72' Topps Baseball - Need submission advise

RayBShotz

I have been listening intently on the boards here to all the talk about 72's and soaking in the nuances of this set regarding tough cards. I am preparing my under the wire 70's submission to include a few nice 72's. I have recently joined the bandwagon.
This is my first go around with this year having previously concentrated my submission efforts on 69's. The question before the group is - specific to 72's, assuming Mint centering and corners, what is the most likely minor defect to look for that would drop a 72' card out of a 9 slab into an 8?
Shooting for 9's and looking for an edge!
RayB69Topps and my "Back of the Pack" 72' set

carkim

RayB,

I've been hit with a few surface wrinkles which dropped me to a PSA 5 or 6. This has happened a few times (Haven't learned my lesson yet) because I was in a hurry and didn't do my "UNDER BRIGHT LIGHT REVIEW".

Carlos

Treetop

RayB----regarding the corners and centering of the 72's

I don’t plan on pursuing the 1972 set I have listed, I have decided to change and put all my (money) energy into my 1960 set. But, I have submitted a few 1972’s here and there for trading or selling and PSA has gotten extremely tough on 9’s. I think a few here that collect 72’s have mentioned that on threads here before. But, recently in the past 2-3 months, what I have noticed is the corners literally have to be GEM mint under the magnifier. Absolutely no missing white color from the cardboard at the corners. Before PSA seemed to give some leway here. Recently I have sold some high end 8’s and the buyers are very please and have stated “these look like 9’s”.and what can I say…….”but don’t remind me! I thought they were 9‘s too!”. .But, what I have noticed more positively is that on the top to bottom centering, it can be 65/35 (or a hair-less), as long as the left to right centering is close to perfect, leaving the overall eye appeal strong. This is just my observations, one pro and one con.

Good luck with your monster of a set

FB

Ray,

Just send them all in. Take your lumps like the rest of us!

FB

Alright Ray...

You really don't have to worry about Print Defects in 72 - have never had any in over 1200 submissions. And as far as what drops a 9 into an 8 holder... I don't think that anyone who has been submitting 72's can honestly tell you that without guessing. Its pretty easy to tell the 7's from the 8's before submitting, but to determine the 8's from the 9's I believe that there are factors beyond the cards themselves at work. I bought what I thought were 120 Mint hand picked 72 beauties at the last Fort Washington show. I submitted them and got 17 - 9's, 100 - 8's and 3 - 7's.

Your best bet is to submit the best you can find. Hope for 8's and be surprised and psyched when you get the occasional 9's.

gemint

About the best ratio I've achieved is 35% 9's and most of those were taken from mint unopened packs. There's too much subjectivity in grading to nail it 100%. The good news is there is a strong enough market for 8's that you should be able to recoupe your costs if you decide to sell the 8's.

The only way to be sure of getting 9's is to buy them already slabbed. But that is getting very expensive these days.

Good luck.

FB

Gemint,

Ya beat me by 1 card. Best I've done has been 34 PSA 9's out of 100. Although I can't complain because these cards were gleaned from stuff I bought from eBay. Not quite as expensive as buying unopened, but when you find that only 20% of the stuff is really graded what the auction states, it starts getting close.