About soaking cards

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

Barry, in the middle of my verbosity, I said that I didn't have a problem with it, either. Sometimes my words trip over one another in their rush to get out of my brain and thus become more difficult to understand.

I guess I probably have between 60 and 70 T206s, and very few of them are graded. I've taken paper off the back of a few, and I've cleaned gunk off a few more. They're mostly not Cobbs, Mattys, and Youngs; they're Schleis, Reulbachs and Elberfelds. I just think they look nicer when they're clean, and when I can read the back. It has nothing whatsoever to do with "getting them past" a grading company.

I submit cards for grading sometimes; I "prep" them by putting them in Card Savers. I'm generally not submitting cards to get the highest possible grade, I'm submitting them to get the most ACCURATE grade. Most of the time I'm already happy with the card, and I want to get it into a slab for the purpose of uniformity. I allow myself one exception to this - 1938 Goudey - where I'm actually building a higher-grade set. Aside from that set, the number means very little to me if I'm happy with the way the card looks. If I buy a card and it has paper on it - like a recent T206 Cy Young I bought - I'll soak the paper off it. The Young I'm referring to won't grade any higher without the paper, I don't think, but I'll be able to read the back. That's all.

-Al

Edited to add "mostly".