So, just when I thought that I was happy .. Boom ! 
.. Now, I collect & sort my pokemon cards for their aesthetic & pleasing look ! .. It’s not / never been about the cards value ! .. I have recently met someone who is ‘fully’ into pokemon collecting & ‘is’ in it, for monetary gain ! .. He offered to ‘check out my cards’ using an online app, called ‘Collectr’ & has located several ‘hits’ .. which he is trying to convince me to sell ! .. An example consists of an EX english card, showing on the app as $37 dollars raw .. but, $190 dollars graded ! .. I’m in the uk, so it would be converted to £sterling ! .. My question is .. If I’m happy to have this card in my collection ‘as-is’ .. but, grade it to sell & then, it doesn’t sell .. I’d want it back in my binder, if that makes sense ? .. Why would I send it to grading, based on an online app guesstimation, to maybe ‘not’ sell later on down the line ? .. This guy has me so confused about grading any of my cards, that I don’t know what to do !
Surround yourself with people who actually like Pokémon and not the people who “like Pokemon for money”
Ignore him and keep collecting the way you want. Grading is entirely optional and can reduce the joy you have for your current cards because they might not be “perfect”.
Check out the grading company’s website. There’s grading fees, shipping costs, and duration of time before you get the card back. If you’re fine with that and the card will grade well, go for it. Your choice at the end of the day, we can’t make that decision for you.
Grading is paying a company to review and analyze the condition of a card to assign it a score on a scale, as well as encapsulating the card in a slab to prevent the confirmed condition from changing.
Some people value confirmed conditions highly if the condition is high enough. The downside is there is non-negligible cost and time to doing this and that you are at the mercy of whoevers opinion you have paid for. Some opinions are more accurate than others, some worth more than others.
Its not for everyone and not for every card since it depends on condition. If someone is interested in extracting every cent from cards, especially if they arent going to use their own money, they may view it more favorably than people who just like to look at nice cards.
Id suggest buying a cheap graded card to see if you like the look and feel of graded cards. Then try to sell it to see how the process is. This is ultimately cheaper and less risky than trying to grade your current cards and then finding out that it might be a pain to you.
This is the same excuse people who are addicted to casinos and bets use to convince others to join …
Consider this: if you’re purely a collector and strip grading from its effect on cards value, would it be relevant to you?
In my opinion it’s mostly appealing to asses & preserve conditions for vintage, as a way to display your favorites (which can be achieved without slabbing them though) and maybe to have an easier time when you need to sell stuff.
Keeping them raw is a perfectly valid option, especially if you don’t care about thesw things.
What about us daywalkers who like both 
Grading can potentially add a significant premium to certain cards if they graded high (PSA 9+). But in the lower grades, (i.e. PSA 6-8), there’s generally little to no premium over a raw/ungraded copy on most cards. The other advantage is a graded copy is authenticated and depending on the card, some people will value that over buying raw to avoid a potential fake copy as well and knowing it’ll be “NM” or “EX/LP” to the standard set by PSA or another company.
Personally, I collect both raw/ungraded and graded copies, and I see nothing wrong with owning either one. I’ve saved a lot of money buying raw cards for binder builds, but I still like having high graded slabs in my collection on some of my fav cards if I can. These days many PSA 10 copies of my cards have gotten very expensive, so I haven’t bought as many in recent times as I used to but still hold onto them out of personal enjoyment and the financial aspect is a bonus in the long run.
straight to purgatory with you
Thankyou for you’re advice ! .. I can’t believe that I let this guy try to persuade me, into looking at value & grading ! .. I’ll stick with what works for me ! 
Thankyou, to everyone for their advice !
If you want to enjoy the cards for what they are and not buy into the scam, ill confuse you more. Just lmk
Sadly the more you attempt to understand the more lost you will be
There isn’t a right or wrong way to approach collecting. If you’re happy with your collection as is and don’t feel the need to grade anything to enjoy it more, then so be it. Raw collecting is totally fine. I do a mix of both.
I think you’ve answered your own question. People have differing motivations in this hobby. If grading doesn’t align with your motivation id suggest tuning out the noise and continuing what you enjoy 
The only differences between you and a ‘professional’ grader is that one takes more time and care to look at the card in question and doesn’t get paid for it.
Honestly, grading is barely above crypto in terms of the legitimacy of the assigned grade. Maybe I should march to the unpopular opinions thread lol but besides increasing the value/liquidity of the card on occasion, it is a blight.
- Adds more plastic into a hobby already terrible for the environment (and that’s before regrading, crossing, freeing etc)
- Attracts the wrong crowd for the wrong reasons
- Doesn’t actually preserve anything better than a sleeve & binder/toploader/card saver
- The submitter is more often than not more experienced than the grader
- Puts more emphasis on the wrong attributes- anything to do with the back of the card, centering etc than on actual printlines, colour
Grading is a mixed bag for me. I have some graded cards but have come to prefer the look and feel of ungraded cards in my binder. The graded cards I do have are primarily for protection of the card’s condition over time since I move around a lot and worry about that sort of thing.
That being said, slabs are not an ultimate or even superior form of protection necessarily. Most don’t have UV protection, can still be impacted by humidity and moisture, and the slabs themselves are fairly easily dinged, scratched, and cracked.
Still, I mostly trust a slabbed card to remain relatively as-is. However, I do not trust any grading company to determine authenticity of a card, to assess condition accurately (buy the card, not the grade), and I do not particularly care about card value or market of graded cards outside of my particular purchase price because I am not an ““investor”” and I care only about the cards as cards to enjoy. At least, that’s the lens I’m approaching this from.
Eeveeteam has the most correct outlook lol.
Those in it purely for money will move to like, whatever, once pokemon isn’t as popular
don’t waste money grading if you’re only collecting for a binder.