Grading, Conservation, Restoration & Fraud

The baseball card collecting hobby is in an uproar over some familiar issues:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/...n-fraud.html

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Thanks for sharing Ikey. The parallels are striking.

As with stamps, card collectors in the rest of the world manage to get by without grading services. I've seen on ebay examples of common GB cards graded and slabbed by US grading companies - the grades have, in some cases, been laughable, with an apparent inability to recognise wear.

"Improving" cards by trimming or inking in worn black-printed areas is quite common here with Edwardian photographic cards, which could vary widely in size. After you've boobed a couple of times, you learn your lesson.

For US cards, I recommend ikeyPikey's Kosher Kollectibles at Flatbush and Fremont.

I can remember when card grading first started becoming a thing back in the 1980s. I always thought it was a bit sketchy since it seemed like the people having cards graded weren't collectors but rather investors looking for the next shiny bauble.

I never saw the point in those types of grading services in any collectibles arena. Perhaps it's just me, but I prefer my collectibles not be entombed in a hard plastic shell.

If I remember correctly, I've even heard of people busting the items out and sending to a different firm if they didn't agree with the first grade.

Dale

The card market and grading are inextricably intertwined at this point. I used to sell more expensive cards (100-1000 dollar range) and if they are not PSA/DNA slabbed and graded they will not sell and a half point difference can be real money. The authentication part has real value given the massive amount of fakes floating around.

I have mountains of cards from my childhood, so these clearly aren't fakes, and most are in really good condition (not counting the ones I used in my bicycle's spokes LOL).

I caught my Mom trying to throw these out on me when I was in High School...it caused an argument but looking back, I mercifully prevailed. I'm talking 1960's era Micky Mantles, Roger Maris,' Elliot Howards, and the like. I also have football, Monkeys (the band), 3-Stooges, and other non-baseball types.

Would you recommend my getting all the higher value ones (according to Beckets) certified and slabbed before I try to sell these (if I ever do)?

Mine were baseball cards going back to the early 50's, and I wasn't so lucky; they were gone before I knew about it. Mom also threw out the comic books, some going back to the late 40's. These were especially nice...I bought them vert cheaply at a church charity sale.

Don't know from them.

My children & grandchildren shop at Royal Collectibles:

https://royalcomicsnyc.com/ ... the mother ship ... graphic novels et al

https://www.facebook.com/royalsportsnyc/ ... their sports spin-off

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Selective memory - you just left Dion and doo-wopping on the street-corner far behind.

I've dived into the odd graphic novel, and might swim around a little more if they weren't so expensive. My daughter's quite keen - she's off to see the BM's manga blow-out shortly ...

https://www.britishmuseum.org/whats...s/manga.aspx

Sports card collecting boomed in the 1980s. I remember going to a few card shows and thinking how different "baseball cards" had become from the days when I was a kid and collected them. What had been simple kid fun had turned into a business without much fun apparent in it anymore. I was most struck by the retired baseball players who they'd perched at tables who would sign your item (one only!) for $25 a shot. That turned me off real fast. Obviously naively, I saw getting a player's autograph as a simple fun thing to do. Now it was a business.

Many cards were slabbed in those stupid plastic vaults they now use. It was entirely about making money, "investing". And that's what stamp collecting has become for some people. You could see that in the 1980s, too, with the rise of "stamp investors," a trend that has mercifully died out -- mostly.

"What's your most valuable stamp?" and "How much is your collection worth?" are two questions I sometimes get from non-collectors. These are the same people who ask those questions about art, people who have no taste but only care about money. Fortunately, stamp collecting has always contained a large majority of people who collect mainly for the fun of it so it hasn't slipped over the edge from a hobby to just another investment. Yet.

The original base of card collecting was young people who loved sports. Young people today no longer collect sports cards, it seems. Sports cards are almost impossible to find anywhere they used to be sold. Stamps sometimes seem headed in that direction, too, with the end of stamp stores. I'd say it's a cautionary warning to stamp collectors not to become sports card collectors. Don't treat it mainly as an investment. Don't "slab" stamps. Don't alter stamps to increase their value. A little cleaning is fine, but not much more. Card collecting and sports memorabilia became almost entirely an investment for middle-aged men with no connection to the lives of young people anymore. Hopefully, stamp collecting doesn't gradually turn into the same awful thing.

Reference to Mr Mantle is another excuse to link this splendid New Yorker piece -

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...l-as-a-woman

'
I do not see how we can be devout Conditionistas, and not expect grading & slabbing to find a ready audience.

One creates the market for the other.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who owns nothing that is either graded or slabbed)

Still, only the extreme condition fans in the stamp world like slabbed stamps.

Now, our coin collector friends do like slabbed coins more. As a group, I see them also as being more personally knowledgable about their stuff than us. For baseball memorabilia, the collectors seem to have more money than the will to study what they are collecting and seem to rely almost completely on grading services. Yet those services still carry on, after so many major mistakes, year after year.