Graded vs. Raw Rant.......

[Exhibitman]

Freakish Spontaneous Wealth. That's the name of the game with grading. Simple as that. Pick a raw card, send it in, get a high grade, turn it out for a huge % profit. Repeat. Which is also why it will never go away; greed is a great motivator.

There is nothing appealing about slabs to me as a collector.

--The slabs are heavy
--You can't put a set into an album and leaf through it
--It is incredibly expensive to have cards slabbed
--They take up a ton of space
--They get scratched up unless you protect them. So now you have a card in a case. a case in a sleeve, and often a case in an iPhone-style case protector. And then you put all those bundles into a Zion case.

As a seller I play the game; market dictates it. Buyers pay a definite premium for slabbed cards even when raw ones are readily available, and won't trust an expensive raw card. Which is why all my good stuff goes into slabs if I want to sell.