slabbed for monetary reasons.

As to the question of low grade cards being slabbed, the answers in this thread are all good answers.

Does anyone else like seeing cards NOT through plastic? (almost all of my higher end items are slabbed).

For your cards and my autographs, I like to know there is nothing impeding me from touching the physical item. Now, when value dictates, I will be protecting items with some sort of plastic, but the piece will always be removable.

Besides being bulky, clunky, costing money, etc., slabs permanently remove the tactile and olfactory aspects of collecting. That's two of the three senses that we regularly employ with our collectibles. I'm sure some folks have tasted their cards :p, and only pray that, aside from 1989 Topps Talking Baseball and the like, nobody has heard their cards speak to them. (And it's safe to admit that you could pass a blindfold test to discern a '89 UD from a 52T from a T206 based purely on scent.)

I don't mind having cards slabbed, for the preservation value that ensures.

But I draw the line at photos. I cannot, for the life of me, understand the new phenomenon of entombing photos in thick plastic sarcophagi just for the purposes of authentication and adding value. I stay away from buying any such photos...

I think the growth in low grade slabs is due to the massive jump in pandemic collectors that have little skill in vintage. Most couldn’t tell the difference between a 1953 Topps and a 1962. They want the hof player, but have zero knowledge of what they are getting.

It makes sense that the entry level cards are graded to fill this demand in unknowing collectors coming in a the ground floor. I say enjoy it because it means they are building the next vintage collectors a little at a time.

150K autographed items? Do you have a list of images?

For obvious reasons, nothing that's shared publicly or privately. It's way too much to put on display online or anywhere else, and that's not my interest. There's clearly duplication galore. Besides anything nice, nobody needs to see 100 Lou Fette 3X5s. You may not recognize my handle, but we know each other.

I'm a user on another vintage board (on Reddit) that unofficially champions many low-grade post-war cards. It's not that board's stated purpose, but a lot of newer vintage collectors show up to show off their pickups. Real casual community...

Many of these people are hobbyists that want a collection, but have money concerns to allocate elsewhere besides their collections.

Especially for people that didn't start to build heavily in the pre-COVID era price bump these low-grade cards fulfill their collection need while allowing them to buy many cards rather than 1 or 2 really nice cards. They are very pleased and happy with their slew of 50s-70s legends, even in PSA/SGC 1-4 condition. Rather than having a few really nice cards to show off, they have a display case full of dozens of low grade legends.

One thing about raw/graded I've noticed...the newer vintage collectors (less than 5-10 years) are kinda weary of wanting a vintage star player in raw condition, fearing ending up with an Etsy counterfeit or a trimmed card. Sure, grading isn't a sure-thing, but it's considered a safer haven. I've noticed many of these same people are not as weary of buying raw in person, but online they seem to gravitate to graded. Some people go graded by default, they've always collected that way and that's what they do.

People have to grade low grade vintage .............. because I keep cracking them out ................. :p

Fun, fun, Scott :rolleyes:

I slab lots of low-grade vintage cards because I like the way they look in the slab. I don’t care what they’re worth. That’s the way I collect.

I screwed myself into a slab collection in the late 1990s when I decided to grade some of my raw and sell off the rest of the raw to fund slab upgrades.

By the time I made peace with "maybe I should have stuck to raw" my needs and wants list was already mostly graded (well over 80% complete) and I decided sticking to it was worth more to me than going back.

It realized I became a "fool" when I was paying $10-ish for slabbed cards worth about $1 solely because I needed it for my Cubs team collection. The crazy thing is I can get more than I paid for almost all of these same cards because of the amount of people out there that would want it out of graded rarity. It's totally graded rarity, not reality rarity. There's only one 1991 Bowman Rick Wilkins RC graded by PSA, it's a 9. I paid around $10 for it and multiple people have offered me $20+ for it so they don't have to bother getting one graded for around the same price.

Slab game has weird culture and value norms.

Is that a new phenomenon?

Not sure if it's been mentioned...

At shows, the lower-grade slabbed card growth has been unrelenting. With so many of them being in SGC slabs, my conclusion is that dealers keep sending off the dregs of their (star player) inventories to get them cheaply and extremely quickly into holders and make them that much easier to sell at their tables.

Anything that gets people collecting vintage is a good thing.

I always thought it was about ROI on getting things slabbed, but the safety aspect is just as important. How many times have we fumbled a slab and been happy it was in plastic?
And then there's the registry, but I don't know if lower end has anything to do with that.

And a raw card, lower grade, if not lower end.

I think in general a lot of people just like slabbed cards. Outside of a 19th century cabinet here and there I can't tell you when the last time was that I bought a raw card. Hell, I've even been guilty of paying $11-$14 to get a 1970's non-sport card slabbed that's probably only worth $1 raw and $6-$8 slabbed. It's hard to argue how nice most cards, in any grade, present in a new slab (especially SGC). If I had a beater T206 worth $40, I'd have zero problem paying to have it slabbed just for the aesthetics, even if it was still only worth $40 in the end. Not everything in this hobby is about ROI.

I'm part of the problem on this. I do it sometimes just for ease and to get things sold fast. If I list a VG t206 for sale at $50, it might sit for a long time, so then the next time I send to SGC I put it in the submission. Costs about $17 or $18, then when it comes back, it's a lot easier to sell the SGC 3 for $68 than it was the raw VG for $50.