[MattyC]

Thx, brother. I remember when I first got back into the hobby after college, and fell gradually into the PSA Registry Set thing. I was having ton of fun-- at first-- but then this uncomfortable feeling began to dawn as I found myself buying cards that said GRADE "X" on them...but in my mind and heart I knew they were not as appealing to my eye as some cards in GRADE "X-Y." And the irony was that some of these special lower-grade cards were actually much, much less expensive than the higher graded ones that I felt were visually inferior, at least to my eye.

I also began to have a problem with paying exponential increases in price (i.e., the jump from 9 to 10) for what seemed to me an infinitesimal increase (and sometimes no perceptible increase, or even in some cases a decrease) in card quality. This seemed like a crazy inverse proportion in the economics of higher grades that led me to look at the the broad pool of lower and mid grade examples. I like rare things and I like a challenge, and I began to sense a fun and immensely rewarding challenge in finding the special, rare low or mid grade example that looks as nice as or nicer than a card that would have cost me much more.

All these musings led to the seemingly obvious epiphany that while there is no doubt utility in the TPG slabbing of cards, to embrace both a company's subjective grading standards and their rendered grades as law and gospel is a mistake. I felt that each collector, were he the one to set the standard, might place a much greater emphasis on certain aspects of a card over others, based on his own sense of aesthetics. Sometimes the collector will agree with a TPG's assessment of a given card, or which card is "better" than another, and sometimes the collector will disagree with the TPG. In the end, I believe the collector is always right when it comes to his collection.

If the TPGs always got it right when determining which card is "best," then logically we would never see a 3 sell for more than a 5, etc. And yet time and again we do.

For example, take a 9 that someone subsequently bumps to a 10. When the card was in the 9 holder, let's say a collector sees it and likes it, but is conflicted: on one hand he wants "the best" card, yet his eyes are telling him one thing while the stickers say another. Now if the collector lets the latter guide him, he winds up paying say $10,000 for the 10. Meanwhile, let's posit that another collector follows his eye, buys the 9 for $250, and subsequently reviews it and it becomes a 10. Now, with the two cards in the same numerical yet subjectively assigned grade (the TPGs are very upfront in stating what they render is merely an opinion), anyone can see the newer-minted 10 in this hypothetical is the superior specimen. And yet it was the same card whether it said 8, 9, or 10 on the sticker.

So once I unshackled myself from thinking the best card was necessarily the highest graded, I freed myself to seek the most beautiful card to my own eye, and also can save an enormous amount of money in the process-- which I would of course spend on more cards, LOL.

For example, for the price of a single card I owned in PSA 8, which I sold, I was able to purchase all of the cards I've posted on this month's thread, and even added a replacement of the card I sold that is three grades lower yet looks better to me (bolder color and better centering than the 8). I find myself constantly "upgrading" to special specimens of lower graded cards and thereby expanding my collection to include images I always loved but never had. But end of the day this is just how I approach cards and it's all about whatever works for each person.