New 1975 Topps BB Set Guy Here!
dcaudle68
Posts: 16
Hi all, just signed up and wanted to say hi to everyone. I am specializing, actaully the only thing I am working on right now is the 1975 Topps baseball card set. It was the first year I collected cards as a 7 year old kid and is very eye-appealing and difficult to build mint to boot. I currently have been doing the big guys in the set in PSA 8 form, but this past week was high bidder on a lot of 77 PSA 8 commons from the set so I guess that means I'm going all out now to try and get the set in PSA 8 form although it will be a long process. Never having sent but a few cards into PSA myself and being very dissapointed with the outcome. my question is, is there any go btween type people who have enough experience with this service to advise what would get an 8(what I want) as opposed to getting "stuck" with a 7? I have 100 commons I am ready to submit but dont want to sepnd the money if I am going to get 50 of them back as 7"s. Any honest answers out ther would be appreciated and any other 75 collectors feel free to email me at dcaudle69@onemain.com, thanks!!! BTW my set is registered under Dean's Figure Eight's on the PSA Website.
Dean Caudle
Dean Caudle
0
Comments
How to avoid 7s is a the million dollar question, so if you figure it out please let me know
Brian
CU turns its lonely eyes to you
What's the you say, Mrs Robinson
Vargha bucks have left and gone away?
hey hey hey
hey hey hey
While Mike is "The Man" when it comes to grading '75s, Frank Smith is also an excellent contact for information on '75s and also participates here on the message board.
Another excellent resource for pointers on card grading in general and all-round good-guy is Steve Pekovich (ebay ID baurfan).
Reviewing cards for the normal corner and centering flaws are fairly easy to identify; however the best advice I can offer you as to grading 75s is to review the card surfaces for "snow". Generally, cards with black areas in the background are among the lowest pops due to this flaw. PSA seems to be consistent in lowering these cards to a seven for an otherwise high-grade card.
One last tip is to always do one last review of the batch of cards being submitted to PSA by reviewing the back of the cards. I've saved myself several dollars by just flipping through the cards to make sure centering is within tolerance (90-10 for 8s) as well as not submitting cards with stains I may have missed in my initial review of a card.
Hope this helps and good luck!
Steve
Good luck on your '75 adventure...It's a great set to collect. I have a few that I put away every so often..
See 'ya!!!
K KELLOGG
email....emards4457@msn.com
CHEERS!!
1) Be brutally honest when you evaluate raw cards. Don't talk yourself into thinking a flaw is less significant than it really is. If you do, you'll end up submitting cards that you've convinced yourself are fine only to be disappointed with PSA's opinion.
2) Understand PSA's grading criteria for each grade.
3) Understand the issue you are collecting.
4) Be VERY picky about any raw/ungraded cards you buy. For me, the submission process begins when I'm sitting at a dealer's table or store. Since I plan to submit what I buy, I like to eliminate any unsubmittable cards BEFORE spending any money on them. Why buy a card you can't use? Of course this leads me to miss cards from time to time, but at the same time when I get the cards home I find a higher percentage are actually worth sending to PSA.
5) I feel a good halogen desk lamp and a loupe of at least 10x are mandatory items. I bought my desk lamp at Ikea and my loupe on eBay. Total for both - around $40.
6) Evaluating raw cards. . .some of this should have been done at #4, but. . .for me it should take only one major flaw for me to pass on a card. It should at least meet the criteria just looking through the naked eye. Normally, I will look at corners first. If they look good with the naked eye, I look at the centering, if that looks OK, then I look at surface (for wax and surface wrinkles) and the back. If the first one of these items that aren't up to par causes me to pass. I find this helps me move through stacks of cards more efficiently.
7) When you get the cards home. . .under good light, use the loupe to look at corners. For PSA8s in 1975 Topps, a small amount of chipping is OK but the corner must be intact and pretty sharp at 5x or 10x magnification. If you're looking for PSA9s, the corners should be very sharp with almost no chipping. From there, look at centering. It won't take long for you to quickly tell whether a card is at least 65/35 or better. If you are looking for 9s, you may want to measure centering more closely. Then look at surface. This is where the lamp proves it's worth the investment. Look at the card under the lamp at several different angles. This will help you identify wax stains and suface wrinkles that aren't otherwise obvious.
ADDED----- The cards that pass #7 make my "first cut". These cards are then set aside where I will repeat the same process a second time on a different day. This helps me make sure I didn't miss anything or have an overly optimistic first session. The cards that pass this second cut are what gets sent to PSA.
About the 75T issue in general-
-- Obviously, the multi-colored borders are prone to chipping.
-- As Steve mentioned, "snow" is very common. This sort of snow makes certain cards particularly tough - for example. . .the DeCinces RC, the Keith Hernandez RC, Jesus Alou, Claudell Washington, and any other card that has large areas of dark backgrounds or large areas of dark hair.
-- "Print circles" are very common. So long as they are not excessive or hurt overall eye appeal, then they shouldn't affect the grade.
-- With the multi-colored borders, some cards will have a print line at the top or the bottom of the card. Like this Dave Roberts for example. So long as it's not excessive, this should not affect the grade at all.
Feel free to e-mail me if you want to discuss anything further. If you'd be interested in trades, I'd be glad to see what duplicates I have. For what it's worth, I've really only been serious about my 75 set for just about a year. I was building a graded 72 set and elected to get out of the 72s to focus on 75s and other stuff (78s and 79s).
Mike
I started going for the 75's about 2 months ago....along with my 73's...
There are alot of very nice ones around on line...just need to obviously be very careful of the print marks.
I recently (about 3 days ago) stopped going for this set to concentrate fully on a 52 Topps PSA 6 set.
I actually ran across a fellow collector breaking up a complete PSA 6 set and I am picking up a ton of singles from him.
Needless to say I listed all my 75's on EBAY a couple days ago...
if you do bid on these I will give cut a great shipping discount to ya since I know you just started the set.
(please dont take this as a shill for myself!!)
Best of luck with the set!
....let me guess....the lot that you picked up are from RUSHOELESS???
He has some great lots up as of late!
Brian
1952 Topps Baseball PSA 6,7,8's
1933 Goudey PSA 5's
T202 Hassan Triple Folds
1962 Topps Football PSA 8's
Dean Caudle
Joe
1) If you look at his auctions, they're nearly all for beanie babies, YuGiOh crap, and other things totally unrelated to sports memorabilia.
2) He's had several (10?) auctions for 75 vending boxes and has used the same picture for each auction. In each case, the lid has been opened.
These things tell me he has absolutely zero expertise in sports memorabilia, much less unopened material. In this light, it's no wonder the winning bids for these have been pretty soft - around $865-$910. Had they been from a dealer known for unopened material such as Mark Murphy or BBC Exchange, I would have expected nearly double those prices.
But even at $900 and assuming they're legit, it doesn't make sense to crack it at that price. Figure $900 for 500 cards, that works out to $1.80 per card. Now. . .if you are optimistic and assume that 30% of them are submittable for PSA8s, that works out to $6 per card (assuming the non-submittable cards have no value). Considering at shows I've been picking from dealer stock and paying in the $1-$2 range, you'd have to get several stars and several 9s to make it worthwhile. And as I said, if you get a box from a more reputable source the prices only go up from there.
Mike
Thanks for taking the time. Great post above. On the subject of the process beginning on dealer tables...will you be in Chicago on Friday or Saturday or both? I'll get there Friday and Saturday and we can hit the usual suspects. Now, how do we get that darn desk lamp powered up in there?
Phil
As for Gibsons. . .if it's a good show, then I won't be able to afford Gibsons
Mike
You da man, I glad you reminded me some of the basics on how to....I've
been beat up by the vintage only on a few of my own stupid errors,
those couple of 5's always leaves me shaking my head.
Frazia,
Gibsons, only if you could put that schmidt in a 10 holder. Find me the
how to book on that...Hey Joe sais hi!!!!!Thats broadway Joe!!!!!!!!One
last thing gossage 81 9'. Put that card in your head.
The Guru