After joining a large facebook group for non sports cards I was a bit floored over the amount of graded cards displayed that could never recover the costs of grading. The drive some of these collectors have to grade everything is both haphazard and concerning.

I decided to look a bit closer and found a site (gemrate) that reports daily numbers of cards being graded. For example, today (Nov 7th) shows:

PSA 61.4K
CGC Cards 8.7K
SGC 8.1K
Beckett 1.4K

Obviously a system where the house always wins, even for Beckett.

Utilizing a digital scale I found that the weight of 44 cards in top loaders are equivalent to 6 Beckett or 10 PSA slabs. I calculated that if I were to slab all of my autograph cards the weight of my collection would grow from 68lbs to 300 or 500lbs depending on what service I used.

I also ran some Ebay price range searches on PSA grades 8 through 10 and found the following on recent sales.

Due to a variety of tier pricing and shipping I used $30 to represent a complete loss due to grade prices.
I gave an additional range of $31 - $60 to determine no value added.

Percentages are rounded up or down as ebay searches don't give exact numbers.


Search criteria "PSA 10"= 1.2M
PSA 10 Total sold items = 766K
Sold for
Under $31 = 190K 25%
$31 - $60 = 210K 27%

52% of PSA 10s will either lose or add no value to a card.

$61 - $90 = 97K 13%
$91 - $120 = 59K 8%
$121 - $200 = 90K 12%
$201 - $500 = 78K 10%
$501 - $1000 = 26K 4%
Over $1000 = 16K 2%


Search criteria "PSA 9" = 990K
PSA 9 Total sold items = 503K
Sold for
Under $31 = 260K 52%
$31 - $60 = 100K 20%

72% of PSA 9s will either lose or add no value to a card

$61 - $90 = 40K 8%
$91 - $120 = 23K 4.5%
$121 - $200 = 33K 6.5%
$201 - $500 = 32K 6.5%
$501 - $1000 = 8.6K 2%
Over $1000 = 6.4K 1.5%


Search criteria "PSA 8" = 400K
PSA 8 Total sold items = 190K
Sold for
Under $31 = 100K 53%
$31 - $60 = 37K 19%

72% of PSA 8s will either lose or add no value to a card

$61 - $90 = 15K 8%
$91 - $120 = 8.3K 4.5%
$121 - $200 = 12K 6.5%
$201 - $500 = 11K 6%
$501 - $1000 = 3.7K 2%
Over $1000 = 2.6K 1.5%

Obviously I could care less how people waste their money but this seems to me a bad trend in the hobby.

Don't forget to add the sliding scale that most of the services have where the more expensive the card, the more expensive the service.

I have always said that incentivizes the services to grade higher as the value is more for high grade cards.

It's a shell game.

If you like the preservation aspect of the holders, it's fine.

If you're doing it for value added reasons, these numbers pretty much show that's a farce.

Ed

Oh yeah...very convoluted price schemes. I tried to keep the math simple.

Sad to say but the rise of the collection protection industry and production quality in the 90s has practically made preservation a bad thing.

Things are getting worse with the lack of general grading standards among collectors. Something very wrong with a system that says an 8 or 9 is a disappointing grade. The enemy of a gem mint 10 is a bunch of gem mint 10s.

Maybe they will pull a Spinal Tap and introduce grade 11.

The whole thing confuses me.

Who are these collectors? Are they long tenured non-sport collectors who decided to start grading? I suspect not. I'd guess most of these are new collectors and likely a lot of crossover from sports cards. It is very odd to me.

I do understand on a high end card why you'd want to buy it graded -- especially if you are new to the hobby and don't know how to tell if a card is potentially fake, or what dealers are trustworthy.

For low end cards I just don't get it at all. . . I don't understand why people grade them (maybe the hope that they get that 'pop 1' and can sell it like a lotto winner, I dunno).

I'm shocked that -- if I am reading this right -- yesterday there were about 80,000 cards graded? That's insane.

As they say though -- if everything is special nothing is special, so grading all the cards will just make them less special and making grading companies a ton of money. I doubt it will cause a crash.

So if you decide to send a card to be graded, let's assume it's a $200 dollar card in your view, how much would it cost you to have it done and would it increase the value of your card if for instance it came back graded 7.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Who are these collectors? Are they long tenured non-sport collectors who decided to start grading? I suspect not.

They are most definitely not.

For some reason new collectors have the mindset that cards are only valuable if they're graded. It's nearly the first thing they ask when they pull a cool card - "Should I grade it?" I can't imagine spending money on cards then wanting to spend MORE money on the same cards just to have somebody tell me it's better or worse than others, and put it in a holder that's difficult to store? Grading has sealed the deal on this being a hobby vs business/investment. I guess there's the rush of excitement when your card gets a 10, but that's lost on me. I have probably a dozen graded cards and that's only because they came as part of a deal or were gifted to me.

The good thing about it is if everybody only wants 10s, that makes the value of less-thans cheaper. I don't mind a soft corner if it's going to get me the card for 1/2 the price!

Encapsulation is also a legit reason for protection. I don't need a grade, but there's peace of mind to be had with a well-protected card. I dislike it especially with comics because once it's sealed you'll never see the inside again. I have a first-appearance Ghost Rider comic that I had graded solely for protection purposes, but I made sure to photograph every page inside before grading.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
So if you decide to send a card to be graded, let's assume it's a $200 dollar card in your view, how much would it cost you to have it done and would it increase the value of your card if for instance it came back graded 7.

It's funny - grades of 7 or below are generally worth less than raw copies.

It's a different story with vintage, though. High grades are more difficult to come by so it stands to reason that if you want a graded copy, a lesser grade is more acceptable.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
The whole thing confuses me.

Who are these collectors? Are they long tenured non-sport collectors who decided to start grading? I suspect not. I'd guess most of these are new collectors and likely a lot of crossover from sports cards.

My searches were to see the effectiveness of the top 3 grades as it pertains to added value. So my numbers include all cards.

It honestly feels like a mental shift in collecting ideology with newer collectors. A new form of lottery that costs $30 or more to enter. If your card is valued more then you pay more to play. These are collectors who get suckered into things such as E-Packs and digital card collecting. Manufacturers are promoting the game with massive increases of individually numbered cards and literally releasing millions of 1/1's. Like grade 10s these have lost their luster. Pop Century is a big time abuser of the 1/1 release.

Still, these collectors act uninterested if you say a celebrity signed 250 cards....say they signed 250 1/1 cards and everyone wets their pants. All the celebrity did was sign a few pages of stickers.

Autographs and Sketch cards are still your true low volume items but even these are subject to the law of supply and demand. Big problem with sports is that autographs are massively redundant.

quote:

Big problem with sports is that autographs are massively redundant.

This was a lesson for me recently as I've started buying some hockey cards on ePack. It is insane how many autographs most of the athletes have. It is also insane how many different autographs each athlete has. . . The real lesson I learned though was that the card the autograph is on can significantly change the value, which generally isn't the case in entertainment cards.

I really don't understand the numbering thing at all. Especially with Pop Century. Again -- if all cards are low numbered then it doesn't make a difference at all. I still collect based on how nice the signature is, then how nice the photo / design is.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
The real lesson I learned though was that the card the autograph is on can significantly change the value, which generally isn't the case in entertainment cards.

Right....and who controls what cards get what stickers attached? Not the athlete. Makes me appreciate my Rittenhouse/Breygent/Cryptozoic cards even more.

I'm pretty much the same way, I have refused to buy bad signatures, even if it is someone I would like to have. I get some people sign consistently bad but I will take a card numbered to 100 if the signature is nicer than one on a 1/1.

I have literally talked to collectors who not only don't care if an autograph is bad...they actually make excuses for the celebrity as if the card manufacturer has them chained to a table forcing them to sign for bread and water.

I have also been paying much more attention to presentation or cool factor. Leaf designs tend to range from somewhat decent to horrific, for many of their signers if you wait something nice will come along.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mykdude,

I have seen some of the UK tea issued cards being graded. One that caught my eye was up for a price of about 25 times to cost of the whole set the card came from. Absolute madness as most tea cards were printed in their thousands when they were in the tea packets and then a few years later remaindered with most dealers stocking them. None of this seems to stop the sellers from trying though.

I do not buy graded cards but there are some horrible prices being asked out there for $1 base cards that have been graded .
Then on the other side I have also seen the same cards graded being sold for peanuts obviously being at a loss .
These might of been offered by a secondary seller who purchased a collection etc .
But with the cost of grading even with discounts it makes you wonder why some cards are even considered for grading.
The grading companies should refuse to grade base cards but greed takes over
In my opinion sellers who get base cards graded and up the ante are just as greedy
So who cancels who out.

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
Then on the other side I have also seen the same cards graded being sold for peanuts obviously being at a loss .
These might of been offered by a secondary seller who purchased a collection etc .
But with the cost of grading even with discounts it makes you wonder why some cards are even considered for grading.

This is one of the hilarious and hypocritical things about being on this page. Crazy demand to get your cards graded and then they post what a great deal they just found for gem mint 10s that sold for less than the cost of grading.

It's almost as if the two ideas never meet each other inside their brains.

I would love to see some integrity with the grading companies but I understand when people insist on throwing money at you it would be crazy not to pick it up.

I have just seen a 1950's card that was originally issued in a stapled format with 7 other cards. It is off-cut (as most of them were for this particular image) and has two staple holes on the left hand side. COMC have it for sale at over $300 despite it being given a grade 1, I suspect because it is Walt Disney it was graded. I have mentioned these cards before in another thread (see Cards that have significantly increased in value - on page 32 dated April 2023).

regards

John

The only cards I grade are the ones I do want encapsulated for my personal collection. I use Beckett, because I prefer their ‘look’. I don’t care what the grade is because I’m not selling them. Also, I find graded nonsports cards sell for less than the usual ungraded cards. I got a dual Shatner/Collins auto card for under $300 last year. It’s a PSA 7, but who cares? I’m very happy with it and I will just leave it in its case.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
The whole thing confuses me.

Who are these collectors? Are they long tenured non-sport collectors who decided to start grading? I suspect not. I'd guess most of these are new collectors and likely a lot of crossover from sports cards. It is very odd to me.

I do understand on a high end card why you'd want to buy it graded -- especially if you are new to the hobby and don't know how to tell if a card is potentially fake, or what dealers are trustworthy.

For low end cards I just don't get it at all. . . I don't understand why people grade them (maybe the hope that they get that 'pop 1' and can sell it like a lotto winner, I dunno).

I'm shocked that -- if I am reading this right -- yesterday there were about 80,000 cards graded? That's insane.

As they say though -- if everything is special nothing is special, so grading all the cards will just make them less special and making grading companies a ton of money. I doubt it will cause a crash.

A LOT of sports card speculators have seeped into nonsports on ebay, particularly Game of Thrones & House of the Dragon. But it’s gone so far as Star Wars and even Star Trek. I see commons graded, and they sell for about $15. Makes no sense to grade a card that you have to sell for less than the card’s value(even if the card is valued at $15, you lose $15 plus S&H on said card). Let the sports kids have their fun. Leave us alone.

One more thing - I think it’s INSANE to send a VHS copy of a movie off for grading. Que Sera Sera - to each his/her own.

quote:

Originally posted by Electrawoman Cards f/k/a jane:
A LOT of sports card speculators have seeped into nonsports on ebay, particularly Game of Thrones & House of the Dragon. But it’s gone so far as Star Wars and even Star Trek.

It's as if they ruined their own hobby with excessive grading and instead of stopping they have moved on to hurt non-sports.