If this topic has been discussed, I apologize. I've often wandered about this. Should sellers command a premium when offering a "complete" set of Autograph, Costume, sketch, inserts or promo cards which exist for a specific release or not?

For example, there is a seller on Ebay right now selling individual cards, from a possible total set of 30, that belong to one of the above listed categories for a specific amount each . However, that seller has also listed a complete set of the 30 "hard to find" cards, which he explains he only found one at a time and took him 3 years to amass.

As a result, he wants about double for the full set as compared to what he is willing to sell the individual cards for, BECAUSE he says it is extremely difficult to put one together.

So, Should complete sets command a premium when sold ? How much more(percentage wise), if at all, are you willing to pay to buy that complete set? What about a set that's missing 1 or 2 out of 30 cards?

Also, although I'm not an advocate of grading non sports cards, I have noticed that one person's interpretation of NEAR MINT/MINT sometimes is clearly different from another's. What do you consider to be a near mint/mint card and what are your expectations when you are considering purchasing a card whose description is near mint/mint?

A full set of something should always demand a premium, the seller had to put all the work and expense in to get a full set together.

Individual cards from a set are just odds and can be sold for whatever you think you can get.

As the interpretation of a cards grade is so open to question i just ignore it. I expect the card to be in good shape unless the seller has stated otherwise, what somebody would grade it at is of no intrest to me.

Albert

I can't offer much in the way of answering your questions but also being a collector of Cigarette Cards issued before 1939 and Trade Cards prior to 1970 I have become accustomed to having the end cards of base sets attracting a larger price when bought as single cards in some cases the price hike can be three times that of other base cards.

regards

John

The convenience of getting a full set of anything should make it worth more. Someone has done all the work for you.

I never have put any stock in grading for what I was likely to collect. Only rare vintage cards, other extremely high value cards or cards that have a history of counterfeiting should be considered good candidates for grading. And that's only if you know it will get a 9 or better and you expect to try to sell it down the line.

Otherwise, unless a card manufactured within the last ten years has been badly mishandled, card condition is almost always acceptable to the average collector who wants it. The differences between near-mint, mint, pristine. Black Label, or whatever else you want to call a card that grades 9 and above are very slight. There are value jumps that go on between those grades that are just silly when the "reduction" gets pointed out.

So I couldn't care less about cards slabbed solely to make them seem more valuable than the ungraded cards. We all have eyes and know what a nice card looks like. Nice isn't a grade either.

Hi Promoking,

I've read the comments to your questions. I think there should be a premium for a complete set but I disagree about the buyer taking into consideration the work the seller put into it. The seller could have run into a great bargain at a flea market or happened to run into an ex-employee who was unloading his stash at a garage sale in a binder of other stuff. Who knows how hard it really was for him to get.

Even if you believe the story that it took him three years of escaping booby traps and Nazis to get the set, the buyer should have his/her own assessment of how hard it is to put that set together. Three years is not that long especially for a 30-card set. I wish some of my sets would take only three years to complete. If you're not that familiar with the availability of the set over the years, you can take the seller's word for it. It boils down to how you value the set - how it ranks in difficulty to complete against others you've bought and sold.

Let's say the singles are $3-5 each but he wants $10 each for the whole set which would be $300 instead of $90-150. If it's a set I've been hunting for years, knowing how hard it is to find singles, and not having seen a set for sale in many years, and I have the extra money, I'd do the $300. You can see if he'd take $250 and tell him you need the extra $50 to buy masks, gloves, and Lysol.

I have bought incomplete sets before. It's nice to get a sample. You can get great deals on partial sets that others have given up on. I once bought one lot that had the full set of the Tenchi Muyo Collection foil cards, part of a set of Tenchi Muyo Universe foil cards and part of a set of The Wanderers: El Hazard foil cards from the VHS and laserdisc releases. It was a great deal (maybe $15-20 total). Those cards can go for $10 each or more. Some sellers want $50 or more each but they aren't worth that in my opinion. It won't be easy to complete those, finding the ones I'm missing in decent condition. I'm content to wait for a good deal and maybe splurge on a couple of cards as I get close.

To me NM/MT means essentially complete cards. There can be a "white corner" but no crease nor other clear wear at a corner. There might be a couple of minor nicks along the edges or a minor surface dent/scratch. There cannot be any "touch-ups" (color fill-in nor trimming) If I need a loupe to see those kinds of imperfections, then I would say the condition is NM/MT. If the cards are that nice, then the set is worth the price but he shouldn't charge the maximum NM/MT price for a set with some EX cards. If maybe just 2-3 cards are a little beat-up, I might still do it, but I would push harder for a discount to the point that those get thrown into the deal. I've bought 90's sets with several less- than-NM cards but then the price was nice too.

Jess

In terms of the complete set, for me I don't know that I care if there was a lot of work done, a little work done or if it all simply came out of one box. The fact is, if I can get it all in one shot then that's worth some sort of premium to me. Now just how much of a premium is involved is when I start figuring out how much work was done.

Another factor for more recent cards is that the premium products may require multiple boxes to complete anything. In that case the bulk buyers compiling sets have to get a premium because they are putting more money into it. Again the same question, how much of a premium? I think the market has shown in a number of examples now that card collectors won't pay more than a certain amount for any premium sets. So the sky is not the limit.

As regards NM cards, I think its important to differentiate between cards that are pre-2000 and ones post-2000. I use that year only because its such a nice round number.

Older cards may have grading deductions for things that we just don't see a lot of in recent cards that are manufactured with modern technology. There aren't many offcuts, or off centers, or border chipping, or blurring off color photos, or stains or roller marks or pack crimping marks or much of any damage resulting from the printing or packing process. The damage you are most likely to get on a recent card is from buyer mishandling more than anything else and of course most buyers are very careful to keep their cards looking pack fresh.

So what I'm saying is that NM - Mint is really a standard you should be buying as a minimum card condition when you get a recent card or open a new product and then it store it away. If you go to grade a recent card it must be at least a 9 because no wants an 8.5 and its better to leave it ungraded if you can't get a 9.

It's fine to have lesser grades and conditions for older sets, that may be the best you can get, but it's no good at all for cards made in the last 20 years. They must be defect free, with no creases, four sharp corners and a clean surface just to be acceptable at NM/Mint. If you can get a grading service to proclaim it wholly Mint or Pristine or Black Label, that's another matter.

It all depends on the buyer and the set. Some dealers do very well selling to very high end clients who only buy master sets. Those buyers are willing to pay a premium . . .

I won't pay a premium for a set, but then again I generally don't collect sets. I actually try to buy sets of hits at a discount. . . Often collectors only need a couple of cards for their collection so a set of something can sell for less than it would cost to buy all the cards individually.

I don't trust condition descriptions like Near Mint at all. . .