WARNING!!!!! The reason for this post is basically to give you my viewpoint on why I hate these people who say they "collect sports cards" when actually they just want huge payoffs for a slab that they might have started in the circle of life in collecting. I plan on proving a point if one of my readers is willing to try to do a little experiment with me on something. If you have read my posts, you know I mentioned I am an anti-graded cards collector I prefer raw cards over slabs.
Thanks to my friend Greg from The Collective Mind Blog he helped with my illustration on this post since I am not that talented to do that sort of thing. Now on to why I hate these types of people, now I am sure if we see these types they're the ones with the suitcases on wheels during shows or have the bullet-proof like cases that they carry all their slabs of players that are featured on the higher spectrum of collecting 9 out of 10 they didn't even pull it from a pack instead they either bought the card after it was graded hence starting the circle. They are also those that wear backpacks cause they want to be trend setters cause they feel like they don't want to carry a suitcase around them so its easier to carry their precious little cargo of a slab on their backs usually rubber banded after all the slab is protecting the card from harming anymore & usually slabs that are 8 or higher if its a modern player like Aaron Judge,Shohei Ohtani,Roki Saski,Patrick Mahomes,Tom Brady,Cam Allen,Josh Allen,Connor Bedard,Austin Matthews,Lebron James,Brony James,etc.....
This is where I hope to have someone experiment with me on this part to prove that it is a circle that never will end until the player is either a bust or just the price of the card has dropped dramatically off the face of the planet if it continues to raise in price more & more deeper pockets will be needed to secure that card for that person. Right now I bet if you walked up to one of those people ask them would they trade their best slab that they are carrying around for a scrub of a player like that has played for more than 8+ seasons at least of the highest level of their sport & you have a PSA 10 of that scrub fresh from a pack graded that they would whip out their phone,IPad,Tablet,etc.....just to find what that scrub is going price at compared to their highly sought after 1/1, rainbow,trifecta, signed with a laundry tag & a picture of the player they think is a winner of a card that they made a deal for 2 days prior to your encounter with them before they replied by saying "Uh........what else could ya throw in for it" or "The latest one sold for blah blah blah Yak Yak & the minor version of this sold for a little lesser but I am firm at Blah blah if ya want it" or even the famous "I am not interested in that guy cause his cards aren't to my range of trading,buying,selling it to someone like you. Cause that player couldn't hold my card guys Jock-Strap."
I am sure most of you are familiar with the website seen on currency WHERESGEORGE.com which basically is a site devoted to tracing down a simple bill & where is it at in the country at the moment so you can see where it started from when someone logged in the serial number of the bill on the site. Well I propose someone to try & see if they take a popular graded card that can be send out & see where it might end up as that card price rises to see if it enters the CIRCLE OF LIFE if the original owner of the card gets it back for a reasonable price. Now I have only had 4 Graded cards in my collection at 1 time now I have 2. The 2 I have are a Beckett Graded 1987 Fleer Barry Bonds RC graded an 8 & the other is a PSA Graded 8 of the `84/`85 OPC Steve Yzerman RC. The reason for the Bonds a good friend of mine by name of Lee Noel who got out of collecting to Persue a higher calling in life & he didn't want to be tied down with his collection so he packaged it all up & mailed it to a collector ala me that would know what to do with it. As for the Yzerman it was the first graded card I owned plus the only way I was able to get the Yzerman OPC RC at the time before I purchased the complete set for a reasonable price & they threw in an extra RC for my PC. As for the other 2 1 was a `08/`09 Topps Kobe Bryant card that featured him with LeBron James guarding him it was a SCG Graded 8 I sent it to an ex-military veteran by the name of Art Rodriguez who answered my call to send me a raw version of the card for my set cause I wanted it raw but I was able to purchase the graded version on a coin flip of a deal during a show for a reasonable price so I could put a request for the raw version instead of breaking the card out of its plastic case. The last but not least of Graded cards is an I want to say its a Beckett Graded I can't recall the grade but hopefully the owner of this card will send a comment to help me out but I know that Mr Night Owl discussed about it on his blog not so long ago but I sent him a graded Hideo Nomo 1997 Score card that featured a small swatch of Nomo's jersey, I figured a Dodger collector like him could use it in his collection & well he was surprised to get it & indeed he had added to his collection.
I guess the reason I want to see this experiment come to life is cause I have seen many of dealers submitted cards to the graded companies only to complain when they thought a certain card would be graded a certain grade only to be disappointed when it came back a different grade then what they expected then after being frustrated they crack open the card & resubmit the card to either a different graded company or they same one only to leave the remains of the old graded stuff in the trash even thought it leaves me wondering about serial #'d cards xxxx/xxxx should a person resubmit that same card would bring up red flags to me if I was a grader cause think about it. If you graded an Aaron Judge red ink 2017 Topps Heritage Autographed card & it came back a 8 but you think it should be 10 they gotta have something that says uh...... how is it possible for Topps to create 2 versions of the red ink autograph that have the same xxxx/xxxx number is one a fake or what. That remains one question that I even asked once to the graded companies they don't have an exact answer for believe me Ill be asking again when I go to the National once again this summer see if they upped the game or not so stay tuned to my blog about what I find out.
In conclusion of this long read I will remind you that next month I will be celebrating my milestone birthday so hopefully it gets some of you to look over my lists & try to make my milestone a great one after all its been a crazy of a year so far until then I am reminded by the great Rogers Hornsby who once said about signing autographs for kids "Any ballplayer who doesn't sign autographs for little kids ain't an American, He's a Communist."
It would be interesting to have a website like this to track cards. There would have to be some kind of serial # to track each one.
ReplyDeleteI’ve always wanted some sort of site (or maybe a way to integrate it to TCDB) that would allow collectors to have their own username and to kind of track serial #d cards like that. If you could somehow get every collector who pulled a serial #d card to input it into the site, you could theoretically figure out how many more of a certain #d card are still sitting in packs, and if everyone correctly inputs the number of their card, you could track if duplicates of a 1/1 or whatever exist.
I agree with you that these people who grade and flip are lame and that grading has ruined the hobby. Might be more fun to have a card make its way around the world with collectors and maybe have a note attached to it to send it to other collectors and blog about it.
I think they have some sort of registry on the grading website that does some of this. Obviously if it's taken out of the case and re-submitted we'd never know; in that case the experiment would only work for a 1/1.
ReplyDeleteThis would be a cool experiment. I'm pretty sure Bo is right. I feel like PSA has a registry and has tracked individual cards before, but I'm not 100% certain.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I love that 2008-09 Topps Kobe card. I wish I would have bought the Topps flagship version to go along with my Chrome card before it blew up in price during the pandemic.