Collecting Experiences Buying Raw Vintage Baseball Cards

eliteco3

Hello everyone, my name is Nolan Klein. I run the online hobby store Cardboard Futures and the youtube channel eliteco3. I love vintage topps baseball and was wondering how everyone has done buying so called NM-MT or NM cards and trying to have them slabbed. I know many sellers uptick the value of the card they are listing to create more revenue. I am thinking about doing a bulk order and want to know if the majority of the cards will be miscut, trimmed, or altered. I do not want to waste time and money on this project without some input from other respected collectors. All the best

1951WheatiesPremium

As an avid reader, I would say the basic advice seems to be to grade them yourself first. Harshly. And write them down. If you don't lie to yourself (which I have a hard time with sometimes), you should have created a smaller group of cards. Join the PSA (or SGC) collectors club (100-200ish). Submit your best cards (8s or better) with their free vouchers. See how you did. If you get the anticipated grades and you are satisfied, send more. If they all look mint but come back as 5s, maybe sell the rest raw. There are PLENTY of collectors who prefer raw to graded. And there are plenty of cards that lose value because they have been graded. Looks like a 7, grades as a 4 type thing.

Again, others will correct my mistakes but that's the gist of it. I collect, not deal, so I don't have as much to lose when it happens. I do prefer to buy raw and submit myself simply for authentication purposes, liquidity and to see how good my eye is, which is foolish since the same card can earn different grades from different and even the same company. But since I'm not high end and base my collection mostly on eye appeal (for budgetary and guilt reasons), I have a lot less to lose when I submit and tend to do so less frequently...

dennis07

I buy my raw almost exclusively from gregmorris cards because I trust them and the grade they put on a card. I have found most sellers on ebay do "uptick" the grade as you said in your post. The dreaded corner touches is what knocks most cards listed as NM-MT cards down to a card I wont even submit.

jay0791

Greg Morris for sure
Most overgrade so be very carefull.
Your knowledge is the most important of all........learb to grade.
Its often hard to tell from scans. IMO don't buy if the scan s so poor you have no idea
what the card could grade. Many times this is done on purpose.

If you see a raw card you might like. Then go and look at the sellers other auctions.
If there is a number of PSA or BGS graded cards.........then most likely what you are looking at
isn't worth grading. He would have done so already.