[D. Bergin]

I don't have very many slabs, and the ones I've had, I've mostly sold off, but yeah, it's irritating when a badly scratched slab shows up.

If you have a piece of art framed, and it comes back to you from the frame shop with a big gauge down the middle of the glass or plexi front, you're going to be annoyed as hell. Same as if you buy a piece of artwork already framed and weren't told or shown the flaws in the frame.

Now you're giving me a job and an expense, to make it look presentable again.

That's basically what slabs are for a lot of people. They're little frames for your cards that have a grading designation on them.

Now, if your sole intention is to free the card from the slab...of course you don't care, and I understand that.

Do I think a card should get kicked back for authenticity issues because of a scratched slab? Of course not. That's stupid unless it's badly cracked and the buyer is given a chance to decide whether they want it anyways.

I don't understand when grading companies and sellers ship slabs out without putting a little graded card sleeve on them. Shit, they cost like a nickel apiece. I won a few modern slabbed basketball cards on Ebay a couple years ago when I was going through a phase LOL...maybe $50-60 cards, and they were thrown in a little bubble envelope without being sleeved and by the time they got to me, they looked like special lightning bolt variant slabs. I gotta think a simple sleeve would have held them together better.