things that make you go hmmm...

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Posted By: David Vargha

One is free to pay as much or as little as they want for the cards they purchase. Believe me, as one who is extremely opinionated, I hardly begrudge someone sharing theirs on an Internet chat board. To me, the biggest value of a PSA, SGC or Beckett is the third party authentication of a card as being unaltered and not a forgery. While humans do make mistakes, the chances of getting what you paid for are greatly enhanced by buying a slabbed card from a legitimate company.

We can argue ad nauseum over whether cards are better raw or slabbed, if thousand of high grade raw cards exist for a particular issue, whether PSA or SGC has better standards, how much one company emphasizes on characteristic of a card versus another company or the collecting community in general and that's great. Because if we couldn't do that we'd probably have to spend time with our families (j/k).

My point is simply this -- if we all agree to "buy the card and not the holder" then discussions as to registry of an EX card or print dots or corners, etc. are really moot if we have the opportunity to see the card before purchasing it or if the seller offers a money back guarantee on cards bought without images.

I was in the office of a collector the other day whose collection easily exceeds $1 million in value. He showed me a PSA 8 Ruth Goudey he was considering buying. After a short discussion, we both agreed that the corners were not high quality for an 8 and that the slight print marks on the yellow background were unacceptable for the asking price. That is no different than the process most collectors go through when considering a raw card purchase. However, no serious collector feels compelled to buy a card just because the number grade on the front says that it is better than how the collector evaluates it. How is that any different from a collector telling a dealer that his creased card isn't really "mint" and doesn't justify the asking price?

Just my 2 cents . . .