First Vintage Set - Graded vs. Raw?

[Mbjerry]

Hello,

Some of you may have seen my new member intro post. I am new into vintage and really wanted to build a set. With the help of Gustomania I selected 1956 topps and decided to start with graded to get my feet wet. I planned to do the entire set graded over multiple years. However, now that I have good examples of grades four through six (about 30 cards) and have looked the cards over closely, I am considering moving to raw for a few reasons. Mainly, being able to flip through my cards in binder and enjoy them more often rather than storing a few heavy boxes and having to flip through slabs. Looking to hear pros and cons of graded vs. raw sets. Would love to hear why you chose to do your sets graded or raw. If you do raw, do you do your bigger cards graded? My bigger cards will likely be 2s to 3s so I am considering buying those graded and cracking out to add to binder. Thanks for helping me work through this decision.

[skelly423]

I used to be a graded only collector, but have recently moved to raw for a number of reasons. The biggest factor is price; you can get really nice raw cards for a small fraction of their graded price. It's more efficient financially, and your money goes a lot further.

The other factor, that should probably be your primary consideration, was my ability to evaluate cards independently. I feel comfortable in my chosen sets that I can identify fake and altered cards, and that I have a good eye for condition. I will still buy the top tier cards graded when I can't inspect them in-hand first, but I usually crack them out when they arrive.

If I ever want to sell my raw cards, I can submit them for grading with reasonable confidence I know the number on the slab that will be returned to me. If you're confident you can avoid fakes and altered cards, this is probably the way to go IMO.

[Mbjerry]

Originally Posted by skelly423

I used to be a graded only collector, but have recently moved to raw for a number of reasons. The biggest factor is price; you can get really nice raw cards for a small fraction of their graded price. It's more efficient financially, and your money goes a lot further.

The other factor, that should probably be your primary consideration, was my ability to evaluate cards independently. I feel comfortable in my chosen sets that I can identify fake and altered cards, and that I have a good eye for condition. I will still buy the top tier cards graded when I can't inspect them in-hand first, but I usually crack them out when they arrive.

If I ever want to sell my raw cards, I can submit them for grading with reasonable confidence I know the number on the slab that will be returned to me. If you're confident you can avoid fakes and altered cards, this is probably the way to go IMO.

The financial factor is a big consideration for me. Where do you go for finding nice raw cards?

[skelly423]

I usually default to eBay, but there are a number of great sellers out there depending on the cards. I've used the-battersbox.com and tonyetrade.com and found both easy to deal with. Of course, there are plenty of impressive cards available on these forums as well if you watch the BST postings.

[savedfrommyspokes]

With the exception of the 1952 Topps set, I have built all of my sets from the 1950 Bowman set through the late 70s Topps sets (minus 3 cards each in 51, 53, 54 Bowman sets) mainly raw first. All of my 1952 Topps were collected in the graded form. With my other mostly raw sets, an occasional key graded card that I had from before starting the set would become part of my mostly raw set. Some sets I have built (61-63 Post cereal, 70s Hostess, 65-80 OPC) will remain mostly all raw (primarily due to cost), as I enjoy the binder experience too.

Over the past 15+ years, I have taken multiple sets from mostly raw to the mostly graded/completely graded state. I took this route because I had many of the key cards already graded. My 52, 62, 72, and 75 sets are completely graded, my 57s and 71s are 93% and 98% of the way graded, while several others are 60%+ graded (61, 65, 68, 74). As most of cards needed to finish these sets graded are commons, if the price of graded commons stays down, my goal is to finish these sets fully graded.

My recommendation is to build the sets mostly raw first with only key cards graded , then slowly work the set from raw to graded if funding/desire permits.

[Mbjerry]

Originally Posted by savedfrommyspokes

With the exception of the 1952 Topps set, I have built all of my sets from the 1950 Bowman set through the late 70s Topps sets (minus 3 cards each in 51, 53, 54 Bowman sets) mainly raw first. All of my 1952 Topps were collected in the graded form. With my other mostly raw sets, an occasional key graded card that I had from before starting the set would become part of my mostly raw set. Some sets I have built (61-63 Post cereal, 70s Hostess, 65-80 OPC) will remain mostly all raw (primarily due to cost), as I enjoy the binder experience too.



Over the past 15+ years, I have taken multiple sets from mostly raw to the mostly graded/completely graded state. I took this route because I had many of the key cards already graded. My 52, 62, 72, and 75 sets are completely graded, my 57s and 71s are 93% and 98% of the way graded, while several others are 60%+ graded (61, 65, 68, 74). As most of cards needed to finish these sets graded are commons, if the price of graded commons stays down, my goal is to finish these sets fully graded.



My recommendation is to build the sets mostly raw first with only key cards graded , then slowly work the set from raw to graded if funding/desire permits.

Thanks for the recommendation. Two follow up questions... One, how do you store your graded sets? Two, do you foresee the cost for graded commons going up with the recent grading cost increases?

Sent from my SM-G981U1 using Tapatalk

[RayBShotz]

I would advocate for graded if you see yourself selling this at some point in the near or distant future.
Graded has more drawbacks now, however, than even a year ago.
If you are going the PSA route you are currently unable to submit your own raw cards and if and when it finally opens back up it might be prohibitively expensive to do so.
The 56T set looks great in 8 pocket sleeves. I always felt it was cool to look at the set and flip the binder pages from top to bottom vs the typical book page by page.
Good luck either way with this.
It's a great set.
RayB