[Exhibitman]

A Card Slabber's Nightmare

To grade, or not to grade, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of inconsistent grades, or to take arms against a sea of slabheads.
And by opposing grading? To sell cheap no more, and by refusing to play we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that grading poppage cause us.
Devoutly to be wished: to sell raw but not too cheap.
To grade, perchance to dream, ay, there's the rub; for in that submission lot what tens may come?
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause; there's the disrespect that makes calamity of leaving raw cards.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of dealers, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of selling off Dad's raw cards, the long delays, the insolence of lowball offers and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when a collector himself might their quietus make by leaving his heirs a box of slabs instead?
But that dread of what the graders do, the packs we bust from whose bourn an altered card somehow returns, it puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than pay some schmuck to grade our stuff.
Thus conscience does make raw card men of us all.
I shall now withdraw, and touch myself anon.

--If the Bard collected cards, with apologies to Robin Williams...