Idk if you grade cards yourself, but I would recommend just buying scaled packs for the sets you want that came out of a booster box.
You can find boosters that are box fresh, but scaled, for very cheap and then grading packs is around $20 a pack.
If you don’t grade yourself, you can use a grading service. It’ll end up costing you up to $100 to buy the raw pack and get it graded with shipping factored in.
Only variable here is, the pack may not get a PSA 10.
It really depends on the set, but I don’t think you should pay any more than $100-150 per already graded PSA 10 booster for 1st edition WOTC era. For some sets like Jungle, you should be able to find them for much less.
If you find it difficult to procure a particular art or set in PSA 10 for less than $150, that’s when I would suggest grading it yourself.
After seeing what they done to Gav’s 1st Edition Base Boosters, I would say get ungraded boosters and just store them in good semi rigid sleeves (I think you need Tarrot once to fit them in)
What are Tarrot ones? I’ve got a number of loose packs that currently aren’t protected as nicely as I’d like but I haven’t sent them into PSA because of the job I’ve seen performed previously… plus I’m not sure if they’ll encase PCG packs
Tarrot/Tarot my spelling sucks. Anyway… I thought to perfectly fitted, people hinted at them before, seeing them now I might be wrong.
But as I say, PSA doesn’t do a very good job folding the packs into the casing damaging them in more than one occasion. Search E4 for Gav1337’s thread about it.
If you just need them for a little bit of protection you can always use psa graded card sleeves for boosters, they are a little wide compared to the packs so they can move left to right a bit but they do hold them in nicely being as you can seal the top.
65-75$ per for the 3 psa 10 base set packs and the umbreon (if its the one that just came up on ebay) I would not go over 85 for it. Just remember if you are trying to flip psa packs it is going to rough. I pay what I want for them because they will be a part of my collection forever, but if you are trying to flip or wait for future prices to increase on packs I would personally go another route like the others have stated.
