I was lucky enough to stumble upon a LOL (lot of a lifetime, feel free to yoink that term) in June of 2019 that yielded me 70 or so 1st ed base cards and over 400 Shadowless cards. Most of these cards are in 7/8 condition with a few gems sprinkled in.
Currently they’re all sleeved up and the lesser condition cards of the 1st ed base and Shadowless made their way into a base set binder which looks pretty awesome so far.
Now, I have over 400 cards in a storage box staring me in the face. How would you all tackle this fortunate problem? Grade the best? Grade them all because Shadowless?
If you’re going for a personal collection you could try CGC with your best copies and purchase the holos off eBay. I’m not sure if CGC has a set registry like PSA. I would recommend PSA registry but the turn around times are very long for grading. If you want to grade for resale then that’s a lot of initial grading costs for returns that may or may not be diminished 12 months down the road.
I really wouldn´t grade any non-10 1st ed bulk right now, there´s TONS sitting at PSA right now, upfronting the capital for 1 year+ with very uncertain outcome is not a good idea in my opinion.
If you want to get rid of it and have the time, sell them individually, if not sell them as a bulk lot clearly describing general condition. Grading with CGC is like PSA grading light at this point, you won´t get as much out of it but you also don´t have to invest as much into it (time), only worth if these cards get at least a 9+ imo and you´re willing to take the risk.
Personally, I´d just keep them, they sit nice in a box
the market is hot right now. everyone keeps talking about the mysterious backlog and what’s in it. truth is - no one knows for sure. I would put my guess primarily on base unlimited, not 1st edition or shadowless.
even so, the demand is much higher than the supply right now. Waiting a year to potentially run into another year worth of grading seems like a huge L to me.
I would grade every card PSA. Paying $10 each for value grade and having it in early 2022 sits much better to me than paying $50 each and having them in 2023.
(also, no one has any proof right now it’s going to take a whole year, that’s speculation based on the timing of people getting cards back right now from July)
To add: The submissions accelerated greatly from when PSA opened back up to the end of the year. If you ask any of the big middlemen or watch their videos this would be clear. Also just look at the price trajectory throughout the year and think how many cards became gradable throughout the year (all of them if prices had held/will hold)
just so we’re clear, middlemen have a specific narrative to push (psa wait times are long, submitting is painful, etc.) , and shouldn’t be understood as an unbiased source of information. I am strongly against middleman and think they add 0 value (just to get the biases out of the way heh)
I just hate that people are sitting around waiting to submit their cards to PSA. that doesn’t make sense to me personally, because you’ll end up regretting waiting. The opportunity cost is crazy for value grading.
Regardless of if your goals are collecting or reselling, I feel like everyone should always be sending their cards in over holding them raw.
To this point in the thread, I appreciate the feedback. As a fairly new collector who struck “gold” at the right time, it’s giving me a lot to think about. Appreciate the honest feedback.
Hm, you just have to evaluate risk vs reward here - 400 mostly 7/8 condition shadowless commons/uncommons: right now they´re selling for 30-40$ on ebay except for a few select ones (red cheeks, wartortle…)
Let´s pretend the average grade we receive is an 8. We have to pay 10$ in grading fees, 5$ in ebay/pp fees (average 40$ sale price, I just don´t see random psa 7-8 c/uc (greatly) increasing with the amount that got sent in), that would net us 25$ per card in 1 year (I highly doubt that we see bulk subs returning earlier at this point), if we multiply this by 400 we have a possible profit of 10k after investing 4k+your time to handle the entire process. So we basically double our money (assuming that prices stay stable) in a span of one year.
While it is true that we don´t know what got sent in, you get a good idea of what people are sending just watching some grading service submissions (gradedgem etc) - there´s tons of bulk in there.
Given the current circumstances, there are so many variables (grading time, returning bulk, handling time, stable prices…) that make this a very risky endeavour. If you´re only looking for a monetary gain there´s so many less risky/more profitable options in the market right now that I wouldn´t even think about it.
(just to get the biases out of the way heh)