Even at $600-$700 it is a pretty impressive price for a modern boxing card. Given the borders and thick glossy stock, I'd rather have an 8 quality card and save the $$ on the slab # if I am buying them already graded.
Here's mine, which I bought raw in a collection and had Beckett slab at the AC National:
Looks perfect to me; I think the grades are nonsense on many of these cards, just random, but I do like having it in a nice holder.
I heard that the issue was about 2500 sets per year from Brown's. So minuscule compared to any baseball issue. That said, the 1997 set is the best one in terms of condition preservation.
The stock, finish and border design lend themselves to higher grade cards, especially as compared to some of the earlier sets, where a 9 is a damned nice card. I am thrilled with these:
