Crossover for Set Registery - Thoughts?
 

As I have begun my journey in collecting vintage cards, I have come to an issue that I'm sure others have had to think about or deal with and that is if I should crossover cards in order to register my future sets with PSA and/or SGC.

As I collect towards the completion of a set I'm never worried about if the card(s) I'm purchasing are PSA or SGC, I look for the specific grades that I'm collecting and purchase accordingly. But in the future, when I have completed a set it would be nice, I think, to register it but I will have a mix of PSA and SGC. I plan on crossing over to which ever holds a majority of the cards in that particular set to minimize the costs in crossing over.

Anyone have thoughts, comments or suggestions on this?

When I first started collecting T206 (about 6.5 years ago) I purchased both PSA & SGC as well as some raw cards. Whatever I could get my hands on at the grade that I was collecting.

After about 3 or 4 months, I decided that I wanted to only collect SGC because I wanted to display my cards and I liked the look of the SGC holder much better. I also liked their grading of cards.

So, by that time I probably had about 6 PSA cards in my collection. Over the years, I sold one of those PSA cards and in at least 2 different submissions, I tried to cross over the remaining 5 PSA graded cards. Only 1 of those 5 PSA cards actually crossed over to SGC in the same grade.........20% success rate with crossing from PSA to SGC. Now, I know that isn't a high number of submissions to totally get an accurate picture, but that is my experience.

So, back to your question, if you do want to go one way or the other (PSA or SGC), the sooner you decide to do it the better for you. Crossing over from one to the other is never a guarantee of success, never.

You may buy a PSA6 Hall of Famer for a lot of money and then try to cross it to SGC without success. Now you may take a loss on selling that PSA6 Hall of Famer and then pay more to get it in SGC down the road, losing money for yourself in the long run.

One thought
 

If I owned SGC or PSA, I would welcome your crossover business. That is why registries exist. Feed your ego and their pockets.

As a collector, I would consider it ridiculous. If you want a registry set, buy the cards in the holder you want to begin with. Bastard sets with cards in different slabs and even raw cards are fine with me. You might call me a mutt collector, but I have a little left over to buy more cards at the end of the day.

you might
 

Unless you want to compete on one of the registries, which some folks seem to enjoy, then I suggest having a site to scan your cards to. That way you don't have to spend money on crossing them over. Whatever makes you happy though is what you should do.

I still don't understand the set registry. who cares? People go from collecting the cards to collecting numbers. if people want to collect numbers, I can sell them the number 5, and the number 7, and the number 1, but hurry someone is contemplating buying the number 5 this afternoon.

It's a way for the card companies to make more money, and puts the collector in an endless quest to buy more expensive cards and /or submit them again and again to the same companies to get the "number" they are looking for.

What if the card was blank and just had a big number 8 on it and you kept submitting it to psa until you got the coveted Ted Williams grade on it? Right not it is only an Al Kaline, but keep submitting it to PSA and they might bump it up to Williams.

Insanity. People hung up on numbers. Then they have a ceremony at the end of the year and pat themselves on the back, and usually the multi-millionaires get most of the awards and so what? If I had millions I could put together a near perfect set too in pretty short order. The Dmitri Young collection is for sale and if someone bought it ALL what a collector they would be, huh? It would put them at the top of some registry and they could get a prize and get in the PSA newsletter. Meanwhile the shlub who has been carefully collecting a set for decades under a constrained budget and isn't spending a fortune slabbing them all is some putz, huh? He's not at the top of some chest puffing registry that you could buy your way to the top if you had enough money. I have nothing against wealthy people by the way, I like money. But the registry isn't a fair playing field as far as putting the time in over the years, and simply buying your way on.


They want the mid range collectors to join the registry because they will never be at the top, they will always be behind the wealthiest collectors, but they will try like heck to buy a card that is a little more expensive, that they have to send to psa to get it on their registry, then their registry number will bump up a little bit, and it keeps them hooked to eternally playing the "collecting a number" game.

I collect cards.

I appreciate the feedback that has been posted already!

Just from reading the first few replies, I'm already rethinking my strategy. I do prefer SGC graded cards but I don't want to restrict myself to collecting only SGC, I could unknowling be passing on a great PSA graded deal in the future...as the saying goes, buy the card and not the holder.

I think my strategy has morphed into buying the cards that meet my condition requirement regardless of the holder and then in the future look to trade or turn-over any PSAs when I am able to find a comparable SGCs.

I'm still new to the boards here, so I apprectiate any and all feedback. I'm enjoying my experience here and learning all that I can.

I have sets w/ PSA & SGC and use both their registries and it has nothing to do w/ numbers or competition.
Its like having an online checklist of what you have and what you need and both allow scans to be added.
So its pretty handy when you are on the road and want to view your collection.
I also like the uniformity of the slabs. And believe me I won't cash in my $50 PSA-8 for a $1000 PSA-9.
Not all registry participants think in those terms.

I agree Jay.

When I start down the road of collecting a set, I know my budget, I know what the cards in each grade are approximately worth and I set out to collect a grade that I can reasonably complete the set in, given my collecting budget. I would never blow my budget just to upgrade a single card from a 7 to an 8…just so I can say I have an 8, that’s not how I collect.

I like the benefits of tracking my set online, and I find the population reports to be a little helpful as well as I can see situations where I will settle for lower grade cards that are difficult to find, or are low in population as I know they sometimes tend to demand a premium.

Just think with out PSA and SGC we would be back selling near mint-mint cards to dealers for vg-ex money as we would be back at the mercy of the card dealers. And buy the way when you sell your slabbed cards and you will or a relative will eventually you will receive more money for them. I can just see the expression on a card dealers face when you bring him raw to sell to them. first question why are cards raw have they been trimmed? second did you try to have them graded yet? and so on and so on you get what im saying. Graded cards when you go to sell you will receive more money.

Different Perspective
 

As Frank pointed out, the bastard set is the format of most all of my sets. I do keep several (approx 10 sets--all Master sets for players) in the PSA registry, but I do so for a completely different reason than has been suggested.

"Yes" the use as an online checklist is nice, and "yes" now with PSA you can even add in the SGC graded cards into the checklist (but it will not affect your registry scoring).

The main reason I have the 10 PSA sets in the registry is to see how many more cards I can add to the registry that have not been noted/found/graded before. To me, I am adding to the history of that player by showing that there are many more cards out there than the typical t-series/e-series/topps etc. cards that are listed in most sets. This is what drives me to the set registry--not getting a PSA 8 over my PSA 5, but getting new cards added to the list, taking that player registry from 100 cards to 125 cards. My goal is purely set completion with whoever previously graded the card or if not graded at all.

Dave

Set Registeries can be fun but don't let them distract you from your goal of collecting a nice set. When you only have a handful of cards, you tend to want them all graded by the same company. I felt that way but as my collection got larger, who graded the card, didn't really matter, as long as it was PSA, SGC, and sometimes BVG, if the card looked good, I welcomed it into my set. I sometimes get the need to still crossover my cards but everytime I figure out how much its gonna cost, usually in the thousands, I think about how many more cards I could add to my set with that money instead. I sometimes will figure out where I would rank in either registry if all my cards were graded by the same company. Some simple multiplying and dividing can tell you basically where you would rank. By knowing this, you can decide if its worth the time and money to crossover.

Hi Dave,

Never heard of this before...how does it work? I went on the PSA Registry and could not find any reference to it. Thanks!

Cheers,
Blair

Hi Blair, Just go to "My Set Registry" and then "Add Inventory". Its at the bottom of the page.

Adding Non-PSA Cards to PSA Inventory
 

For adding any other Company or Raw card just for documenting you have the card, you simply go under "Add Inventory" in the "My Set Registry" section and at the very bottom you can enter any card (Add non-PSA item) into "My Inventory" (graded or not). These cards then show on your overall inventory, but not in the specific Master Set. For me, I then just make a notation in my player Master Set that I have such-and such card, SGC 40 etc. in the comments section at the bottom. As mentioned before, this gives me an inventory list that I can use when away from my home computer.

There may be a way to get the non-PSA card listed to the Registry, but have not found it yet.

Ronnie beat me to it. I type slow.

Dave

Dave, Your explanation was much better than mine.:cool:

I've used the Registries, but never for competitive purposes and have always purchased cards based on value rather than the holder. My T206 set can be seen in the PSA registry, the SGC registry and the BVG registry all under the TOBACCO ROAD name. The remainder of that set is in my Raw Meat registry.

Or you can see the whole bastard together at Collector Focus, along with other sets in multiple holder types.

BVG as well as PSA will allow entry of slabbed and raw cards from other companies, if you want to keep your inventory in that way. I prefer to keep 17 different spreadsheets on my laptop (saved on my cloud) to record, date of purchase, price, card type, back type, grading company, grade, where I have it stashed, serial number, etc, etc, etc.

A lot of good points but I'd like to throw in one more:
Even if you have a set which is 1/2 PSA and 1/2 SGC, it doesn't hurt to register them so you will have a record of your cards and the certification numbers in case of theft.

i just sign up for the SGC register. i would like to add my t206 set.

can i add my psa and bgs card to the sgc registry ???

if yes how ?

I have always wondered why a non-grader hasn't created their own registry which would accept either PSA or SGC (Beckett?) graded cards in order to accomodate a mixed graded set. IFor years, I have thought that was going to be the next evolution of VCP or even Net 54, but I was wrong.

Mixed registry brainstorming
 

I'd love to see it too, and would be willing to work on it. But I am not savvy enough to program it. Data entry would have to be on an individual basis. Verification of graded cards on the honor system??? Maybe.
Importing data from existing registries to combine them would probably not be accepted by PSA, SGC and BVG, and if it could happen, everyone would have to maintain two or more registries. My Monster set is 17% raw. We could post scans and let the group evaluate and grade the raw cards. Oh my this is getting complicated, but if there is some computer know how out there and interested parties to develop the ground rules, it could happen.

Having said all this, having a #1 or #2 rated Registry Set has never been nor will never be an aspiration of mine. Combining all the grades from three companies my spreadsheets tell me that my set is roughly a 3.5. My raw cards if graded would drag that number a bit lower. For now that knowledge is good enough for me.

I remember talking about this a few months back and the main problem was how to deal with the raw cards. How do you prove you own the card. At least with graded cards, the serial number can be verified and also flagged if a duplicate number was entered into someones collection.