Grading hits home

[Archive]

Posted By: Mark M.

I buy most of my vintage cards on ebay and have been buying pre-war cards for just a few years. Aside from posting a link on this forum or looking to see if a card says "Dover," I do not know how to tell an original from a reprint for most types of issues. I once bought an n162 Anson that turned out to be fake - but since it was the first n162 I had seen, I had no idea what type of font, paper, etc. an original would have. So I can either (i) buy only graded cards or (ii) buy ungraded cards and be unsure whether they are real or not. And let me tell you, it's a rather uneasy feeling to pay $1000+ to get a card that may or may not be real. And there are many new collectors/investors of people like me. Hence, the demand and need to grading companies.