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Posted By: Bob

David you are certainly welcome for the article. I'm glad you found it informative as did I. The only thing you mentioned that I would take issue with is the idea of buying only ungraded cards. There is a saying here that you always buy the card, not the holder. Quite often cards will be severely undergraded and you can get a good deal on them because some of the "slab-heads" will steer away from lower graded cards. I recently received a PSA 2 from Mike in the BST thread which looks almost identical to a PSA 6 which went off in an auction last night. I can't for the life of me figure out why it was graded so low but I was able to snag it for $85 instead of $400 and the card's appearance is beautiful so I was happy to say the least.
I realize that most of the collectors here have more knowledge than the run of the mill ebay buyer, but they guys (and gals) here have a keen eye for eye appeal and what does and does not constitute a p, f, g, vg, vgex, ex, exmt, etc. card so often cards are bought which are slabbed in lower grades at bargain prices.
On the other hand I have seen some real dogs graded vg and vgex so what you say does have merit, but again I go back to the "buying the card, not the holder" maxim. Sometimes also it is just impossible to find certain cards which aren't slabbed. An example would be the 300 series cards in the Sporting Life set (M116). About half of the 300 back cards are very scarce and it seems like you simply can not find these cards except in holders...
tbob