Posted By:
Jeff LichtmanNixon, chill a bit. We all get your point: collecting should be a pure endeavor and not driven by money, etc. I don't know about the rest of the people on this board, but I've never purchased a card in my life with the thought of flipping it for a profit--or ever selling it in my lifetime. I am self-employed in a field far from card collecting. Nevertheless, I dare say that my personal collection is probably worth as much as anyone's on this board. I rarely buy graded cards if they're from the 50s on because I can usually tell on ebay if a card is damaged. If I can't see the card well enough, I'll just take a pass. Nevertheless, I've spent four figures on a number of cards (T206s, etc.) and I'll be damned if I'm going to buy it raw. The cleverness of the thieves on ebay and elsewhere make it very difficult to determine in a scan if a card has been tampered with. And with an objective third party grading company (except Pro of course), I at least have a better chance of knowing that I'm not throwing money down a rat hole. As for getting my personal cards graded, I have little interest as I will never sell my collection. But at age 38, I won't live forever and I would like to leave my collection to my kids in good shape. Therefore, occasionally I will get a very expensive card graded that I purchased raw just to protect it for future generations who may not be as insane as I am about the hobby. Your argument about the companies simply assigning numbers to cardboard has merit; however, you should also go to the bank and complain to the tellers about why your pile of bills with 1s on them are worth less than the ones assigned with the number 100; after all, it's just the same paper...