I have no strong preference. I think in theory the concern for fakes is higher once you get into pre-WWII cards given their simplicity, so I understand "authenticating," but at the same time, it's not like I'm buying $100K cards here. No one is forging a torn-to-shreds Orval Overall.
I think people get obsessed with the grade, too, and there's probably a market inefficiency there. Compare a random N172 graded a 1 vs one that's graded a 4, and I feel like fairly often the 1 looks as good or better, but a lot of people are just bidding just based on a grade.
Auction houses I think are pretty much exclusively graded cards now, so this probably skews what I've added recently, but I'm not in a rush to grade anything I have that's raw.
I will say... I don't understand grading modern cards at all. It's got to be, what, 90%+ 8s or 9s? And magically all the hyped 1/1s get 10s. To me, card grading is mostly card authenticity, and that's just not needed for something like the Skenes debut patch.
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