How much good, raw vintage is still out there?

RonBurgundy

Of the total modern vintage card population, say from 1948-1975, how much raw, never graded vintage is out there in NM or better? I would guess less than 10%. I think the days of finding gold from the shoeboxes in the attics are gone, for the most part.

smallstocks

We may find out real soon if PSA runs a 50's special as promised.

NewJerseyMeatHook

10%? I'd say more like 30-40%. I still believe that grading still has not hit some old timers sitting on huge lots of vintage. I know of one guy in particular!

Just a thought.

Boopotts

10% may actually be a high estimate when we're talking about cards that are 'in circulation' (part of the collections of active hobbyists, or part of a dealer's stock), but I bet it's a very low estimate when you're talking about all the cards that are still out there floating around.

RonBurgundy

You could be right (and I hope you are). Just recently I pulled a 68 Clemente and Drysdale out of a card shop both of which turned out to be 8's. The guy who runs the shop is an old timer with an aversion to grading. I also have a friend who collects raw, high end vintage and refuses to get anything graded. But it seems raw is getting harder and harder to find.

lostdart58

I must disagree.........


90% of vintage NRMINT cards already graded????????





I think the figures are closer to 90% - 95% of the NR-MINT vintage cards out there are YET to be graded.

digicat

I know of a rather large stockpile of vintage stuff that's probably gonna stay hidden for a while now. A few years ago, I was visiting a former girlfriend's house and talking to her dad about baseball. He recalled that he found a box of all of his old baseball cards when he cleaned out his late father's house a year earlier, and put them in his office. I asked to see the stuff.

OMG!!!!!! I felt like I had seen a ghost or something! A mixture of fear, awe, and excitement as this guy pulled out a few old boxes and opened them up to reveal what ended up being about 1500 baseball and 500 football cards from the 1952 through 1960. You could tell this guy took care of his stuff as a kid. I told him that he was sitting on a fortune, and he just kinda shrugged. I told him that he needed to store the cards better (they were laying at the bottom of a number of cardboard moving boxes), and he asked if I wanted to do it. So, of course, who am I to pass up an opportunity to carefully sleeve and box a bit of vintage baseball history. He's a coin and art collector an obscene collection of extremely valuable stuff, so the baseball card collection probably seemed like chump change to him.

He had all the good stuff, and from what I've seen of graded vintage stuff, I'd venture to say that his collection would probably mostly grade between PSA 7 and 9 (beautiful corners and edges, no wrinkles, decent centering).

As a "50 cents here, 20 bucks there" collector, I was proud to have had the opportunity to inspect raw Mantles, Aarons, etc, and give advice as to how to store and care for the cards. I put all the cards in penny sleeves and put them in a shoebox holder, and recommended that he hide it away somewhere safe.

No 1952 Mantles, but I did get to hold a raw 1956 Mantle in my hand, and carefully slide it into a fresh Ultra Pro vintage sized penny sleeve (which I lightly slit the sides to so that the card never had to touch the sharp edge of the sleeves).

So, there's some good stuff out there, hidden away. I wonder when his collection will ever see the light of day again?

RonBurgundy

If you are correct, then why does it seem that so many dealers have so little quality raw vintage available? There is also a lack of it on Ebay. Several people on the board were recently lamenting the lack of good raw vintage at the National, which mimics my experience at smaller shows. I'm not being argumentative, it would just seem that NM vintage is drying up, or has dried up.

smallstocks

Jami,

I think what RB is asking is how much of that stuff would grade Nm or better.

lostdart58

Heck.......my two raw vintage sets (55 Bowman and 59 Topps) will stay well stored with me until I am old and grey.......When the time comes to sell, these cards ain't going to no dealer. They will be passed on or sold off to collectors like myself...............

.....The majority of cards out there are NOT for sale..........

Woodson28Fan

I'm wondering the same thing. I'm grown leary of buying vintage stuff because I believe it could be tampered with. The other day I wanted to buy a 69 Namath, but decided against it because I was afraid it could have been possibly trimmed or recolored. I would rather spend my money on a PSA 7 of the same card and at least know I'm getting a legit card.

lostdart58

Perhaps I read the question wrong..............( my bad)


.........but I do believe there is lots of quality raw material out there....

envoy98

There still is a ton of nice stuff to be had. I've had people bring collections to me that I just couldn't afford to buy when I was set up in KC and locally. One guy in KC brought every Topps FB & BB set from 1956-1966 or 67, I forget. He pulled out a handful of cards and gave them to the greasy looking guy at the BGS booth. I think I still have his name and number and I've been tempted to call him up and see how his grades turned out. I recall the 57 Unitas and Starr cards were both rock stars and appeared to be slam dunk 8's. He didn't bring all of his stuff in but said it was " in the car" I saw a very nice sampling of some fantastic stuff.

There are plenty of dealers around that have nice vintage around that are just totally against grading. I have a customer that I see in KC & Chicago that will come by and spend a lot of money on my graded stuff and he sits at several other dealers tables and looks at everything they have and he gets every last bit of it graded.

At the National I spent quite a bit of time with the people from Augusta Sports Cards and lady that organizes the national (I forget her name). They both had some very nice football from the 50's-70's. Maybe not all of it was NM 50's but there was a large chunk that would have easily graded out NM or better. In fact, I picked up some nice pieces from both of them, granted most of what I was getting was HOF and Team specific rc's for my set registries but I got some nice cards in fantastic shape that I am very happy with.

Edited for readability.

BTW-Woodsonfan, if you'd like a nice 69 Namath I just sent one in today that should grade out a 7 or 8. I have another that is sharp but OC top to bottom. I'll guarantee it unaltered. PM if you'd be interested in either of them and I'll give you first shot. I'll have the graded one back in about 10 days.

mmoin

For any game theory types out there, the precipitous drop in quality raw vintage is much like how lemons crowd out quality used cars in the market- as PSA has made it economically obvious to send in any 50's-60's vintage stars (and sometimes even commons) that will grade a 5-6 or better, raw vintage that *appears* to be NM+ is increasingly likely to be trimmed/doctored/etc etc, and thus buyers will calculate this in the prices they offer for lots of seemingly high-quality vintage. This is a self-reinforcing cycle, in that as more high-quality vintage gets graded, the likelihood that the remaining raw is either low quality or nice-looking but doctored increases, thus forcing buyers to lower their offers even more, and further encourage raw owners to finally give in and grade genuine NM+ raw vintage cards.

Anyway, as far as guesses, I would supposed that no more than 5-10% of the remaining raw vintage is NM or better, and that assuming the grading companies do not go kaput (in which case I am sure there would still be an extremely strong secondary market for PSA-graded cards), that percentage is likely to decrease much further. If one were to graph a curve of this figure, however, from '48 to '75, the percentage certainly increases drastically over time, as it is virtually always a profitable move to submit '52 hi #'s, and rarely a profitable move to submit lots of '73 commons that appear to be NM or better.

Andrew

ctsoxfan

<< <i>greasy looking guy at the BGS booth >>






I don't think you are going to find much high grade raw vintage at shows anymore - and if you do, you will certainly overpay for it. Dealers mention that it's like "leaving money on the table", no matter how they may personally feel about grading. Shops and attic collections may still turn up nice raw vintage, but only on occasion.

CleveFanCarpFisher

I know its not much in the whole scheme of things but I have 7000 of which at least 75% are PSA7 or better...1952 to 1962.

In addition, those I "deal and trade" with, numbering about 30 people, each have 3-4 times more than I do...and probably in better condition.

We've been doing it for about 30 years and haven't tired of the "old way" yet. (Buy and trade but never sell)

My math says over 700,000 ungraded that I know of...most of which are in highly collectible condition....many complete sets.

Why would we spend/risk $7 million dollars to have someone tell us what we already know????

Of course, we aren't in the "grading mainstream" since there appears to be little value in that, IMO, unless you are going to sell or have a large ego.

NewJerseyMeatHook

Amen.

RonBurgundy

These are all great thoughts, guys. One reason why I signed up for this board. You learn a lot and get some thoughtful opinions.

eyebone

Digicat....perhaps you should take up with that former girlfriend again......

Eyebone

Seraph

There is a lot of pre-war vintage (baseball and non-baseball) out there that is still raw.

Treetop

I went and saw one of these NRMT-MINT 1954 -1980 collections last year and the owner was completely fooling himself. Bunch of JUNK. Sure there was some nice cards, but lots of "MK" and OC cards, among trimmed and fuzzy cornered cards

Remember, many say grading saved vintage card collecting and I agree. So many cards were altered in the 70's 80 and early 90's and many of these altered cards are sitting undetected in the so called high power collections, IMO.

Woodson28Fan

The bottom line for me is that even with the negative attention PSA (via WIWAG) and BGS (via a lot of PSA people) have received, I still feel better about having my cards -and buying cards - in the slabs of these two companies than just dealing with raw ones. There is too much uncertainty out there.

Woodson28Fan

and i wasn't knocking psa supporters. frankly, i am glad they have called out beckett on certain inconsistencies that definitely merited the negative attention.

AlanAllen

Look at the pop reports of the T206 Wagner vs. the estimated quantity extant. Fewer than half have been slabbed. There is a ton of quality raw in the world. Now, how much quality raw is on the market is an entirely different question.

Joe

calleocho

it really matters wether you are talking stars vs commons.

How many raw 1952 Mantles of psa 7-8-9 quality do you really think there are? maybe 100 or less, i would actually like to see someone with an old pop report and compare it to a new one and see what amount of high grade mantles have been added...not many probably.

how many raw 1952 commons of high quality are there? in the 10'000's

Boopoots said something really interesting...while there might be some high end cards still raw...what are the chances they will become avaible?

ndleo

The reason that you do not see quality raw on ebay is because buyers won't pay for it. Because of the scams on ebay, anytime you see quality raw, everyone thinks it's doctored and bids accordingly. I listed a 200 lots of 1968-1975 NM+ football and the results were awful. Except for a few rookies, the bids came in at 25-40%. My feedback at time was 1000+ with no negs. That is the last time I did that. The only cards I list are graded or modern raw.

Why would I sell it on ebay when I can get better money at shows? I like ebay and use it often, but all of my quality vintage raw inventory is for shows or private deals. I bet that other dealers do the same.

TheCARDKid

There still seems to be alot of raw, high dollar cards stashed away out there.

In all these years, there's only been 600 some odd '52 Mantles graded. That seems like a very small number, considering it's only 10x the number of T206 Wagners in existence.

There's been 500 '54 Bowman Ted Williams graded and that's the rarest card in the set. Even accounting for re-grades, you can see that very little of the rest of the set has been graded.

And boards like Net54 show how popular raw cards are.

dakota

Yeah what Treetop said.
But Treetop ....all it takes is that ONE time!!! wink wink
See ya soon

Buccaneer

I, too, believe there is tons of nice raw vintage out there. I was going through the 1963 Pop Report today and for most of the commons, there are only 50-150 graded of each in NM or better. They produced 100,000s of each card and only 1/10 of 1% (at most) survived in such conditions? Going back to the 1950s, the percentage of graded vs raw production is probably higher but like someone said, there are still 10,000s raw 1952s alone, I suspect.

bowdowntome

I don't believe I ever saw as much trimming and altering of cards going on in the 70's and 80's as I do now, SINCE the invention of "professional" card grading.

Commons that sell for $100 today (graded), sold for pennies back in the 70's. Why would anyone care about trimming or altering a card even back then, that sold for pennies? Stars and "key" cards maybe, but today, even commons fall victim to card doctors because of how inviting it is to try and get them by a card grader and them for BIG $$$.

EdnaPurviance

Got raw?

CleveFanCarpFisher

Perhaps a corollary...how much ungraded coinage out there?????

My guess....$$$billions....and those boys have been at it much longer than card nuts.

Stone193

I collected mostly raw over the years.

I apologize for the large scan. We have had this discussion before and I personally think there's way more than one might think. I am not the biggest collector on the banana tree but have many boxes of commons from 53T to 78T. Back in the late 80s, it was easy to pick up 50-100 ct. lots of commons from some of the dealers who were only interested in the star cards. Now centering isn't always what I would like but if we are talking Nm - I just have this feeling....

mike

FYS

The biggest question is what were the print runs? I think I have read before that the 84 Topps set had a run of about 1,000,000 cards each. Does anybody have any published print runs for various years?

Steelcity99

Bowdown: I agree. I would submit that 75% or more of the alterations made to cards have been made in the last 15-20 years. Other than to simply have a more aesthetically pleasing card, there would have been no real pragmatic reason to alter a raw vintage card prior to that. Only once the everday type collector realized the monetary difference between a card with 2 soft corners and one with 4 sharp corners did altering the card become worth the time and effort. Grading only increased the incentive to "improve" cards. Seems to me that we may never know how much true quality raw is out there since the fraudsters are constantly altering cards in an attempt to get 9's out of what may have been a high grade 7.

MajorDanby

most (not all) sellers that frequent shows know about the grading market...they know that most serious collectors prefer graded in one of three slabs (GAI, PSA or SGC). Yet, a large majority of sellers still sell raw. Why? Not to be kind and generous to their fellow collectors. But to sell cards they know can't get a good grade on (i.e. not gain a sizeable profit over the grading fees and the SMR [which, in any case, will likely not reflect the market price for low grade vintage cards]). They advertise these cards as crisp and sharp....trying to fool the novice collector to pay NM prices for an EX card. It's funny when i come up to a dealer and talk about some of their great graded items in one of their cases...and then, as if i was guy pierce from memento...they show me three cases chock full of raw cards all selling at or way above SMR NM prices. in shows, quality raw cards are not plentiful.

Now, does that mean there are no good raw vintage out there? No. There is plenty. They're all in the closets and bookcases of collectors who dont feel the need or motivation to grade their collections. They're in small card shops where the owners are unwilling to take on the hassle and fees of grading...and the effort, hassle and fees of selling on ebay.

How much quality raw vintage is out there on ebay? Hard to tell. I've been lucky and unlucky. I bought some great raw cards that have graded PSA 7 or 8 from ebay...ive got some raw cards graded as NM that have been as bad as PSA 4. The problem with buying raw on ebay (in particular, buying raw star cards...i have no problem buying raw common cards because there is little advantage for sellers to conduct foul play on such cards with limited profit) is that you are unsure of the cards' condition and legitemacy. What runs in your mind when you look at a sharp 1954 Topps Ernie Banks rookie raw? Is it a counterfeit? Is it trimmed? Is it really NM? There may be good raw vintage out there to be had on ebay...but the stigma of not being able to really see these cards up close makes fishing for raw a bit too risky.

In sum, yes...i do believe there is plenty of good raw cards to be had. To find them, you'll have to for the most part go through the less conventional route.

bowdowntome

steelcity - Absolutely!

I distinctly remember back in the mid-late 70's, buying T206 commons for as little as .50 each, and I mean nice ones for T206's. Then, there was no need to trim them up, there was also no interest in passing off doctored reprints as originals. Today however, you pretty much have to look at any EXMT or better T206 with a suspicious eye.

I personally don't know ANY graded card collectors in the area I live. I have never seen ANY collectors at local shows asking for graded cards, and only 1 time did I see a dealer with predominantly graded cards, set up at a local show. I asked him how business was, and in a not-so-subtle way told me he would never do these local shows again. But there are LOTS of collectors around here, some favor vintage, some modern, who have there own "stash" of whatever they collect in ungraded condition. I'm sure there are lot's of bummer cards in these collectinos, especially if they've started collecting in the last 10-15 years and look for ungraded vintage, but those who have been around the block a time or 2, and can do their own weedng out of junk cards, without a disinterested third party opinion, probably have a good chunk of nice cards. QWe may never know until these people start passing away and their collections start hitting the market.

NewJerseyMeatHook

Steelcity99

Love that Killebrew NJ! Before we left NC there were a few (emphasize few) stores around where decent raw vintage could be had. I know there is one store in Bmore that specializes in raw vintage, but haven't been yet to check it out. Ebay is a total crapshoot. Case in point: I took a pretty good size hit on a '58 Koufax that looked nice in the scans, but close inspection when I got the thing showed that the corners had been retouched. No way to see that on the scans, but I unloaded the thing and stated in the auction that it had been retouched, and just ate the loss. On the other hand, I got a lot of about 5 raw '62's on the bay that were some of the nicest 62's I've seen in or out of a slab. Same with a lot of 76 Sox that I won. How much is out there? I don't have a real large collection of vintage, but I know I'm sitting on a few nice, unaltered cards myself and the way I figure, if I'm sittin on some with a small collection, who knows how much folks with big a$$ collections are sitting on. I don't get much graded and I can't help but think there are alot of other people out there that don't dig the grading thing and, thus, don't get their nicest raw vintage graded.

Don't get me wrong, I buy some cards in PSA holders (e.g. '62 Snider psa/dna) (and a few SGC), but I don't sell much graded and don't submit myself.