[chadeast]

Originally Posted by Kawika

Didn't wish to irritate anybody with my choice of terminology. A decade or so back when I was engaged in scorched earth collecting practices there seemed to be a ton more stuff out there for grabs. T3s routinely showed up on eBay and the pricing was such that 3s and 4s were affordable and not anywhere as stratospheric as they are now. I shied away from the higher graded cards then because they were more expensive and I fancied myself an armpit collector whose main criteria was eye appeal. I loved pinholes in T3s because they kept the price down. There may be a better way to phrase it but it's what I called "collector grade" back in the day. SGC wasn't grading T3s then, just PSA and GAI. I'd have liked to had the whole set slabbed by SGC when they started grading them but it was one of those ideas that never went anywhere. The Matty was graded by GAI - I forget the grade, maybe a four for what it's worth - but I cracked it out of its über-fugly slab. It looked like it was graded by Radio Shack. Really awful.

No irritation here, I just wanted to let you know that IMO you have a really nice set! I love the Matty ungraded. In fact, I've cracked out 17 T3s from SGC slabs so far, as well as 4 PSAs. The SGC slabs are just too cumbersome for me, and frankly I've found that I just like the cards better unslabbed. It's ok to let them breathe Thanks again for sharing.