Are graded cards the future of vintage?

[G1911]

Originally Posted by homerunhitter

You are absolutely right and this is a valid point. I totally get it and agree with you however, the other side of the coin is if cards aren’t graded now, you and I both know some 37 year old card dealer they still lives in his parents basement posting video Games and eating Cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew all day is going to try to take advantage of families that are trying to sell their loved ones collection because it will be way to easy to tell someone that doesn’t know about cards “hey, this stuff isn’t in good condition” I’ll give you $50 for it all! Hard to do that when they are all graded already. Plus most of the big name consignment services like probstein, only deal with graded cards. They won’t even accept raw cards if you sent them in (if a family decided to send in their loved ones cards) and like mentioned above some of the bigger card dealers/shops that I’ve dealt with totally took advantage of me because my cards were raw and not graded. (Offering to buy my cards for Pennies on the dollar!) so it is peace of mind for the most part but your right if technology changes and it will. This topic/conversation might all be a mute point anyway as people would want the most current form of graded technology.

Include a sentence in your will highlighting the estimated general range value. Attach a 1 page document to your will telling them to go to X hobby friend for advice. Heck, you could write a 1 sentence notice: “The baseball cards are worth ~$100,000 at the time of writing (date). Do not sell to the first offer, post on Net54 upon my demise for advice on grading and auction houses”. You could do a longer one pager and periodically update it with the trendy grader of the moment and the trendy auction house of the moment to go talk too. There is absolutely no reason people need to get suckered so easily. Just a general notice like this will do it; I’m sure your heirs would do a little work for a big pay day. The person inheriting the bulk of mine is aware what to do, and I have such documents and a short provision in my Will to make it abundantly clear.