Helping a friend...Topps Gretzky RCs

kmnorton

My brother has a professor friend that casually mentioned to my brother that he has some baseball cards he would like to sell and my brother offered me up to help him out. I received scans of big cards (Mantle, Koufax, Clemente, mostly NY teams) and I was excited by what he had. When I asked for closer pictures, the condition of the cards is not good at all (mostly 1 and 2 potential). He also included a scan of a Gretzky and then casually mentioned he had two more. That peaked my interest more than the baseball cards and asked him for higher res scans and when I saw them asked him to send them to me and we'll go from there. We decided to hold off on the baseball discussion to focus on these.

I took scans of the front and back and need advice. I don't think he needs the money right away and doesn't really understand the overall concept of grading. I'm going back and forth between just sending them in and explain it's probably the right thing to do rather then selling raw, but I don't know all that much about Topps version of the Gretzky RC (I do have a PSA 4 OPC RC). Could I ask opinions on the 3? The OC one has two surface dents that would impact grading. The other two look pretty good. I don't want to add a million pictures, but will attach the fronts and include a link to my Flickr account if somebody is kind enough to opine, but needs a higher resolution pic. One question I do have is about all the fisheyes/whiteness on the borders. I've seen graded examples and some have them and some don't in similar grades.

As I said to start this missive, I'm trying to get the most value for him and would really appreciate the help on grading opinions.

Link to higher resolution scans.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/51777577@N00/albums/72157719620978625/with/51325105999/

Thanks in advance,

Kurt

RufussCkingston

They can't be sold raw unless you want quarters on the dollar. At the least you would send them to SGC at $30 a pop (more if they grade well). Can't see the dents on the OC one, but figure a 5 on that one, then 6-7 on the other two.

So more or less $1k to $2.5k value per card. Probably send the OC to SGC, and the other two to PSA at $200 a pop.

Make sure to measure them first, a lot get sent back due to min size.

kmnorton

Thanks for the suggestion. I think I may have to go with two of them to SGC because one of them is slightly under 2 1/2 inches in width and I'm afraid PSA might reject it. As a side note, I was on a Zoom call to explain the next course of action and as we were wrapping up the call, he says "oh, I also have two full unopened boxes of 1981 Topps hockey" LOL. We'll tackle those next.

Ahmanfan

Hi Kurt,
If you want to get the ball rolling I'll give you 1k for the OC one. Let me know.
John

RufussCkingston

@kmnorton said:
As a side note, I was on a Zoom call to explain the next course of action and as we were wrapping up the call, he says "oh, I also have two full unopened boxes of 1981 Topps hockey" LOL. We'll tackle those next.

Ehh.... 81 topps isn't really a barn burner! Now if it was OPC, then it would be something.... Unless he mean 80-81!