Posted By:
T206Collector1) SGC will not grade a sealed Topps buyback -- they will release and seal.
2) I've bought 2 in my day. A very nice Herzog Boston and a rather un-nice Tinker bat off shoulder/swinging -- with back damage and more than one crease. I acquired the Tinker in a lot of other pre-war cards for what really was a song. I had SGC free the Herzog -- it went into an SGC 50 holder, and I sold it, since it was a double -- getting much more than I paid for the Topps version.
However, sealed Topps HOFers are sought after by some collectors (or at least were about a year ago). So, I put the Tinker on ebay with a BIN of $400. It sold to one of those buyback collectors, and I used the funds to buy a bunch of T206 cards, including an SGC 40 Tinker in much better condition than the Topps Tinker.
So there are a number of strategies to consider playing here...