Collecting raw

[vintagebaseballcardguy]

Those of you who prefer raw cards, do you typically buy raw or buy graded and crack out? If so, do you save TPG grader label? What about the star cards in the sets you are building?

[Harliduck]

Originally Posted by vintagebaseballcardguy

Those of you who prefer raw cards, do you typically buy raw or buy graded and crack out? If so, do you save TPG grader label? What about the star cards in the sets you are building?

I buy both...and crack anything graded. I do save the labels, although I don't know why. If I was a buyer on something raw I wouldn't care if they had the labels, who is to say it belongs to that card? The only thing I like about graded cards is busting them out, and I have done a LOT. I do have to say though, I could care less about the investment part of this hobby...I love the cards, and these are all for my 8 year old son...

[JCM2009]

I am a newbie to the Netbaseball forum but here is my 2 cents on this subject. I collect only vintage Cleveland Indians and have built an extensive collection over the past 30 yrs. I find that professional grading is a marketing scam and graded cards are overpriced. I do not need to pay someone to look at my card and deem it as "Very Good". I believe I have enough intelligence to look at a card at determine its condition without using too much brain power. Also the slabs are too bulky for high volume storage. I do buy graded cards if the price is right but crack them as soon as I receive them. I have saved the grader labels but not sure why. The only value I see in professional grading is authentication but I think I buy from reputable sellers so I have not had any problems with buying fakes or reprints. Maybe I am a little lucky also.

[David W]

If you are a VG-EX collector why would you buy graded cards in that range unless you don't know enough about them and are worried they are reproductions/fakes/counterfeits?? There are probably hundreds of thousands of us who collect in that range.

If you want NM and up only, I suppose you had better go graded, but then I suspect you are collecting as much for investing/retirement as anything.

I have a few graded cards I picked up on Ebay, and left in the slabs, but most of my stuff is for my collection, not my retirement.

[pawpawdiv9]

I prefer GRADED..for the fact i one day will be handing these down to my Nephew.
Its more like preservation...and with it labeled, he wont have to look it up what it is neither.
Needless to say..I think the name Mickey Mantle was still be around.

[steve B]

I collect mostly ungraded cards. I probably have a slight advantage of having collected when most shops had stacks if not entire boxes full of most postwar sets. So I don't have much worry about knowing if the cards are real or not.

I'm ambivalent about grading. I figure grades 1- 6 or 7 are the old familiar grades. P, F, G,VG, EX and MT. Unless you're super fussy about grade anything 7 and up is a very nice card.
But if you are picky, or collecting some of the more expensive cards I think it can be a good thing for a few reasons.

The first is that it gives an opinion that's supposedly unbiased. And that means outside the influence of wether that 55 Topps is a common or a Clemente, and outside the excitement of "discovering" the card. (How many of us have "found" a really great card that seems to develop more problems the longer we own it? I know I've done that at flea markets, bought a really nice 50's card only to spot a bunch of stuff that I didn't notice when it was new and exciting. )

The second is hopefully a bit of an unbiased technical look that should catch most alterationswhen a buyer might not have the tools handy. Yeah, that means some factory crads with some oddity like being originally cut small will get rejected. same for ones with odd cuts. But hopefully most of the amateur trimmings get caught. And as the prices get higher, the temptation for a seller to enhance a card is also a bit more.

All of that also limits the old "it's excellent for its age" that so many dealers used to go with. Nope, excellent is excellent no matter wether it's from 1910 or 2010.

And to a point, as much as we might hate to admit it, there are a few cards that really aren't around in really amazing condition. I went through around 15000 81 topps I had, looking for only the really nice ones. I had maybe 2-300. Out of those only 6-7 were ones that seemed worth grading because none of the companies had done many or any perfect ones. They still only came back as 8s or lower. 81 Topps are really common, and really cheap. But if for some reason you want perfect ones, they really aren't that common.
If a card is really that nice, I don't have any problem with having it graded.

Steve B