Sports Card Grading... What Service to Use?

[iamshady]

Hi, I've asked this before but I never got around to it. Does anyone have experience with submitting sports cards to be graded? I'm not sure which company to go with, which one is more widely known and reliable? Thanks.

 

[Czar]

I have a huge pile of old baseball cards, since 1-2 years before Magic retired and 2-3 years after that... where can I get them grated


next stop ebay

 

[aznspeed]

try beckett or pga
those are the most common

 

[Czar]

you know of any online grading list where I can just check it out myself?

 

[iamshady]

www.beckett.com has a free one Czar

 

[Czar]

I just registered at beckets and its not free .. you have to subscribe to it the lists.. kinda sucks.


do you know if some place where I can just hand them a big box full of cards and have them take care of selling the cards?

 

[kranky]

First thing you should do is look very carefully at some already-graded cards from PSA and Beckett to get a feel for how good a card has to be to get a high grade. Then check Beckett's magazine find out which cards you have are in a good-enough grade to be worth paying the grading fee. I think you'll find you have very, very few cards worth the expense, unless you have cards before 1960 of star players.

 

[Czar]

where is psa? been searching on yahoo and I find nothing

 

[iamshady]

I have a Hank Aaron rookie card, Pete Rose rookie card, a 1952 Ted Williams and a 1954 Mantle, all Topps. I have hundreds of others, but those are the four I want to get graded, I think the $99 from PSA would do fine for these four

 

[Czar]

well this is strange, I started this my collection thing on beckett.com and i´m adding a few michael jordan cards i have.. and i cant find 91-92 Topps card with him, seems that Topps only started 92-93.. does that mean its valuable

 

[kranky]

Hey look, I predicted what kind of cards you have!

Yeah, those are worth sending in. The reason I point that out is I run into a lot of people who have a pile of cards from the 80's, see ebay prices for highly-graded cards, and assume they have a equal-quality card. Usually not. There aren't very many recent cards worth sending in.

Czar, here's the PSA site.

 

[Czar]

thanks kranky
though they also want money for access to their price listing part.

most of my stuff is from around 90-92
my probably most unusual card is a 3D UpperDeck card of Detlef Schrempf, some sixth man card, 91-92, most 3d cards I saw at that time were just stickers but this is the only one I saw that was actually a real card.
which can be bought from here for hardly anything
http://www.beckett.com/items/index.asp?Action=View&ItemID=9972924&Area=1

 

[Michael]

I used Becketts. The best thing to do is consolidate and send in a bunch at once so it is $6 a card.

Michael

 

[Czar]

<< I used Becketts. The best thing to do is consolidate and send in a bunch at once so it is $6 a card.

Michael >>


I just checked a bunch of my cards at becketts sale/trade/buy thingy and most of the cards I checked were around $1 but few got over $2... so its not realy worth it to let them grade them for $6 each