Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil68
I can't tell you what to do, but I can say that cards that PSA would deem a "5" that are centered present beautifully and have a slightly handled, beautiful appearance. I am happy to buy them raw. It seems Greg Morris brings higher prices for raw cards than graded examples--so he's really not a great option on-line. Great seller, but a card that sells routinely for 25 bucks in a holder sells for 40 raw. I'll save the $15 and break out the saw! But he's the only guy I find in that position. Most cards raw are affordable. Long-term you'll want centered cards with clean images. They are much easier to re-sell if you need to.
Question for you...are you a numbers guy? Meaning, are you cool with a set that ranges from "3"s to "8's" ? Some guys (me included) don't like such a wide condition range. I have found it's inevitable with 52's. The high numbers make NM and better cards awfully hard to assemble without selling your house.
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I really appreciate all of the input everyone.
As far as what Phil said here: I'll be looking for low grade (w/o anything horribly damaged, bad stains/tape/writing on front, etc) to borderline mid-grade, so basically grade 1.5 to 4-5. Though my Feller is a slabbed 5.5, so I might have to bang a corner on it to keep things uniform
Never plan on selling these parts of my collection or upgrading anything I get, so will be taking advantage of that lack of resale value for 85/15ish type centering when possible to lower cost.
It will all be about getting the best deal on anything within those grades while compiling a set that always looks better than beaters, regardless of raw or graded.
I agree that a lot of the Greg Morris raw cards sell at the top of the market, but I've found that occasionally you can find the commons, semi-stars, and even low demand HOFers/bigger names (Ashburn, Red, Roberts, etc) that you need at a very useable price. That was actually where I bought the Hodges yesterday, and that was just before I'd even decided to build the set (at the time, just liked the idea of getting a clean grade 4-5 '52 T card of someone like that for a big discount). So I will still attempt to find anything that falls through the cracks in his auctions.
But getting good deals anywhere on the top names and high numbers will naturally be very difficult, especially in the current market.