O/T (but not really) - do you care about scratches on your slabs?

[D. Bergin]

I don't have very many slabs, and the ones I've had, I've mostly sold off, but yeah, it's irritating when a badly scratched slab shows up.

If you have a piece of art framed, and it comes back to you from the frame shop with a big gauge down the middle of the glass or plexi front, you're going to be annoyed as hell. Same as if you buy a piece of artwork already framed and weren't told or shown the flaws in the frame.

Now you're giving me a job and an expense, to make it look presentable again.

That's basically what slabs are for a lot of people. They're little frames for your cards that have a grading designation on them.

Now, if your sole intention is to free the card from the slab...of course you don't care, and I understand that.

Do I think a card should get kicked back for authenticity issues because of a scratched slab? Of course not. That's stupid unless it's badly cracked and the buyer is given a chance to decide whether they want it anyways.

I don't understand when grading companies and sellers ship slabs out without putting a little graded card sleeve on them. Shit, they cost like a nickel apiece. I won a few modern slabbed basketball cards on Ebay a couple years ago when I was going through a phase LOL...maybe $50-60 cards, and they were thrown in a little bubble envelope without being sleeved and by the time they got to me, they looked like special lightning bolt variant slabs. I gotta think a simple sleeve would have held them together better.

[bmattioli]

Another money grab..

[CardPadre]

Finally, an important poll.

[bnorth]

I hate scratched up slabs. Worst part is my favorite slabs are SGC and I swear you can scratch one by looking at it too hard. When I collected slabs the first thing I did was put them in a sleeve when I got them.

[seablaster]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Now you're giving me a job and an expense, to make it look presentable again.

This.

The TPG slab may be with any card for a lengthy although indeterminate time frame. Aside from the cost of having a card reholdered, gone are the $5 reholder days, there is the real potential risk that the card gets damaged during the process.

Unless you're planning on cracking the card out, it's advisable to be gentle with them and use sleeves. It's not about being a slab collector...it's being careful with something that you value.

[bocca001]

I do not believe that voting yes means you are a slab collector. For me, it just means I want things to look nice if I have them displayed. I don't care all that much if a card I have is slabbed or not and have cracked many slabs, but I do have some more valuable cards in slabs on display. A notable scratch just would not look very nice for something displayed. That's very different than collecting slabs.

[packs]

No I would never care if there was a small scratch on some random area of my slab. If there are criss crosses over the face of the card and it obscures the view of the card, yes that would bother me. But I would never not buy a card because there was an errant scratch on the slab.

I also think it depends on what level card is involved. I’d buy a 52 Mantle in a scratched slab. At that level I don’t care if I have to reholder it. Is there really anyone in the world who would let a deal for a Van Gogh fall apart because they had to have it reframed?

[ullmandds]

The pole is too general for me to answer. As many have said disfiguring scratches or gouges would definitely turn me off on a more expensive yet common card. If the card were rare or something I had to have it would not bother me from a standpoint of purchase, but I may choose to re-suit it down the road even though I hate slabs. It's more about liquidity for me.