To crack or not to crack...that is the question.

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Posted By: steve yawitz

Having been everything from a PSA Set Registry Kool-Aid drinker to a militant member of the Slab Liberation Army, I'm now content to be somewhere in the middle. I still much prefer the look, feel and, yes, smell of raw cards to graded cards, but for pragmatic reasons I do keep some cards slabbed.

With the exception of major HoFers or difficult fronts or backs, I keep my T206's raw. I figure about 95 percent of my in-progress set is raw. If I ever get to the point where I consider my collection complete - and I'm not sure that I will because I'm one of those dorks who just has to have 31 different Ed Konetchy cards - I'll probably crack 'em all out and put them in plastic pages for ease of viewing.

On the other hand, I've been keeping my non-T206's graded or - gasp! - even submitting the raw ones to SGC. I'm comfortable selling raw cards and I hope people feel comfortable buying raw from me, but I suppose it's generally easier to sell graded cards. Because I limit my non-T206 collection to a set number of cards, I do almost as much selling as buying, so it makes sense to have as large a group of potential buyers/bidders as possible.

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