Need a couple of tips...
MachoMuchacho
Posts: 241
Okay, here's the deal. I want to grade a bunch of cards. The only deal I see worth doing is paying $600+ to get a bulk lot of 100 graded. (Unless there's some other deal I'm missing) I can't convince my wife to go along with this. We just bought a house, we're a young couple, and we have more important things to buy. I know that if I had these cards graded I could sell them and make a pleasant profit. I guess my questions are: Should I sell random stuff I don't need (video games, etc.) and save up $600 extra bucks to submit them to PSA like that or wait for a monthly deal which may never come and get my cards back 3 months later due to demand. Or is there another deal I could do that I don't know about? What do you guys do? Thanks.
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Comments
Mark
Raw: Tony Gonzalez (low #'d cards, and especially 1/1's) and Steve Young.
Yeah, I've learned the hard way. I had a 89 UD Griffey and 89 UD Biggio graded a 5 due to a very small surface wrinkle on both of them. They came straight from the packs, put into holders and shipped to PSA...boy was I ticked!
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randy
<< <i>I know that if I had these cards graded I could sell them and make a pleasant profit. >>
Boy I have said that a few times myself and was lucky to get my grading fees back once i sold them...
What type of cards are you looking to submit? (years etc)
- What the cards will likely grade
- What the cards will sell for if they get the expected grade
- What the cards would sell for raw
You can look at something like a 1983 Fleer Rickey Henderson and say to yourself "This card looks perfect, I'm grading it." Well, if you took the time to go onto ebay, you'd see that even as a 10 this card will only sell for $10-$15. Hardly worth tying up $6 for two months for a chance to double your money.
If you have tweeners- cards that could be a 9 or a 10- then you need to decide if the payoff is worth submitting it. In a lot of cases, a 10 will bring a ton of money so it's worth it even if you only have a 10% chance of pulling a 10. Other times, a 10 will sell for $30 while a 9 will sell for $20 and a raw one will sell for $15. In this case, it's not worth grading. Also, keep an eye on the pop reports and players that have been selling well on ebay- you're better off grading a 1986 Fleer Alan Trammell that has a slim shot at a 10 than a 1978 Topps Pete Rose that does.
There's a lot more to it than "These cards look good, I'm going to grade them and make money." You want to minimize the chance that you're going to lose money, and the only way to do that is to go by trial and error. I would suggest that before submitting all 100 cards, you take like 10 of them and see how you do. Sure, you'll end up paying more per card, but you won't be tying up $600 for 2 months with the chance that you don't make anything. You're gonna want to get a better feel for the whole grading and flipping thing before you jump in with both feet and spend money you might not be able to afford.
Lee
edit to say- Nothing's more dejecting than to spend a month gathering cards to submit, tying the $600 up for 2 months, and end up losing a couple hundred bucks on the whole deal.
Strategy.
<< <i>Lee, that was a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out response. >>
Yes it was, Im still "all set" with picking out raw cards to eventually grade for my collection. Forget about trying to make $$ doing it, thats just me though.