Advice... To Slab or Not to Slab?

[lampertb]

Thought I'd get the opinions of some more experienced "flippers" out there.

If I have a complete '41 Playball set - all of which is low grade, but about 1/3 of which are trimmed - would it be worth my while to have the entire set slabbed by PSA? My goal of course would be to maximize income while minimizing cost.

What do you think?

Richard

[glchen]

Absolutely not worth it to have the entire set slabbed. The cost of slabbing would eat away most of your sale. It's only worth to slab mid or high grade cards from the set or the high value cards (e.g., Ted Williams, DiMaggio). I would check ebay and compare the price of a sample of cards sold raw to those graded at that particular grade and see if there is enough difference to justify grading it. You'd have to figure that it's roughly $6/card to grade minimum + shipping both ways, so there would have to be at least $8 difference in price to make it worth it.

[ullmandds]

you'd be pissing money away grading a set like that. if anything...have the big name hof'ers graded...and that's it. honestly if they are all trimmed...even the big names...not sure if its worth it to grade any?

[Harford20]

I ran into this same question about 3-4 months ago. I am now about 120 cards into the 1939 Playball set. I do have all the HOF'ers and the very few key cards (Moe Berg, etc.) slabbed (most purchased slabbed, some sent to PSA), but was looking to slab the remainder of my VG-EX to NM set for protection purposes. Even slabbing the remaining 80 or so cards really was not worth it--I could almost buy the remaining 41 cards I need with the money spent to encase the commons I have. With these sets, as the others have stated, protecting the HOF and key cards (and maybe only the BIG ones) is important, but I would certainly recommend with low-grade cards saving your money.

Dave

[Stonepony]

Keep them in a nice binder and enjoy!

[Ronnoco]

Richard,

There isn't much--if any--fiscal benefit to having lower grade/trimmed commons graded/slabbed. I've paid for that mistake before, and failed to break even on the commons. Use what you'd spend having them graded on higher grade and untrimmed cards. I've found that to be a far better use of my cash.

Kevin

[Leon]

Easy question. Common answer. On a per card basis, IF you feel you will get more than the grading fees, by getting it graded, then get it graded. Most of what you described probably wouldn't need to be graded. And this is pretty much the same solution for any card being sold.