Has anyone bougtht a raw set from Larry Fritsch and had cards graded?

glossycrazy

Hi- I have always wondered how nice the raw sets are that Larry Fritsch
sells. He has vintage football sets for sale from the late 60's early 70's that
have cards bought from topps in that given year and the cards have been
virtually untouched according to his ads. I'm curious if anyone has bought
any of these sets and were they impressed by the condition of the cards or not?
Plus, did you send in any cards to be graded and how did they grade? Thanks for
any insight you can provide.
Paul

rbeaton

I bought a 79 set which is quite nice, except practically every card is OC.

Robert

jwasserman

larry notoriously overgrades 1-2 levels. however, he does have a very easy return policy and ive never had a problem with him- good customer service.

perkdog

About six monthes ago I inquired about him on the boards here and I got laughed at. I have been under the impression not to deal with him. This is just what I got from fellow board members in the past.

fsjeter

I've never bought a set from him but I did buy a 1981 Topps Football vending box from him. It had two Montana RC's and they both came back 8's.

Scott

TheCARDKid

I bought a '59 Topps Football second series lot from him (he originally priced it at $99, now it's $140 I believe).

The cards were very sharp, I got several 8's that paid for the whole thing (this was when the Zeke Bratkowski was a rare card and sold for $75). The stars in the lot were basically 7's. The rest were the usual mix of OC's, PD's or straight NM-MT. All in all, a profitable experiment.

I'm sure he's got other 8's and 9's buried in his sets.

Onlypsahockey

I bought a few 68 Topps hockey commons years ago from him to finish my raw set. They were georgeous except for centering. I was pleased with the condition as many of the 68's are oc. Bob

1967topps

Larry Fritsch my gosh is he still around?
The first baseball mag I bought (probably a 1967 street and smith yearbook not with andy etchebarren
on the cover) had an ad from him.
I remember the name because it was similar to a neighbor's name.

miami3

I bought a 1973 and a 1974 Topps baseball set from him a couple of years ago with the idea of breaking up the sets to go to PSA and then to EBAY.

I received the sets within 1 week or so and it took me about 2 hours to go through both of them and 1 day to return them.

I would guess that 90% of the cards in these sets would either grade no higher than a psa 7 and most would get o/c or p/d qualifiers and this includes all of the star cards.

In the old days of collecting I would have been very happy with the overall condition of these sets but PSA has raised the bar for card condition and most of them would not make the cut.

That bieng said, I would stay away from them if you are looking for graded cards but if you are happy with ex-mint overall sets then they are OK.

To their credit they did issue a no questions refund very quickly.

Fuzz

People have bashed Larry for years for selling oc cards in his "untouched" material. But having opened some older material myself, it is the material, not necessarily him. The "average" card comes out of a pack as a seven or an eight so what you have heard in in-line with that. If your expectations are a run of 9's, you will be highly disappointed by anybodies raw unless it is put together as the best of the best. If you bought, I would suspect the corners would be nice, and the gloss very good. Centering could be anywhere.
Fuzz

nearmint

It took me 3 months to receive an "untouched" 1969 Topps football set from Fritsch, and then the entire second series was in Ex condition, disregarding the centering. The cards were clearly worn; they were not straight from the pack. My suspicion was that since it took so long for them to send the cards, they hadn't had them in stock when I ordered, and they assembled a mid-grade 2nd series for me when they bought a set from someone. They refunded my money without a problem, but it was still a painful experience.

kingraider75

damn I hate OC though