I switched back to raw cards and my happiness increased 1000%
 

After reading numerous posts on this site and after going back and forth for a long time between graded cards and raw cards, I switched back to raw cards and my happiness increased 1000%

Dont get me wrong graded cards are cool and all, but I felt so much better when I went back to the way I first started collecting and thats old school raw cards with no penny sleeve, not top loader, no albums, no 9 pocket pages, no caring about chasing a psa 10, not caring about the condition of cards, not caring about damaging them when I hold them, just having them in a a few shoeboxes and enjoying the simplicity of collecting baseball cards!

It a great feeling just to hold a stack of vintage cards and have that old vintage cardboard smell! I realized that sometimes going simpler is the best option!

My only mild disagreement is that cards are a lot easier to look through when in nine pocket pages in a binder (or several dozen in my case).

;)

I totally agree with you. I also go back in forth between binders vs boxes. I chose boxes recently because I’m truly trying to go to a simple easy care free way of collecting however, you are right, putting them in binders makes it so much easier to view them.

Bravo! I too am a raw guy but I do have 2-3 shoeboxes full of cards but prefer binders and sleeves and top loaders for dupes.

Through the years I have tried several different methods. I finally went back to what made me happy - 3 ring binders in Pro sheets - in sets. The graded cards that make up my sets I take a picture of the card, size it, and place it in the binder. The binder makes it so easy because you can also read the back of the card, pull them out when you want, and easily helps me track my completion of the set. If you have 2 versions of the card - let's say yellow and white versions of the 69 Mantle - you can easily place both cards in the binder. Yes, I have Mantles, Clemente, etc. inserted in the set. Also in the front I place a checklist of the set, any other information, etc. Also, if there is a separate set from that year (let's say the 65 embossed) I also place that set in the 65 binder.

Whatever makes one happy!

Moreover filling out the empty spaces in my Ultra Pro sheets provides me with both joy and a sense of accomplishment!

;)

I have been collecting for close to 40 years now and most of it was just collecting cards.

Grading became a problem for me when I bought a complete set of vintage cards from a fellow member on here. What he sent me was a set of NrMint or better cards. So I decided to get the entire set graded because of condition. Well I ended up with the #3 set. I struggled a lot with upgrading 7s, 8s, and 9s for a couple years. Finally I knew I needed to break up and sell the set. For me I decided paying hundreds of dollars for a card nobody could tell the difference in beside a number on a flip was stupid.

Every thread needs a picture - here is mine - it doesn't show them all but you get the idea. The stars indicate they are complete. The ones without a star are the 2d set because I ended up with so many dups!

I don't mind flipping through lower grade commons truly raw (just the cardboard, no sleeve or card saver or anything)...

But for a lot of the things I enjoy in my collection, mixing the common sense of the knowledge of the value of the cards with how I view them is a necessity. Not everything is slabbed, but I use a lot of card savers, toploaders, and mag cases like UP One Touches and Pro-Mold's for my raw cards that are worth something.

I bought an album and ultra pro pages to test them out and today I started putting some 1951-1959 topps into the ultra pro pages and I must say, WOW! Vintage topps cards from the 1950’s look amazing in pages. Really, much better than I thought they would look. My only questions on this are,

-Is it necessary to put these cards (1951-1959 topps) in a penny sleeve?

-Will these cards stick to the ultra pro pages over time (with long term storage?)

-Are there any benefits to putting these cards in a penny sleeve (they are lower to Mid grade cards)

Thanks guys for your help. I finally found a way to store these that i absolutely love. I appreciate you all.

Indeed! What year were the cards?

:confused:

Yes they do! That's why I've been doing precisely that for over thirty years:

http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/...ballcards2.jpg

https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...allCards-1.jpg

http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/...eballcards.jpg

http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/...keyCards-1.jpg

http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/...aceCards-1.jpg

https://hosting.photobucket.com/85c5...4a24aae8c7.jpg

http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/...neWrappers.jpg

No. I've seen no reason to do so.

That would certainly benefit the sellers of penny sleeves. Me though I'd find that to be simply an annoyance.

No, not when it comes to decades anyway. When it comes to millennia, I can't say for sure but I doubt it.

Glad to be of service!

;)

Those sets look great Balticfox!

Thank you so much for your help! I appreciate it very much. I always wondered if penny sleeves were necessary. Very cool pics!

I applaud your decision. Grading has so many deficient qualities. Especially PSA which seems to delight in propagating collector ignorance by not giving grader notes and not giving the date of the grading (important because they've gone through 15 different slabs and the newer grading standards are tougher -- just try getting anywhere near top dollar for a PSA graded card from 2005.)

I've cracked a lot of slabs over the years to liberate my cards. They look so much better in a sem-rigid without all the distracting grading info.

Some call me crazy for doing that, but I didn't buy the cards as an investment and future monetary returns are purely secondary.

As a collector for 55 years now I can tell you that collecting was so much more fun in the 1970s compared to today that it's not even close.

So collect how you prefer. Don't always be a lemming and go with the crowd. Listen to yourself and follow your heart. You're doing that and it's great.

Finally a thread I can relate to. I have cracked every single graded card I have ever acquired. In my circle of collector friends, we all collect raw cards. I love having my cards in binders, in 9 pocket pages, where I can easily get to them... OJs , t206, t205, Goudey, Play Ball, Topps, Bowman, and many others...Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Foxx, Williams, Mantle, all of them. I don't stress out over them, and I don't care if any are fake. They all look, feel and smell real to me, and to everyone who has seen them. It is very much a fun hobby to me, not some business or investment. Obviously, there is a huge business or investment side to baseball cards. But it's just not my bag.

I totally agree that cards look better without a slab. It's like walking around with your medical record hanging from a lanyard around your neck. But I'm resigned to buying slabbed cards as most of my buying is online. Since the vast majority of the cards on my radar tend to be graded, I've gotten cynical when I see a good looking raw one come up for sale. I figured there must be something wrong with it, else it would have been graded before sale.

I don't yet have the confidence to liberate the graded cards that I've purchased, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happens sooner rather than later.

You don't care if they're fake, lol. What, are you getting your cards on Etsy now?

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

No, when I got the vast majority Etsy hadn't even been conceived, or the internet as we know it for that matter.

All my Topps Sets BB, FB and Basketball from 70 - 79 are raw and in albums too. I built it the old fashioned way piece by piece. The hunt for the cards were exciting and I enjoy viewing them in an album.

Ricky Y

This is the best and most relevant thread I’ve found…thanks for sharing.
I thought I was the only one taking my cards out of slabs. It means a lot to know there are like minded collectors out there.

I finally just acquired a Koufax rookie and will be liberating it tomorrow. Can’t wait to feel 70 year old cardboard (with a couple wrinkles I’m sure).

I've been upgrading a 1975 Topps baseball set, which is currently in a binder. Looking for well centered cards, near mint cards. I have the now replaced cards in a box, with no protection. I find that I have more fun looking through those "replaced" cards than the ones in the binder. I can pull out a stack or two. Flip through them. Read the backs. No worries about damaging them. I like having the binder too, but the box of raw cards is brining me much more enjoyment than I would have thought when I first started upgrading the set.

I actually really enjoy filling in the blank spaces in my card sheets particularly when there are many such as in the sheets below:

https://hosting.photobucket.com/85c5...b639bef2d9.jpg

:cool:

I like my sets ungraded and in albums also. In the past year I have moved all of mine out of ring binders into ringless. The downside is that you can't see the back without taking them out. The upside is that you don't have to worry about the page catching on the ring, possibly bending the cards on the side, or the ring wearing out and not closing all of the way. They also take up about half of the space on the shelf so I have room for more sets.

I'm wondering what you guys who liberate all of your cards from slabs are using these days to safely do that. A while ago, I think some were employing bolt cutters and other crude implements. Since 99% of my collection is raw, when I purchased a few slabs a while ago, I tried to carefully remove the cards, but wound up creasing one of them - a 1954 Bowman Schoendienst - that was graded EX+. So, I swore off using that kind of violence entirely. What common tool does the removal without any chance of damaging the card?

I don't understand. Ringless binders? And how can you not see the backs of the cards? Do you have any pictures?

:confused:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...t=bolt+cutters

;)

My best advice here would be don't overthink it. I once at least halved the value of an EX '56 Clemente because I cracked the SGC slab over the top instead of just prying it apart at the sides - which they will do easily. Just put a flathead screwdriver in the seal, pop it and work your way around - and some SGC slabs get to the point where you can just pull them apart with your hands.

PSA for me works best by taking a pair of pliers and snipping off one corner, then working from that around the edges with a flathead to break the seal. I have not tried this yet on some of the newer "L1" or whatever PSA slabs - where the plastic is supposedly a lot more dense / pliable and less prone to brittle cracking - but I suppose it's still possible.

Beckett / other slabs I have less experience with. But I remember that Beckett works kind of like a shoebox, where one side of the slab sits on of the other like a box lid. They are more of a pain in the @, but the inner sleeve Beckett uses generally insures you aren't going to hurt the card inside unless you are just being super careless.

I'm not sure how to put pictures on here, but the binder has no rings in it and the pages are attached to the inside of spine. All of the pages have sleeves on both sides so you put the cards in the front and back of each page. You cannot see the back of the cards unless you pull them out of the sleeves they are in or put the back side of the card facing out.

Attachment 660628
Ringless binder. Can be purchased on Amazon.You can get them in various sizes.

Snap, crackle, pop...
 

Right, that is the method I used a few years ago after reading about it here. I carefully placed the pliers on one corner of the slab and pressed, but quickly realized that the plastic just was not giving. Don't recall what brand of slab it was, though. I dug out a larger pair of pliers and really bore down on the corner until it finally broke, but at that point a large jagged crack had run across the slab and dug into the face of the card. I was then pretty exasperated and thought I had been misled about the "simplicity" of the whole thing.:(

Yeah sometimes (and both with PSA and SGC) if the plastic shatters and produces shards, those can go into the cardboard and ruin things pretty quickly. It's happened to me a few times. And there isn't much you can do.

I don't pop slabs anymore unless I have a good reason - if it's just really old or scratched up, or I don't like the way the card moves within the slab - I will still occasionally bust them, but for the most part anymore I just view a slab as a holder. If a card gets to me in a slab, it usually stays there. If not, that's fine too.

Not for me. I need the flexibility to keep adding pages to a binder(s) because my collections are open ended.

Boog is a free man, once again:


https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1747132280

Next stop: the 1967 binder.