I just wanted to know your experience buying NM/M holos from the big sellers such as Troll and Toad, Collector’s Cache,etc…
Which kind of grade is to be expected here, 7-8? 8-9? 10s have to be one in a million for holos(wotc), but do you have any luck buying singles from these places and having them graded?
Sorry if my question is a little vague, but this is my first time doing this and I don’t really know what to expect. I pretty much paid PSA 6 price for 2 copies of the card I wanted so it was a no brainer. Here’s hoping for a couple of 8s, or maybe a 9 which is my current most wanted.
It will vary by store but most of the time I’ve been pretty happy with the cards I receive from T&T. Collector’s Cache have been top notch and they are one of my favorite retail outlets.
You have to figure that these stores don’t have a “Mint” card rating. So you can’t expect to receive a Mint card every time. But it does happen. I’ve purchased numerous cards that have been received in mint condition. But I’ve also received a fair number of cards that have white marks and foil scratches. In the end, luck of the draw. Just wish T&T would ship in penny sleeves when you buy expensive cards.
Thanks. I heard that about T&T, I think some people actually buy a pack of sleeves and ask them to sleeve their cards. LOL
I made an order at Collectors Cache. Shadowless Chanseys at $25 per. I can’t really go wrong here even if they’d end up grading 7, but I’d obviously prefer them to be closer to the Mint range.
I’ve bought a ton of WOTC cards from T&T CC and other places online. Cards from big online sellers that are claimed ‘NM’ are going to be PSA 6.5-7 on average. Sometimes you’ll get a nice 8. 9s and 10s are virtually nonexistent. It makes sense. If these companies had PSA 8-10 worthy cards, they’d bulk grade and resell on their own, not offload them for $20 through snail mail.
I know on the newer stuff it’s not hard to get 9-10 cards as there’s plenty of product and even the 10s are fairly cheap, but these specific cards were marked as NM/M, not LP or worse like most of the older product they sell.
My experience with T&T was pretty poor concerning NM Pokemon cards of older sets. 75% of all the cards I have received from older sets were not even close to NM, but closer to LP. Don’t bother purchasing from third party affiliated merchants because the cards were in terrible condition when arrived. However, the customer service at T&T is excellent, and were very understanding with my frustration.
These companies don’t always have time to thoroughly inspect every single card that comes through them to see if they’re 9-10 worthy and then may not want to wait 3 months for them to come back from grading them. I’ve bought many “NM-M” cards (crystals, shining, gold stars, etc) from big companies that came back PSA 9-10’s. I’ve also had some that were PSA 6-7 worthy as well. It’s hit or miss but you can definitely still get some mint cards from these companies.
I’m expecting cards in the 7-8 range, which is roughly what @jj1 suggests I should be getting.
I’d be surprised they pay much more than $5 per holos, maybe $20 on Blastoise/Venusaur and $50 Charizard so I don’t think they really care. They don’t even have Base cards on their current buylist. lol
@pokematt That’s what I was thinking. Of course if the card looks absolutely flawless they’ll put it aside and send it to PSA, but there’s not much incentive to grade a PSA 8 card. Most of the Shadowless 8s go for about $40 graded and they sit on ebay for a while tbh… So if you can just flip it for $25-30, it’s faster cashflow. Chansey is a special case, but I wouldn’t buy the other holos at that price even if they were 100% guaranteed 8s.
Some of these companies have massive inventories. They’re not going to spend 6 figures on grading every month when it’s not really worth it. They’re all about moving product and getting a quick cashflow.
Ive ordered a few cards from TCG player recently. All from newer sets. I order from the sellers that have 1000+ ratings. Most of the cards were 8+ I would guess. A few are probably 9. I never planned on grading them when purchasing.
They were all sleeved. A lot of them were shipped in top loaders. I was pleasantly surprised.
I did have one card that had some odd denting on the back. It was substantial. TCG player refunded my money.
I am very happy with their service. I will be ordering from them again.
Same here. Got a Base set Blastoise and Fossil Dragonite holo from a highly reviewed seller with reasonable prices. The holo portion on each was in pretty good shape and whitening was kept to a minimum. I just ordered another batch of holos to complete my base set binder so we’ll see how they turn out. Used a wide range of sellers this time around, but all highly rated.
Honestly I think it’s about luck, I’ve had cards I bought from Troll and Toad come back as 10s and 9s but most of the cards that I’ve bought have some kind of a flaw. There are cards that look NM or Mint when you first look at them, but when you take a closer look there might be scratches, edgewear, indents, or even some strange dirt. So it’s better to buy from them and not think about grading until you have them on hand, that way you might get lucky with a minty card or two and you won’t get disappointed about it.
It’s all luck. Like I said I’m pretty sure these companies don’t bother grading cards themselves ever so when they get new cards in they quickly look at the front and back and determine whether they’re nm-m or played. I’d say in most cases they don’t ever look for scratches, dents or even creases. I’ve ordered “NM” cards from T&T that came with creases and I had to return. Like others have said already, I would expect to get PSA 6-8 condition cards from these sites, but you can get lucky and get gem cards as well.
I think RhymeStyle on YouTube gets a lot of cards from Troll & Toad graded with moderate success. It’s not the best avenue but it’s also not the worst.
So I received the 2 Chanseys. They’re definitely NM, I’d give them a 7-8(both 8s IMO). So when it comes to Collector’s Cache, I think they advertise their cards properly and the prices are sometimes good for binder collectors and such.
