Grading commons

celesterussell

Guys and gals:

What type of "guidelines" do you use for grading vintage commons, what type of ratio do you use when evaluating the pop report vs weather its worth sending in.

Thanks, and for the 71 Munson fan, that the A"s John Donaldson sliding home.

Also, arn't the 73BB made on the worst paper?

wolfbear

One way would be to go through the pop reports for a set,
and find the 10, 20, or 30 cards, depending on set size, with the fewest number of 8's + 9's.

Go to eBay and see what those low-pop 8's and 9's have sold for recently.
If they're selling for a lot more than the cost of a high quality raw card + grading fees + auction fees,
you too could be on your way to becoming a millionaire.

The tough part, of course, is actually FINDING the high quality low pop raw cards to submit

jason045

What I have done is gone through the pop report for each year and established a number based on the popularity of the set and made a list of the cards with a combined pop report of 8s and 9s that is less than said number. For example, for 1964 Topps baseball, the number I came up with was 12 after looking through the entire pop report for that set. That yeields a total of seven cards with a combined population of 8s and 9s that is less than 12. Basically I choose a number that will give me between 5-15 tough cards per year. Then I search ebay about once a week for these tough commons. So far it has proven a mildly lucrative way to support my card habit, but I got a big submission coming up with a '61 Houk, a '71 Regan, a '64 Osteen, a '60 Wertz and Berberet, a '66 Alou and Edwards, and a '72 Henderson, Reds RCs and Schall IA that should all 8. I have several more tougher commons through the years that are borderline 7-8 that I will also be submitting. When I get the results back, I will give the board members first crack at the good stuff.