[bravesfan22]

Originally Posted by Harliduck

You know whats funny...I have literally bought thousands of raw cards off ebay over the years, and have only bought a couple of trimmed cards and have been taken care of each time. I have bought 3 graded cards (and freed two of them, haha) with great success. BUT..my brother, who has bought maybe 5 graded cards got totally taken. He bought a 65 Mantle 4, and once in hand the PSA holder was able to come apart with his fingernail and the card had multiple creases. No way it was a 4, and no way the PSA holder should just "pop" open. He is currently in a battle with the seller and mediating with Ebay. This has been going on for a month. So with that said, by percentage alone, buying raw has completely been overwhelmingly the way to go IMHO and I won't trust anything graded. Just reading through all the posts on this forum has completely turned me off to an obviously flawed, biased system that is too easy to forge. Again...just my opinion and has nothing to do with your obvious AWESOME 55 Aaron. I'll gladly trade my raw one for your graded one...

John,
I am sorry to hear about your brothers luck first and foremost. I mean I would love to own raw cards but like a few others have pointed out, with me just starting out the vintage I dont trust my eye yet and it's still hard to trust anything online. I just make sure to read through sellers feedback and buy from sellers who have sold quite a bit of the type of item im interested in. I have already picked up alot of info on what to look for on raw cards to know if theyve been faked IE: if theres a crease or corner bent up what is the color of card stock its on and how does that relate to the set and things like that. Overall I think ill stick with graded for now, I havent decided if I want to do a full '55 set or just do certain stars and hof's out of the certain sets i like. For now I'm doing Braves hof's (aaron,mathews,spahn) and certain stars(williams,mays,robinson) out of the 55 set.

Thanks for the kind words about the card, I'm glad so many people appreciate it like i do!