Grading raw vintage cards for trade or resale purposes

[JollyElm]

I've written about this before, but it bears repeating...

Be very careful when you're looking to buy an ungraded card in a dealer's case when (virtually) everything else is sitting inside of a slab.
Big red flag (your experience may vary).

If everything is graded, then why wouldn't the expensive Mickey Mantle (for example) be graded, too, since all the cards in slabs were submitted recently?
Did he submit that one with the rest and it got 'rejected' by the TPG, but he's not disclosing why?

I saw this a lot recently with cases full of SGC cards. Since they have such quick turnaround and are (you may or may not agree) inexpensive to grade,
dealers were obviously sending everything off to get them back in time for shows.
But there would be a lone Willie Mays or Sandy Koufax card sitting among them in a top loader, not graded. Sure, there may be legitimate reasons for it, but you have to ask yourself (or the dealer), "Why??"

At a minimum, make sure you have a newer card on hand to make sure it (Topps-era card) is the correct size (not short or miscut).

Absolutely something to keep in mind (no disrespect to dealers intended).