Quote:
Originally Posted by MCoxon
Also, if you look at old Beckett guides, it would have "percent discount from mint" for various grades, and my recollection that Ex-Mt might have been at 75% of value of mint, whereas now, I notice almost a doubling at every PSA number grade for 1950s cards, so that a PSA 9 price (mint) would dwarf a PSA 6 in price.l
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Beckett ranges (& don't get me started on how some people always thought the left column was for NM and the right was VG...) were stated to be for NM cards for pre-1980. If you had 1950's cards that were truly better than NM (again, as subjective as this is today, it was even crazier what people thought back in the 80's) then that was some range 100% or more of "book" value based on what the card was. Clearly the percentage for Mickey Mantle was higher using this line of thinking than Mickey Vernon.
I remember one case where a dealer actually pulled this on me - wanting more $ for a card because it was in "better than" NM condition. The term NM-MT was not yet en vogue, and it certainly was not associated with the number 8. But the point I believe was the same. The card in question was a 1958 Topps Yogi Berra, which I bought because it was so nice, but paid wayyyyy too much for by today's standards. It was nice, but may have been a PSA 6 today because of the centering. I'm not a centering freak. I don't generally like worse than 80/20 up to miscut cards (there are some rare exceptions), but have a tolerance for it beyond that. Today as back then, if my first impression of a card is that the centering is acceptable, I move on and then generally don't consider it again - I just admire the card. Then sometime later someone will be all like "Well that's nice except for the 65/35..." and I'll be dumbfounded. I digress - another large point to be made is that before professional grading - many, many EX-MT or so vintage cards were routinely described as NM to Gem Mint by dealers who sold through the mail - and in the 1980's and earlier, this was often done sans any pictures. I imagine that many, many off-centered "mint" cards were sold at mint prices back in the day.