Grading questions in general and for 1967 Topps

[VinTX]

as far as determining exactly how rare a specific card is, your best bet is to check the population report on PSA's website. They keep records of everything they grade and will be able to tell you on any given card how many have been submitted and the breakdown of how many got each grade. For example, your 1967 Topps Brooks Robinson card has had 816 total submissions. Of those, 187 received an "8" where only 19 received a "9" so you can see that this particular card in a PSA 9 grade is fairly rare. Incidently only 1 has received a 10 grade.

another thing to be aware of, especially if you plan to start buying graded cards on the market to upgrade those in your set is the qualifiers. Not sure if you're aware of those or not but typically most people will tell you that a card with a qualifier is equivalent valuewise to a card with no qualifiers 2 grades lower. So for example if you have a PSA 9 (MC) (MC meaning miscut) it should sell for approximately the same as a straight PSA 7.

As far as pricing, there are a few different sources you can refer to to get an idea. One is the SMR which is a price guide published by PSA specifically for graded cards. You will typically find pricing on ebay etc to be fairly consistent with the SMR, though there are always deals to be had. Another is the VCP which is an online price guide that tracks ebay sales and auction house sales can provides an average price based on those. Then some people just go on ebay and check out completed listings to get an idea of what similar things have sold for recently. It's really just a question of whatever you're comfortable with.

The 3:1 ratio probably holds true for some cards, but I wouldn't use it as a guide as it won't always be the case. For example in the '67 set, the Cepeda (card #20) has an SMR value of $100 for an 8 and $825 for a 9 so that's a little over 8:1. The Robinson you mentioned for 8 and 9 is 415 and 1000 respectively so that's about 2.5:1 So it really just depends on the card, and of course ones that are very rare are going to command premiums. At first it can all seem a little daunting but there are lots of tools to help you out including the fine folks here at Net 54. I'm currently working on 2 graded sets myself and find that the SMR and also looking at recent sales give me a pretty good idea of what a good price range is for any given card.

Hope this info helps a little and good luck!