Grading questions (various) with photos

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by Mesquite

Thanks for the replies. Please excuse my ignorance on the lingo, but what does registry set mean?

swarmee: if you wouldn't mind explaining, could you describe what takes this card (ignoring the centering) down to EX-5 that you mentioned (I'm assuming that would be the grade you'd give it, ignoring the centering)?

I didn't look at the card too hard, I was just theorizing that if it was a 5, it would be a 5(MC). I think it would be more likely to be a 7(MC) looking at it further. As to something getting two qualifiers, I had never seen it. But AUTH(QUAL) is not the same as 7(MC)(ST) which I thought was what begsu was proposing.

http://www.psacard.com/PSASetRegistry/

Take a look around the link. Dial down to the 1952 Topps Baseball set. You can see that there are OVER 200 COLLECTORS trying to complete this set in the best condition possible. The top set has a 9.01 GPA with 100% completion, meaning they've put together this 65 year old set in MINT condition average for all 407 cards. Pretty amazing!

Some would say that PSA's set registry has boosted the overall value of all vintage cards, because making people compete to have the best set of all will get them to open up their wallets. As in, a PSA 10 Nolan Ryan 1978 Topps just sold for $17K, rather than the $20 it may have sold for 10 years ago ungraded.

I am working on two registry sets, for two tobacco issues that are not commonly collected (T51 College Series and T56 Emblem Fraternal series). If you go into the Non-Sports or Multi-Sports, you can even see scans of all the cards on the PSA website that I've uploaded. It's fun, but grading fees can become excessive. ;-)