Condition Disorder and Seeing Monetary Value

@justmatt, this thread topic is great. I feel that I am recovering from “condition disorder.” When I officially re-entered the hobby and I started buying graded cards/raw cards for grading, I was really aiming for 9s and 10s. Indeed, I was only thinking about the value. However, now that 9s and 10s are going out of reach, I realized that focusing on high grades and value was hurting my interest in the hobby. It was depressing to see these cards that I had been hoping to buy “slip through my hands.” It forced me to re-evaluate why I collect in the first place and what excites me about getting cards. What thrills me is being able to buy cards I could never have as a child and getting really great pieces of art. Simply owning a cool card was enough to make me happy and took off the pressure I was putting on myself to have only The Best. Now, I do not mind having cards in lower grades as long as they still look pretty pleasing to the eye. There are also cards I wouldn’t mind having a bent copy or two of! There are still a few cards I would like to have in 9s and 10s, but those are now long term goals I can save up for. My list of such cards is not as long as it was before so it feels like it is much more realistic that I will obtain them in my life time.
I don’t do binder sets, but something that I appreciate about them is that you can have cards that are not mint that look just as beautiful in the binder. There is nothing like flipping through a full binder of cards, after all.

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Hi, Thanks for your reply. I think as you say ‘focusing on high grades and value was hurting my interest in the hobby’ is relatable to almost anyone in this hobby that has entered in the last few years as the only advertised side of the hobby is really pack opening, grading and dealing with big cards.

A lot of people want to feel part of something, There was WOTC and Modern divides, but now there is the beginning of a middle ground where people want to be part of early, but cant justify the costs and can loose interest if you get caught up in it. I know prices and goals have risen and been made harder to achieve for every level of collector, but having some inventory/past that has risen with the rising tide allows one to perhaps exchange or sell extras and duplicates for new cards/goals.

Its like saving for a house, where house prices are moving quicker than your ability to save.

Re-evaluating can definitely be the way to bring back the reason why you started in the first place.

I will buy any condition for the right price. I think the condition “disorder” you’re speaking on only comes into play when it comes to expensive cards with a large degree of variance from one grade to another. No one wants to pay hundreds of dollars more for a raw card if it’s going to grade an 8, and you’re paying a psa9 price for a chance at a psa 10 that would be a good deal for your dollar. You know? So it’s kind of relevant. Yes, there is a financial element. But if you can walk away with a beat up card and you know what you’re getting and the price is right, then its still money well spent and a card you can enjoy.

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Even as a new (return from childhood) member to the hobby, I absolutely feel this way. I do think seeing openings on Youtube and the talk of “pack fresh” and “mint” cards definitely makes these things feel more important than maybe they are. I have decided I’m only interested in sealed and graded product for now, but cannot stop telling myself that having a 10 is more important. Having a graded 10 sounds so much better in my head but I know I can usually own a few 9’s of a card for the price of just one 10! In my mind, the two causes of this are social media influence on us and the knowledge that a “damaged” card(however small a knick, dent, bend, etc) is probably not how the card may have looked when someone first opened the pack it came from.

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This was the original purpose for firms like PSA. They provided a confirmation (and some insurance) that an item you were buying was real, and had a certain level of condition. In hobbies like coins that led collectors to compete over who had the “best” collection and destroyed the hobby for some, or at least the fun of collecting. Big money got involved, and only wanted the best condition of everything. At the last National Coin Show I went to, maybe 10 years ago, I accompanied a friend who was an active bidder for some ridiculously rare coins. He brought me into the pre-auction private viewing, which he had an appointment for. We looked at a couple dozen really nice, really old US coins, in the way you might check out rings or watches at a private jewelers. As we walked out he told me that all the coins we saw would sell for between $100,000 and $2 million dollars each.

For Magic there was originally resistance to grading. As I stated before, a slabbed card is one that couldn’t be played. Once grading became accepted, the original sweet spot was in the grades of 6 and 7. Players around the world learned they were getting a real card (since in Magic there have always been counterfeiting attempts), and they were getting a card good enough to fit in any tournament deck they wanted. At a grade of 6 there was no worry over a card having a defect that would make it unusable. These days more collectors are seeking higher grades, often for investment decisions. Players still don’t care to spend any more money than they have to to get a playable card.

All of these things worked okay when PSA was a fixed price per card, or when their services were a smaller percentage of card value. The problem for Pokemon now seems to be that PSA is really inefficient, seems to be damaging more than a few cards, and wants an ever-larger percentage of the value of a card for grading it.

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Thanks for sharing your story. Grading almost becomes a double edged sword for collecting, To start off with it provides Framework, protection and authentication for items held close to people. It gives everyone a somewhat consistent structure to compare to rather than personal opinion. However with this it creates a desire for what would be the best grade, as collectors want the best. Social Media and video making then wants to provide content matching the best. We live in a competitive world where in any sport or hobby, people are taking things to the limit, when PSA 10 is the limit thats where people want to be.

This also provides a business venture to get those cards and sell them. Without a PSA 10, A mint card would be a mint card and a 8-9-10 range card would in my opinion never be at the price of a current 10. You also eliminate the stubborn cards to grade a 10, like T17 and Dark magneton because no one would know that they were hard to find in PSA 10 parameters. In turn Cards that are just rare to exist would be the top end of collections or as per other markets like antiques, people can go with just what they like the look of / is visually appealing to them or hold historic value.

I was wondering if you put yourself in a world where social media and youtube didnt exist, there was no grading, and you were simply buying on reference to what you knew and had when pokemon started, what cards you would have and how your collections would look.

On the flip side , grading brings a vast diversity of additional collection goals and reasons to be in the hobby. Im just trying to reach a happy medium with both sides.

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Honestly I don’t think you should blame it on social media or youtube. When I started collecting, it was raw cards and I bought old collections. In time I got a dublicate card but in better condition it moved up in the ranks in my binder.

When I started collecting PSA cards kinda same thing. If it’s possible we want the better thing. So if you consider it worth paying the premium for a 10 over a 9 then you do that to get the better thing. If the better thing for you is buying extra PSA 9s instead of few PSA 10s then you do that.

Let’s say you start up your working career with a low paying job driving in a cheap car. Over time your career tops and you left that low paying job years ago like you swapped out the cheap car with a brand new whatever smart and good car.
Sure status and other things effect you into buying the new and better car. The old cheap car had the exact same purpose as the brand new whatever smart car, drive you around. But the brand new whatever smart car offers better seats, comfort, aircon etc. kinda like the PSA 10 card.

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@hammr7, thanks for sharing about coin collecting! It’s quite interesting and I’m sure the current price increases are destroying the fun of collecting Pokemon for some as well as they get priced out of what they want.

I guess part of the problem lies with this idea that PSA 10s are worth a whole lot more than 9s and 8s, and that it makes it ‘investment grade’. It’s true, but the flipside is that if you just wanted to collect a graded version of the card, does it seriously need to be perfect without any flaws? We’re still talking about cards that are 20+ years old, and if you’re buying stuff for your own collection, you’re probably not intending to sell or it flip it anyway.

I bought a 1st edition foil fossil Gengar PSA 8 for around USD 90 recently, and yeah if I look at the pop reports its at the lower end of the bell curve. But I never owned this card as a kid and I’m super stoked to have it, even if its not the rarest or the in the most perfect condition.

On the other hand, most cards are still pretty affordable isn’t it? Perhaps 1st edition base is pricey, but we’ve got unlimited or even shadowless to replace that. I guess if you collected gold stars, those would be pricey too.

I can sympathize with you and I think it’s just part of the evolution of becoming an adult collector. As most collectors do, when reintroduced to the hobby, just want to relive the experience. They want the cards they had once long ago and the cards they could never afford as a kid. This is why Base set cards will forever be desirable, demand high prices relative to its mass production, and be a starting point for many reentering the hobby. Whiting, some holo scratches, a little scuff… It isn’t a big deal because most newcomers aren’t organically entering the hobby because they want to flip, invest, and tend to not be thinking 20 years down the road. They are entering because it’s fun and I really don’t think there is much more than that because on top of it just occurring naturally, they don’t understand the complexity of the hobby at large so decisions they make are mostly emotional despite what they think they might know.

As collecting becomes an actual hobby, knowledge is aquired, and goals are set, one can’t help but notice Price tags. That is where most collector start to notice things like condition, centering, whiting, corners, holo scratches, indents, PSA grades, etc. You can’t tell me someone getting reintroduced to the hobby after 5,10,15,20 years (which is the majority of adult collectors) looks at a Base Charizard in MP or LP condition and says to himself…" eh I think not. I’d rather spend the extra $1000 for a PSA 9." But after the maturation process occurs, I think there are typically two types of collectors…a binder collector and a PSA collector (third option would by a hybrid). Binder collectors don’t usually go for the Mintiest because I think they have a different mindset. Artwork + Completed sets + holding a physical card = MP-NM cards are best option because all of those can still be enjoyed (**someone above even mentioned collecting damaged cards which might also be true but to the best of my knowledge that is a very small percentage of collectors…nothing wrong it it :blush: ). Then the PSA collector who values art work + rarity + grade + monetary value (investment) = PSA graded cards is the best option. This isn’t to say that both don’t have value but the value more often than not goes to the latter.

No matter which of the two categories you fall into, at a certain point and after a certain amount of money has been put into your collection, you have to look at condition which again is why I think most people stay away from damaged because it’s just a much harder sale and little return. I’m a master set collector and I’m all for LP. but I try to do as much NM as possible, I don’t shy away from HP when prices are too high… and really anything with the right price tag will be considered because for me it’s all about having a binder with a complete set and getting to view them all and appreciate them as a whole and not necessarily as the infinite amount of small details that make up every card.

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For coin collecting, which has lost some popularity over the decades, virtually all price increases have been for the rarest and highest graded coins. Consider that gold and silver are at prices similar to where they were 40 years ago. So the bulk basis hasn’t changed. PSA grading started a feeding frenzy among the hard core (and very rich) collectors for those highest grades. Almost all other grades of coins have stagnated since. I have some nice - think ExMt 6 or NrMt 7 - quarters and half dollars from the early and mid 1800’s. Their value today (maybe $100 to $200 each) is virtually identical to their values 40 years ago.

I have a similar condition 1962 baseball set that I can sell for less than I paid for it in 1984. It is a very nice set, but not nice enough for the dwindling group of baseball card collectors (mainly older Americans).

That is the concern for collectibles like Pokemon. Of course you can’t do anything with coins other than collect them or spend them at face value. And you can’t do anything with baseball cards other than collect them. Pokemon is vastly more popular and has world-wide popularity. And you can use the cards to play the game, although most high grade cards will never see play again.

Investment status is the holy grail for many types of collectibles. The highest graded coins are now considered a pretty sound investment option. Only a few sports cards have reached that status. Maybe Magic and Pokemon cards will get there as well. If so, it may be a double edged sword, leading to a wider gulf between the "10"s and all other cards.

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I do agree coins have lost some demand over time but coins and cards aren’t as comparable as you’re making them out to be. For one coins are graded on a 1-70 scale there are no ‘ExMt 6 or NrMt 7’ coins that’s not how PCGS or NGC grade coins. Secondly, there is no 1800s half-dollar worth ‘virtually the same’ as 40 years ago. Please name that the date and mint certified condition? Yeah I won’t my breath. Market size and supply size play a HUGE roll in how collectors behave in a hobby. Coins may be on a down turn but type in ‘coins’ on eBay and ‘pokemon cards’ on eBay and you’ll see coins have 4x the number of listings. That hobby could erode dramatically and still be much larger. Aside from coins are cards both being small, condition sensitive, certifiable collectibles the demographic, average income of the consumer ect is completely different.

One huge difference that MTG and coins share that Pokemon doesn’t are valuable MP and LP cards. In Pokemon if it isn’t top pop or PSA 10 you might as well feed it to the dog. Other older collectible categories see mid grade and heavy played cards still demand significant prices. Maybe this hobby will grow into it or maybe supply is just too high for anyone to pay a premium for 8s and below. Only time will tell

@hammr7, I’m not current with sports cards trends but I know basketball has been killing it. Has it not been true for baseball? As a school teacher, for the first time since my own childhood, I see students collecting cards again.

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For the coin grades, I was trying to equate to the 10 point card scale. I have coins that would grade out in the 50 to 60 range. I obtained them well before PSA was an entity. They are not graded. Two of my favorites (for personal reasons) are an 1829 Bust Half Dollar and an 1841-O Seated Liberty Half. Ebay sales for graded copies have recently been in the $200 to $300 range. If I spent the money to have mine graded, and then sold them on Ebay I would not make back any profit. Despite both being very presentable, over the last 45 years they haven’t come close to keeping up with inflation.

If these coins graded at 65, or perhaps even 63 or 64, these coins would be worth more, and maybe a lot more. But there is so much money in higher graded coins that any new grading will be held to a pretty harsh standard. If you look at the historical record for coins (or baseball cards or Pokemon cards) it used to be that an excellent condition specimen used to be worth 50% of a Mint specimen. As grading takes hold you find that curve steepening because PSA 9 or PSA 10 (or MS 64 and higher) specimens take off relative to everything else.

This definitely hits close to home. When I started collecting again back in mid-2015, I couldn’t care about condition at all, and I didn’t even wanted graded cards, since I wanted all Pikachu cards in a binder to look at.

After about 3/4 of a year collecting, I wanted to complete the Base Set Pikachu in all languages and variations. But, the 1st edition Chinese and both 1st and unlimited edition Korean Pikachu cards weren’t anywhere to be found ungraded. They were however all three as PSA-9 from the same seller. So, long story short: those three were my very first graded Pikachu cards. :blush:
From that point onward, I still preferred NM ungraded, but if I couldn’t find it ungraded I’d buy a graded one instead. I therefore have a couple of PSA, BGS, and even one MAP graded Pikachu.

When looking at my collection goals now, I still prefer NM ungraded for Pikachu and Seviper cards. Completing it in all languages is already hard enough as is, so condition and prices are mostly irrelevant. However, for some of my other Pokémon sub-collections, I do look more and more at the condition. I collect the Moltres WotC #21 artwork in all languages for example, and tried to buy the mintiest ones I could find (except for Portuguese, which is hard to find in general…) I’ve also started collecting the English and Japanese variations in PSA-10, and later on even graded some with BGS (and bought the POP1 Black Label 10 as well).
I also collect Full Art Supporters in English and Japanese exclusive, and only bought NM+ copies. After buying the Japanese The Masked Royal promo and Team Rocket Brief Case promos in PSA-10, I decided to grade all rarer Japanese versions. So I currently have the three Extra Battle Day promos and the Alolan Friends promo at PSA, hoping for some 10s grades (I already know one won’t get a 10 due to the whitening it had, but that’s fine). I’ve also received a FA Supporter that was damaged in the mail once, which I immediately placed in my duplicated stack and I ordered a new NM one (elsewhere). I’ve also been replacing a couple of extremely played Pikachu and Seviper cards with NM ones, like the Captain Pikachu Jumbo about a year ago, and the Italian Jungle Pikachu with W-stamp last week. I’ll also try to replace the French EX Sandstorm Seviper soon, since it’s the only Seviper card that isn’t LP+, and I don’t really like the two creases it has.

So yeah, although I still don’t care too much about condition, I am seeing myself care more and more as the time goes by. Not necessarily for the value though, more for my own enjoyment. :blush:

Greetz,
Quuador

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Damaged/less then perfect cards are not bad for binders! I pick them up if the others are too expensive and/or I want to a more complete set. The dmg card can always serve as placeholders and remind you to upgrade said card, if those defects are so bothersome. Grading cards can breakup binders, but it’s probably better then not… Unless you have nicer graded cards and replace with damaged placeholders to complete the binder set.

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I found myself constantly looking at the condition of the cards from the game Dominion that I was playing this past weekend with some friends. Watching them grip and rip shuffle their decks kept stressing me out lol.

Clearly they weren’t sleeved, it’s hard to ruffle shuffle with sleeves on.

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Yep, if I could find reasonable priced Dominion Sleeves I’d buy them.

European Standard Sleeves. I usually use Mayday, 500 cards for the standard game, I don’t know about expansions.

wondertrail.com/games-and-puzzles/card-sleeves-binders-deck-boxes/board-game-sleeves/mdg7035-mini-euro-size-card-sleeves-clear-100ct-by-mayday-games.html

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Wow that’s cheap, thanks for the link. Im gunna buy two thousand to cover my expansions now.

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