Professional Grading Question

[scmavl]

Dean,
If you're going for best sale value, you may want to go PSA for 50's-90's cards. The registry keeps prices high and auctions hot. While I personally like SGC for my keepers, I'll go PSA for cards I want to sell. Any high dollar rookies you should get graded, at least to show the card is legit. LOTS of fake '54 Aarons out there. Good luck!
-Jarrod

[smtjoy]

As has been said, I would for sure get all high level rookies graded by either PSA or SGC. I would also get any Mantle graded as well as 50-60's Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Koufax that are in EX+ condition. If your only going to do one sub of less than 20 cards I would just go SGC much easier for first time subber and no $100 sign up 8 submissions.

My two theories on selling, one if you have lots of extra time to do everything then getting the best graded and selling the others raw by yourself on ebay will maximize what you make. Doing it this way also takes time so if you need the money now not the way to go, plus if you have not sold on ebay then you will need a little time to figure it out and you will also get less on some sales with your low feedback.

The other theory is to take less money but let an auction house/consignment house do all the work for you. Most will know and can help get the proper cards graded and will know how to list everything to get as much for your items, they make more when your cards sell for more. The biggest downside is they will take a much larger % than doing it yourself but a ton less work and time for you. There are a number of companies that might be interested like Sterling, Clean Sweep or Hunt to name a few.

Good luck with your cards!

[xdrx]

Jarrod/Scott - thanks for the additional thoughts. I'm not in any hurry to sell, so it sure seems like a slow and steady approach on eBay makes sense. Not sure who I'll use for grading yet, but I'm definitely not going to try and sell the higher end stuff raw. May try some mid-level cards on eBay sans grade but with healthy starting prices and see what happens.

[LanceRoten]

Pretty nice Ripken. Those spots are similar to a couple of spots on a 80 Topps Rickey Henderson I sent to PSA. Graded a 8(nm-mt). I had thought at best the Rickey would grade 8.5, so, I was pretty satisfied with the grade.

[U240robert]

Yeah if you have higher value cards you may want to get them graded.
Also, if you run across any mid level cards in very nice shape then a graded version can make a huge difference. You can take a NM/Mt common of, say 1961, if it came back a PSA 9 thats a nice value as opposed to selling it just raw which may bring just a few dollars.
But definitely the high value cards. On ebay it seems graded cards bring alot more unless you are a reputable dealer then it may not make a huge difference.

[xdrx]

Originally Posted by U240robert

Yeah if you have higher value cards you may want to get them graded.
Also, if you run across any mid level cards in very nice shape then a graded version can make a huge difference. You can take a NM/Mt common of, say 1961, if it came back a PSA 9 thats a nice value as opposed to selling it just raw which may bring just a few dollars.
But definitely the high value cards. On ebay it seems graded cards bring alot more unless you are a reputable dealer then it may not make a huge difference.

The more I look on eBay the more I agree with this. Just sent 10 cards to SCG to get graded. Based on that I will make some decisions about other cards.

One thing that puzzles me is that I often see cards being sold for less than $10 @ that have SCG or PSA grades. Are lots of people getting crazy-low pricing on grading? If not, why would you spend maybe half the value of a card for a professional grade?

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by xdrx

The more I look on eBay the more I agree with this. Just sent 10 cards to SCG to get graded. Based on that I will make some decisions about other cards.

One thing that puzzles me is that I often see cards being sold for less than $10 @ that have SCG or PSA grades. Are lots of people getting crazy-low pricing on grading? If not, why would you spend maybe half the value of a card for a professional grade?

Either they didn't get the grade they were hoping for or the card sells for 50% more when graded.

[scmavl]

Dean- you may want to post them for sale here first as a lot of us line raw cards. Good luck!