[Al C.risafulli]

I started putting my cards in slabs around 2005 because I was working on a type card set of Hall of Famers, and at the time I liked to display my cards. I had shelves all around my office, and with all the different sizes and shapes of the cards I'd collected (maybe 150 different type cards at its peak), the SGC slabs provided some uniformity that made them display better.

Eventually I started realizing that they also protected the cards better than I could - not only from clumsy hands but from dust, dirt, moisture, etc. They're not archival, but they're more archival than nothing.

I feel the same way about slabbed photos. They protect these brittle pieces of art really well. I also think that, to some extent, they reduce the temptation on the part of some people to trim them or clean them - the slab makes them lie flat, which improves the appearance of edge tears, paper loss, and wrinkles that often get trimmed away.

I do, however, think that maybe we're getting a little carried away with these giant slabs or plastic laminate that are housing huge pieces. These days I collect mostly large-format 19th Century team photos, and I dread the day when companies start grading these.

-Al

-Al