Need advice on storing & grading a raw collection.

General
1

Hi all,

I’m new here (this is my first post), so thank you all for having me. Let me know if I’ve done anything wrong.

I arbitrarily decided to get back into collecting pokemon (after 20 or so years), and after spending a few days surfing there web for Pokemon TCG info, I’ve determined that I have a lot to catch up on.

The first thing I figure I should do is shore up my current collection before trying to expand too much, so I figured I’d solicit advice from you all in storing and grading my cards.

I have a decent sized collection consisting roughly of the following:

2x Base Set (Unlimited, varying quality)
2x Jungle (One set is mostly first edition, varying quality)
2x Team Rocket (One set first edition, NM-M)
2x Fossil (All cards from here on are first edition, mint condition)
2x Gym Heroes
2x Gym Challenge
2x Neo Genesis (108/111 and 103/111)

Storage: The cards are stored in individual sleeves within a standard 9 card binder that has rarely been touched in 20 years, and upon inspection it looks appears that the quality has not deteriorated.

  1. What, if any, steps should I take to ensure the cards maintain their condition?

Grading: I don’t particularly plan on selling, though that may be necessary to some extent for me to expand into new(er) WOTC sets, so I at least want to grade some of the more valuable, mint condition cards.

I’ve looking into PSA grading, and it looks like it should cost anywhere from $8-$20 on average to grade my cards.

I could conceivably afford to grade all my holos that are in NM or better condition, but I’m not sure that’s necessary. It rather not spend thousands of dollars just to figure out how much these cards that I don’t intend to sell are worth.

(P.S. I assume there isn’t much grading happening with SARS-COV-2 going around.)

I think if I could get away with a budget of $1000 for grading ($8 x100 bulk order from PSA plus a few more) that would be acceptable.

  1. Should I even grade the cards I don’t intend to sell? Is there any good incentive?

I’m definitely interested to find out which ones rate PSA 9-10, and it would help in determining the collection’s value (for curiosity’s sake and insurance claims)

  1. Would mint first edition holos from these sets (Jungle to Neo Gen) qualify for bulk grading?

  2. With hundreds to choose from, how would you all recommend narrowing that down to, let’s say, 100 or so graded cards?

Thank you!

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Hello. So first let me say I’m a rookie but I’m pretty knowledgeable. I’m in a similar situation. I have all first edition wotc holo’s. All varying from 5-9 grades but they are ungraded. I don’t plan to sell either. So basically my strategy is to not grade anything. If I want a PSa card of one I really like in let’s say a 9 than I just buy it already graded. Also once I finish collecting I plan to do a second set all in PSa 7-9 just for holding to later resell maybe 10-15-20 years from now. If you don’t plan to sell the main thing that would stick out is the psa cases provide good protection. All this grading cost is going to add up. Which will be less cards you can buy. Or less money on hand. Some cards even in PSa 9 still don’t sell for high prices. Examples would be Jumpluff. Steelix. Crobat. Etc they sell for generally less than $50 last time I checked even after grading. Ones that would make price go up a lot would be legendarys starters or very popular pokemon. Shinings crystal cards gold stars etc. Or anything 1st edition base set. At the end of the day its your choice so decide what you like and plan to do for best outcome. There’s nothing wrong with grading everything but it costs a lot. And sadly PSa 6 or lower basically means somehow the card is worth less value than ungraded to most people. Did I steer him in the right direction guys?

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Step 1 should be to establish a collecting goal and an expected budget for that goal. If you send off 100 cards and 3 of them get PSA 10, 27 of them get PSA 9 and the rest get PSA 8 or below, what’s the next step? Are you ok with a set that has variable grades? Do you plan on upgrading any of them? Would you have the budget to do so?

Another thing is many people are shocked at how good a card needs to be to obtain a PSA 10 or even a 9. Are you familiar with the grading scale at all? In general I would not send in any nonholos that didn’t have a shot at a PSA 10. For holos, I personally wouldn’t send on any that couldn’t at least get a PSA 8 for 1st ed and 9/10 for unlimited (obviously things like charizords may be exceptions). Of course if you’re just grading for yourself the numbers you pick are totally subjective but personally I’m not a fan of having the value of my graded cards be close to the cost of grading.

And yes, PSA is currently shut down and has a huge backlog so you certainly have time to figure out what to do. My advice is to figure out an end goal and work toward that rather than dropping $1k on grading and figuring out what to do after the fact. Accumulatimg experience will help guide you. You will always have the option to grade at a future date

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This is a reality good point that I had not considered. I could spend $800 on grading, or I could buy a couple really decent cards. Maybe it only makes sense to grade the cards I’m willing to trade.

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If you’re not concerned with selling buy ungraded cards and build some nice binders or put then in card savers etc. Or if you want some graded cards you could buy a ton of the more unpopular Pokemon in PSa 9 which I’m sure will eventually go up. Or buy 2 or 3 or whatever big hitters in PSa 9 or so depends on what cards

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One I bought that falls into that category is a PSa 9 1st edition Dark Crobat. Beautiful card too. I paid $50-$60 a few weeks to a month ago for it :slight_smile: or I bought a 1st edition Dark Typhlosion for $150 which has great potential. Others like Typhlosion #17 in a PSa 9 is a thousand bucks already so I wouldn’t advise that unless your deep into collecting goals

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Thank you for the advice. I am familiar with the PSA grading standards as described be the documentation, but not in practice.

Would it be fair to say that if a card has no imperfections then it’s PSA rating would be dependent on centering? Most of my Fossil, Gym (both), and Neo Genesis cards when straight from the booster box into my binder and have never been handled since.

For example, I spent some time checking out my 17/111 Neo Genesis Typhlosion and it looks to me like there are no scratches, no whitening of any kind, no smudges. The front appears to skew left of center. Should I be expecting this to grade PSA 8? 9? 10? (Understanding that I don’t have a keen eye, so may have missed something).

I totally agree with you that I wouldn’t want to grade anything that’s expected value approaches the grading cost.

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Straight from the pack your expectations for WOTC cards should be PSA 9 for holos and probably PSA 10 for nonholo which is one of the major reasons why PSA 10 WOTC holos carry a premium. As for the typhlosion, that card is plagued with holo lines/scratches and centering issues. Make sure you’re looking at the holo under a pretty intense light at different angles. Either way it sounds clean enough that if you were to do a submission, I’d definitely throw that one in

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Ok that’s fair. When you say “should be PSA 9” do you mean that most of them will be 9 or all of them? In other words, out of 10 such “straight from the pack” WOTC holo cards, how many could I expect (perhaps hope is more appropriate) to grade PSA 10? 0? 1?

I see, I was flummoxed at why the card was valued so high.

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What I mean is the expected condition from the pack is gonna be about a PSA 9. Gem mint cards from the pack are lucky. PSA 8s are also possible. The point I’m trying to make is that even if you kept your cards in perfect condition from when they were opened, one should still expect a majority of holos to grade less than PSA 10

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