My. . .it's been a VERY long time.
mcastaldi
Posts: 1,227 ✭✭✭
Getting back into cards after a decade-plus hiatus.
Wonder how many of the old gang is still around these days.
So full of action, my name should be a verb.
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Good to see you again Mike. You may remember me from working on the 1972 set. I think I sold you a Schaal IA PSA 8 back in the day.
It's been so long. You're one of the few I recognize. For the most part I put cards away when my wife and I moved in 2006, but dutifully moved what I had. Sold off most of the graded stuff I had in 2021 when the market was high.
Finally getting back into it so I've been going through my raw stuff. Very surprised how much nice raw stuff I still have and decided to build raw sets from 74-84 in NM+ (with later issues NM/MT). So far I've sorted 74T, 75T, 78T, 80T, 84T, & 84D. I'm somewhere between 50-67% complete with each of those.
Planning to go to National for one day (since it's a 2 hour drive) and see what I can find. As much as anything looking for reliable sources of raw from those years. But. . .my feeling is the pandemic drove prices so high that any HOFers or stars worth grading have been submitted rather than left raw. So that will be interesting. Some of the later years I'm working on (82-84) I may end up looking for unopened for a lot of those.
Everytime i go to the National i never find what im looking for and end up buying other stuff lol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_from_Panama
Welcome back. I also have been away for the past decade. I sold off most of my collection back then, but I still have some odds and ends floating around the house that I need to clean out.
Especially with the current landscape (PSA grading fees + high prices for graded commons + very high prices for unopened) I really think graded sets are more of a vanity project for the individual collector now. As someone who has built two 70s graded sets back in the day, I couldn't imagine trying to do so now. When I built my 72T and 75T, PSA8 commons could had pretty consistently in the $10-15 range. And 9s in the $15-20 range. If memory serves, grading fees were in the $8/card range. There were exceptions, obviously. But now. . .when grading is $16-$19/card it makes it really really hard to submit duplicates to pay for the stuff you want to keep. And with grading that high, it makes it really tough to justify $1k to $2k on cracking a rack box from 1980-1983. You need to have a pretty spectacular rack box - and a fair amount of money for submissions - to hope to break even, much less pay for your 'keepers'.
Maybe I'm misreading the economics of this. I have been away for quite a while.
Mike, welcome back. I echo your thoughts on trying to make a graded set from 1960-1985 at the price of $16 a card. PSA really needs to think hard about the direction of their company and how they can encourage set collectors going forward. They need to do a true collectors special for $10 a card/$100 or less and upcharge to $20 if the card has a value of $200+. The pricing truly hurts the set collectors.
While it wouldn't entice me as I have no interest in doing a graded set (been there done that), I would think something like this could be a win/win. . .
$10/card. . .70 day turnaround. . .25 card minimum. . .stipulation being that all cards submitted must be from an issue where you have a set on the registry that's at least 10% complete.
I think this would keep out most dealers and bulk submitters (unless they want to register sets with 60-70 cards each on the registry). And it wouldn't allow you to start your set that way - so you need to demonstrate you're serious about building the set first.
Just an idea.
I love the idea, however there are many sets that I would like to grade out but have not done so because of the cost. As hard as PSA has been on vintage, it just does not make sense to grade out 70's commons. I sent in around 700 vending cards from 1971 Topps football, 1971 Topps basketball and 1973-1975 Basketball straight from vending. Got destroyed by the graders. I have PSA 6's that look PSA 10's. A real shame that they choose to do this.
If they would do a true commons special and surcharge any that are above $100 value, this would be a very fair deal. That way when you get an invoice of all PSA 6/7/minimum sized/9PD you won't be overcharged for the bag of @#$@ 112 days after you sent it off.
I had given up submitting cards for that very reason. Not sure what the answer is. Seems like no matter what I try, nothing has come back higher than a 7. For that reason, I've decided that if I want graded cards, I just buy them.
@1954
A few things at play here.
So yeah. . .my sets are all raw now.
This would be an 8 all day long back 10 years ago. Now PSA would put this in a 6 or 7 holder due to the bottom corners and a small amount of PD in the card. You can pull up 20 psa 8s from 10 years ago and this card looks just like those. Sending in this card at $15 does not kill you-you might not like the grade, but at least it has a value greater than $15.
@1954
I did some thinking about this and the best way I can describe it is this. . .
When I was submitting back in the day, there were some pretty clear delineations between a 7, an 8, and a 9. And if a card came back lower than expected, you had a good sense of why - i.e a corner with a little too much touch. . .centering didn't quite make it to 60/40. . .etc. Now. . .the lines between a 7 and an 8 seem completely arbitrary. To the point where I'd be willing to bet a grader couldn't maintain more than about 60% consistency in a double-blind test.
Then. . .when I was submitting, in most cases the difference between a 9 and a 10 generally came down to what kind of day the grader was having. Now, that's worked itself down to the difference between 8s and 9s.
As for the Aaron. . .I know part of it is that graders are used to looking at modern, laser-cut cards, so their idea of "light wear/chipping" is completely off the rails.