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Peter3.) Do you feel graded cards have had a positive or negative effect on our hobby?
>Both. On one hand, they've made the prices for low-mid grade cards plummet, which, for the collector on a budget, is very good news. But the move from cardboard to antiseptic slabs of plastic with a premium given for the least amount of handling is a little troubling. It sort of takes some of the fun away from what used to be a hobby.
>>>Jamie, I used to feel the same way. I always preferred keeping all of my nice vintage stuff in a book together, just like I'd love filling page after page with hot rookie cards from the same set. Of course, I am the same guy who when working at CVS in college, would lovingly and obsessively fix the toothpaste and soap shelves so that there was just a wall of perfectly stacked boxes. So you get an idea of how much I enjoy the aesthetic appeal and symmetry of collecting.
>>>I also didn't like that you couldn't actually touch the cards when they were in a holder. But then I realized, for the most part, my cards go right into the binder anyway, and I almost never remove them unless I'm reorganizing the binder for some reason. Couple that with the chance for damaging cards during handling, the musty smell of some of the older ones, and the fact that a few literally look and smell like they've been stored up someone's a$$ for the last 50 years, and I realized that the actual touch-feel part of collecting was overrated, for me at least.
>>>My reason for jumping on the grading bandwagon is that partially through my own fault, a lot of the cards I've gotten are in worse condition than I thought, with some of the more subtle flaws that I didn't see and that unscrupulous dealers had no problem overgrading. Additionally, the problem of trimming, retouching, forgery, and dumping of mislabled reprints on eBay contributed to my decision.