Share your contrarian hobby opinions

[jchcollins]

Two things I'm fairly convinced on that most of the hobby probably disagrees with:

1. For my money, prewar cards are a bust / bad value compared to postwar vintage. While it's true that for most of my collecting life that they have not been readily affordable for me (I started with cards at age 9 in 1986...) - even today they simply don't hold a value for me that can compare with later cards: I can get a beater maybe up to G T206 common for the same price as I can a midgrade postwar HOF'er whose name is not Mantle. Guess which card I'm going to choose?

2. For those that care purely about the cards and not other things - even if only subconsciously - professional grading in the 21st century has become a farce. Graders have tried to convince the collecting world that something subjective is inherently objective - and have done a poor job of it at that. Between the scandals and shifting technical standards in practice if not in writing - I'm done. I've seen both PSA and SGC miss on honest grading as often as they get it right, and there is not a single, known-name accepted grading house today that has not survived at least one major scandal. Appreciate your cards for what they are and are not - and free them from their slabs - they are the work of an evil conjurer. Oh - and another thing - centering as the end all, be all of condition criteria was not accepted as a "thing" by anyone serious in the hobby before the advent of professional grading and PSA. Fact.