Buy the card, not the grade - stories

[leaflover]

I have owned the Drysdale PD for 10 years and have not found the defect.
Hegan on the other hand has no PD or OF qualifier. If I had opened Leaf
packs in 1948 half of them would have gone in the trash.

[Peter_Spaeth]

.Maybe it's the print specks, but in hand they are barely visible.

[jb67]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

.Maybe it's the print specks, but in hand they are barely visible.

Wow!! Best looking 7 I have seen.

[MikeGarcia]

About the Drysdale , in my eyes , if the ''snow'' is obvious immediately upon first glance , then at the "8" level it gets a PD . It is visible in your scan , but maybe not so bad in hand ?

..

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by leaflover

I have owned the Drysdale PD for 10 years and have not found the defect.

The Drysdale looks like it has some light print snow to the left...but that could just be the scan. More proof of PSA's inconsistency Yawn...

[MarcosCards]

Wow, this is an excellent thread. Although enlightening, it is also a frustrating and discouraging commentary on the current state of third party grading.

I still consider myself a newbie on this forum. After posting photos of my childhood card collection (1960s Topps) last year, some of you Net54baseball veterans strongly suggested that I submit my star cards to PSA for grading. I was going to - but life got busy - and so I put it off. Maybe it was for the best. I think I can enjoy my cards just fine without them being encased in hard plastic.
Marcos

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by MarcosCards

I think I can enjoy my cards just fine without them being encased in hard plastic.
Marcos

And there is nothing wrong with doing precisely that. Life was a lot simpler with my collection as a kid when the cards just were what they were and didn't have judgment passed and hanging over them in a slab. I know in my day I cherished quite a few lower grade vintage cards and thought a lot less about grading, or at least the minutiae that goes into it. A card was either in pretty good shape...or it wasn't. Grading today obviously has become a subculture unto itself. I find TPG's useful when buying cards that I can't hold in my hands first (i.e. 99% of the time...), and yes if there is a card that really pops in a slab that can be nice sometimes as well - but it's certainly not a hard requirement for me to enjoy whatever baseball card is in question. Just this weekend I busted out a not-very-cheap 1956 Topps card from a BVG slab - not because I disagreed with the grade, but because there was lint or dust or something trapped between the inner sleeve and the hard plastic that made it look like there was print snow on the player's face. Voila, problem solved and now I have a much nicer looking card. If I'm not immediately planning to try to flip a card (that's rare for me anyway) I'll often liberate it from it's slab over something minor like that. I've always been that way.

[BLongley]

I saw this on eBay the other week and had to grab it... in hand there is light corner wear and a little ding on the top boarder you can only see at the right angle...but definitely the best PSA 5 I’ve owned... it’s even better centered than the PSA 8 I used to have...

And none of you can probably see this because I seem to have trouble getting normal sized scans

[Sportscards1086]

Got this today in a trade/cash deal...

[KendallCat]

Picked up this Ryan about 2 years ago and cannot figure why it is not an 8/8.5. Have looked with a loupe several times and nothing. No reason to buy an 8 when it appears this one looks like one but for $700.

The 58 Mantle is about as close to centered as I have been able to find and I usually don’t buy 7’s.