Your Collecting Thoughts on Grading Companies
 

I know grading companies have been discussed ad nauseam. Not really looking for pros and cons type discussion. What I am curious on is your own personal collecting habits. Only PSA? Only SGC? Mix them up and only care about the card? I thought I only cared about the card but lately it has been bugging me to have different size/type/color slabs in my collection. Trying to get over this and wondering what others think. If you do have a mixture how do store and organize them? All together? By date and set? Separate by grading company? My OCD is getting to me on this. Only a year into my vintage collecting and trying to align on a strategy. Thanks for sharing your approach.


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I only have a few graded cards in my collection. About half are Beckett and half are SGC. Don't like PSA. Never have, never will.

Most of my graded cards are in a display case. I'm a binder/set guy and the graded cards are in 4 pocket pages in the front of the binder in card number order.

Mike

I have a mix, but I do wish they were all the same company, just to look nicer. But ultimately it's about the card, not the holder.

I like all my pre-war in sgc holders, post war looks better in Psa holders but I have a mix of both in my post war.

My spreadsheet tells me I have 810 graded cards. 809 of them are PSA. I have one Beckett...just couldn't leave it there for the price. I prefer to stick with PSA for consistency/resale value, but if the price is right, I'll buy the card not the holder for sure. In fact, I have a bid in right now on a lot of 9 graded cards from a non-PSA grading company. We'll see if the bid holds!

I have ~125 graded cards.
- 80% PSA
- 20% SGC
- No other companies right now...not because I'm opposed to them. For what I collect (mostly 50s-70s baseball), I just don't see very many CSG and Beckett.

Like it or not, PSA is king of the market. Both in terms of number of cards out there and resale value. I don't focus on resale value, since I'm a collector-first. Any card I purchase I generally intend to own for a long time.

FWIW, I think the newer SGC holder (tuxedo) does an excellent job of presenting cards of almost any era.

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A mix
 

I have a Roberto Clemente master registry set that is all PSA (except a 1957 Salesman sample panel that I have no interest in crossing for a PSA A instead of an SGC A)
The rest of my collection is a mix of PSA and SGC and raw. Lower value cards I will usually get raw. "Keys" I will generally get graded. PSA or SGC for prewar and mostly PSA for post war (with some exceptions).

I've only flirted with graded cards in the past, and have popped more than I can count through the years. Like many here, I'm a binder raw type collector guy. I do however have a new interest in grading my 50's stars...52-56, only the oversized. Have had fun submitting. I have around 50 graded now, all SGC. I do have a couple of PSA's laying around but will either pop those or sell/trade them. Can't stand PSA's cheap looking slabs. Definitely an OCD type collector, all MUST be the same and SGC is my choice.

But to answer the question...yes, one company only here. Love the tuxedo...and not for resale value, could care less.

Open door policy for me. Bring 'em all in, as I'm fine with any and all TPG slabs. Of course, if I'm purchasing, the prices have to be in line with the respective differences in value for the big 3 or 4 TPGs.

I really like this approach for the value it allows when going outside of PSA, or SGC after the mid sixties. How do you organize your collection with all the different slabs?


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I have also been submitting some of my own and only to SGC due to the cost. The tux has really grown on me. Now I am in a bind because some of the raw cards I have submitted to SGC I don’t want to get rid of. I’ve made some nice pickups of PSA’s that I don’t want to trade or sell. But my OCD is really acting up on the different slabs. Lol


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Here is another piece of the puzzle for me. I do like buying raw occasionally also. That adds another element. Wondering if I just want to buy graded from one company so everything is the same. But then that excludes the raw stuff which I don’t want to do either. Lol


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Wow~!
 

Nice Aaron! :)

PSA and SGC are the two I target. I will say that CSG is growing on me. I have a few modern CSG cards and I'm very impressed with their crystal-clear holders. The new flip design is much improved over their original.

Mine are mixed. I even have SCD (red labels), and CSG is growing on me.

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For my '54 set, I have 98% of my cards in PSA holders and from here on out it'll be PSA only for any 50's builds.

I worked in a movie theater as my first real job back in high school and when the early pokemon movies came out they gave out cards the opening weekend. I don't know why but I grabbed a handful from each movie, held on to them for the last 20 years and low and behold they have some serious value now. Not sure who I'll send them to but CSG seems to be growing market share on these so I may try them. Their grading system seems to be very strict which I prefer.

Personally prefer PSA for post-war vintage but those new SGC slabs are quite nice and they are getting tougher on their grading finally. I'd stay away from old label SCG post war cards, they are over graded by 1-1.5.

Being based in the UK submitting raw cards for grading is just too big a pain, but I do buy graded cards from time to time. Any of the big 4 are welcome in my collection.

Because I'm buying for my PC, the card is the most important thing for me - not the holder. That means I can pick up relative bargains in SGC, BVG or CSA holders

Given a choice though, I have a preference for SGC especially for Pre-1970.

My pre-war are mostly SGC, and post-war are a mix of SGC/PSA up until the 1980's, then it's all PSA from there on out. I have a handful of BGS, but nothing major. I really like the new SGC slabs, they look super sharp with a lot of cards and I'm very impressed with their customer service. PSA is pretty classic and is great for resale, but I with the majority of people here in that I don't typically tend to resell unless I have to or something better catches my eye. If we are talking pre-1980 then I don't really care if it's PSA or SGC, whatever has the nicer card for the best price, the inconsistencies in looks of the slabs don't bother me.

I suppose it's fair to say I have a love-hate relationship with grading over the past 5 years or so. I love a properly graded card in a clean slab, but I hate issues / errors in the grading process and scratched, dirty slabs. If I like the slab once I get it in hand (50% chance?) I will leave the card slabbed, but I've busted dozens upon dozens of them in the recent past too.

Anymore grading is very much just an option for me, certainly not a hard requirment. I like to buy graded online if I cannot evaluate the card in hand first, just to make sure I'm in the ballpark with expectations once the card arrives - and especially if it's over like $100 in value. I will usually stick with PSA and SGC when buying online. I've submitted on rare occasions in the past, but only to SGC - I've never met the patience criteria for PSA turn times or really agreed with their pricing.

I will say even with SGC, the rampant inconsistency lately is just a huge turnoff for me - they recently graded the same '65 Mantle both a 5 and then a 6.5 a few months apart. Anymore I really just prefer to buy raw vintage at the LCS. I learned to grade almost 30 years ago. The allure of the "official" holder in light of how many mistakes even the reputable graders still make I guess has just mostly worn off for me.

I listened to a podcast the other day where they presented statistics on a study where they resubmitted the same cards to the same companies multiple times. 45% of the time the card came back as a higher grade. The results of the study put a really bad taste in my mouth for grading. I recently received my first ever round of grading back from SGC and I got hammered. Every one of the cards came back 1-2 grades lower than I expected. Really disappointed. All raw for me from now on except the big cards or grade sensitive cards. Grading feels way overused and mostly not necessary in the under $300 world that I play in.


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Yep. Even 3 decades into professional grading, so much of the actual service remains a gimmick. A scale that at the end of the day is tied to eye appeal can never be anything more than subjective, no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise. In the mostly midgrade vintage world I play in, I could submit the same "EX" raw card 10 times, and sometimes it would get a 5, sometimes it would get a 6, and sometimes it might get a 4. There might be the outlier where it gets a 3 or a 1 because of something a grader thought they saw only under magnification. Bottom line - you know the "range" of your raw cards and which ones are nicer than others, and even with the nicer ones what their micro flaws might be. These things don't change. But if you play the slab game, the grade can and often will. I'm just at a point in my collecting career where I would rather focus on the card only and appreciate it for what it is. This is why I don't sweat grading anymore. For protection if I buy graded online, I don't focus on the grade. I have some 5's nicer than other 6's, and some 6's that look better than 7's. It's just the reality of how the game works in practice.