1973 and 1974 topps baseball in psa 9

miami3

I have about 3000 or so raw cards from these years plus 3 complete sets of each.

Does anyone have any experience in submitting these to psa and getting 9's or 10's on a regular basis.

i know that certain years have their nuances, I was just wondering what I should look out for.

I have only submitted 4 cards so far from these years and all came back 9's- 73 Schmidt, 73 Aaron, 73 ryan, and 74 Winfield.

Is it worth the time and effort to send in commons as the prices on 8's seem pretty cheap or just stick to the stars?

onegaucho

Wow- are you going to sell those 4? I'd be interested in all of them.

Anyways, I'd stick with the lower pop commons first. Another check you might want to make is to see what cards the current top 3-5 people on the respective set registries are missing. Those are more likely to get more bids during an auction.

marz

write "Zardos51". he is your expert on these sets. he is on this chat board often or look him up on e-bay!

jackstraw

i have not seen zardoz51 on this board in months?

riccaboni

74's are pretty easy to tell the winners from the losers. Centering and registration are the biggest problems on the 74's and are what seperate immaculate 8's from no problem 9's. The white border is a dead give away for chipping or corner damage so their shouldn't be much problem there. Check the back borders, I've had a couple 74's that were dead center on the front and not so good on the back and check for surface damage. 8's hardly bring back the grading fees for 74's, so I would be careful on the commons and minor stars. Sometimes the minor stars bring less than some of the commons.

It really seems there is no real low population cards from the '74 set to be honest. Other than the 599 variation and the Washingtons, no card has really stuck out as a key card, or tough to find in top grade.

Those are your pretty big keys for the 1974 set. I'm interested in the 74 commons if you decide not to have them graded. I collect the set, and am always looking for raw cards.

-Ian

Wayne8348

I agree with Ian but I might also add that the most difficult thing on the 74's is the print defects. PSA will sometimes let fairly large dots pass and still grade the card a 9 while on others they mark it down to an 8. I honestly can't see the difference under 10x loupe. I even have 1 psa 10 with 2 small print defects that you would normally see on an 8. It's seems to be a crap shoot unless the card is completely free of the print spots which is extremely rare.

There are about 75 cards with a pop of 2 or less in psa 9 that I would consider very low pop cards. I Washington variation low pop just went for over $200 the other night in psa 9. I think it would be well worth your while to check the pop reports and grade anything pop 4 or less. You should break even on the 8's and come out very well on the 9's.

Good luck,

Wayne