Grading Companies (Overview & Opinions)

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

It's fashionable to complain about the grading companies, however, the reputable ones simply protect you from fraud. I never bought a slabbed card until after I spent nearly a thousand bucks on a NM 56 Mantle and learned after submitting it to PSA that it was trimmed. Since most of us buy our cards from ebay there is limited ability to look the cards over prior to buying them. In addition, about 90% of ebay sellers overgrade their cards. Maybe one of ten advertised as NM could ever come back as a PSA 7. Unless your money means nothing to you, it makes no sense to spend a lot of money on an ungraded card. If everyone was honest, I would rather have ungraded cards so that I could enjoy them more instead of storing a bunch of hard plastic slabs. Unfortunately, sometimes it rains, terrorists blow themselves up and the world isn't perfect. Until we fix all these problems, I'll never spend a decent amount of money on an ungraded card again.