[raulus]

Seems like a confluence of factors at play here.

Certainly the relative affordability of raw is a major factor. As others have noted, opportunism can also be a factor, with a plan to flip the raw pieces into highly graded slabs and turn a quick profit.

The OP mentioned dealers clamoring for raw. My sense is that when it comes to dealers, there’s a better opportunity to acquire raw cards at a reasonable price, and retail them with enough margin to continue to stay in business. With graded cards, the market is a bit different, simply because that market tends to operate more efficiently in many ways, making it a bit more difficult for a dealer to really have a solid margin short of resorting to museum pricing.

Finally, the OP mentioned shows. For buyers, this provides an opportunity to personally inspect the merchandise prior to buying, just to evaluate whether it’s legit and unaltered (at least in the opinion of the buyer), and whether the condition meets the buyer’s needs. Online sales do not afford this same luxury for personal inspection. As we have seen recently, even online AH scans don’t always convey every defect.

Of course, you also have some substantial portion of our world that just plain prefers raw. Some of that may be due to nostalgia, economics, disillusionment with the TPGs, aesthetics, weight, or even confidence in our abilities to perform our own evaluation without assistance from some assumedly undertrained grader wearing green eye shades in far off places.

As the WSJ headline would say, Raw is having a moment!