Grading 101

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Posted By: Scott Mt. Joy

The post war forum would be a better place for this post but I'll help.

I would say for the cards you have your best bet is to have them graded by PSA followed by SGC. If you were going to keep them I would say it was the other way around, I prefer SGC for my cards. 1950-1973 bring more money most of the time from PSA so thats why you should choose them.

As far as cost, when you join psa you get 6 fee subs for the $100 membership- use these on your most expense and best condition HOFer, send in cards like 57 Robinsons RC, 63 Rose, 58 Mantle, etc. USE PSA SMR to look up the card values so you can send in the most expensive ones. I would recomend sending these in first and then wait for you to get them back with grades so you get an idea of how your cards grade and to help make your next sub better. Then with what is left pick your best 100 and use their bulk submission, that will be $6 a card plus postage, go with all mantles, aarons, mays, clemente and koufax, these all sell better graded even in low grades. Once you have those then start looking for lower tier HOFers but cards that have the best corners and make sure the card is centered, psa is a killer on giving out Off Center (OC) which lowers any grade by 2.

Once you get your bulk sub in if your cards all come in at psa 8-10's then get another batch of your next best 100 out the door. If your cards in the first 100 come back mainly 7 and below, then you probably want to sell the rest raw. Most commons from those years will need to be 8+ to really make it worth grading a lot. That an most people who are not familiar with grading always think their cards are NM-MT++ and will come back all 9's then these people are shocked when their mint cards come back 6-7's.

I hope that helps, need anything else post over on the post war baseball forum and I will do my best to answer.