Should i grade my baseball cards

The rest do not carry any value. Even when we buy a card that is professionally graded - we still grade the card ourselves. If we agree, with the grade - we may pay a few bucks more seldom more the cost of the grading! Quite often we will remove the "under graded" cards from the PSA case to allow us to sell them for more money. We usually do not have cards professional graded because it actually reduces the number of potential buyers and possibly reduces the value of the card.

As we grade on par with anyone, we can sell to both the graded and non-graded card collectors. We offer a money back guarantee, so if collectors do not agree with our grades - they may simply return the cards. The graded card collectors simply buy the ungraded cards and submit the card themselves. Dean's Cards has found that our graded cards sell slower than our ungraded cards.

Many collectors are unwilling to pay a premium for a graded card. There are occasions, when collectors will purchase a graded card from us and ask us to remove it from the case before shipping it to them. Besides, most people want to actually touch the card! Money that sometimes isn't returned because the grades assigned to the cards do not improve their value. Trying to explain this to someone that thinks that they've figured out the card market by perusing eBay for a few minutes typically doesn't end well.

But that won't stop us from trying to share our knowledge and expertise with our customers and our Internet viewers and readers. Knowing what NOT to grade can often be as profitable as what you decide to grade.

Grading expenses are sunk costs and mistakes in spending those dollars cannot be recouped. We've watched people drop silly money for lighted magnifiers, measuring devices, loupes that are powerful enough to identify the sex of a fruit fly. Something as basic as a wrench and duct tape can be just as effective. Perhaps a strange analogy, but experience will outperform bells and whistles every day.

So, you want to spend hundreds on loupes and lights? Magnification is helpful, but consider the fact that most graders are NOT using magnification while grading most cards. Would you use an entire can of Raid to kill a single fly, and then crack out another can the next time you see a fly? Magnification should be used when you're trying to identify certain specifics or are attempting to eliminate something.

If you can't see a flaw with the naked eye, odds are that the grader isn't going to either. I understand PSA's target audience for premium cards.

BGS seems to be in an uncomfortable middle ground at this point. SGC is another complicated one. I know that their niche is vintage cards. I actually like the way their tuxedo slabs look. However, the data tells me that the numbers don't add up.

Even when you factor in that SGC is working with some of the large group submission accounts, you still aren't getting me there on the value. HGA is definitely in play, but getting a spot reserved is so difficult and even then, only being able to send them five cards means that for my sixty cards, I would have to go through the process twelve times.

Who knows how long that will take? I like the look of their slabs and the data that proves the value is there, but until they can ramp up the number of cards they accept, it's not the right play for me at this time. It's especially intriguing that they are so well respected in the comic book and coin communities. That gives me confidence that they could be major players in the space for a long time.

It will be interesting to see how the market changes in the coming months and years. Will the values of slabs from these newer companies continue to hold up over time? Are people simply excited about these newer grading companies and paying a premium until they are no longer new?

I suppose that is possible. But the data is the data, and that's all I have to go on for now. By: Jason Koeppel. The game has changed. Some of the exceptions include low population cards, condition sensitive issues caramel cards , short prints, etc. Because there are so many factors to consider, it is difficult to black and white rules when it comes to deciding which cards to grade. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula, and you should try and familiarize yourself with the market of the cards you may be potentially grading.

However, here are some quick and dirty rules of thumb that I use when deciding which cards to grade. The best advice that can be given when entering into the grading game is to start small.