I recently got hold of these three E-Reader promo cards in NM condition. They belong to the Gamecube game Pokémon Channel. I’m wondering if they are worth grading from a collecting standpoint, rather than a monetary one. I don’t want to grade them for profit, but I also lack an emotional attachment since they are neither Starmie nor Dragalge related. Nevertheless, I tend to send in cool or rare cards if they make for interesting collectibles. Would you send them in?
Front:
slabs take up a massive amount of space, they are heavy and when you just want to look through your cards it is a lot more effort. Some of my most expensive cards are in slabs, but some of my most expensive cards are just in toploader binder and I honestly prefer that as I can just look at them all at once and not worry too much about it
Just think about the difference between trying to look at 18 cards in a binder vs 18 cards in slabs. Or like the difficulty of taking slabs to an event vs a binder. Slabs are good for things were you really want to focus on the condition or for display or where you want items to have a premium feeling. Binders are better for curation and focusing on the card instead of the condition.
For a long time I also had a “grade everything” mindset because if you like the card it makes sense to give it a premium treatment. But when your slab count starts to hit over 1000, the “premium” effect is not quite the same. I graded a lot of neat oddity cards like errors or cards with a story or other weird stuff I liked, similar to OP. But I found these just ended up in a “miscellaneous” pile and I never looked at them often. Eventually, it just felt better to move them into curated binders, like one for errors, one for random interesting stuff. Easier to flip though, the condition wasn’t really relevant, saved space, could bring it to irl events. Just a net positive
It ultimately depends how you want them in your collection. I graded my Jirachi painting to display it on my desk with my Gamecubes since I plan on shiny hunting the Channel Jirachi one day. I graded it so I’d be able to see it more often vs sitting in my binder. I try not to grade it if I can’t display it
As a e-reader (+) collector I have the urge to just reply “do it!” as soon as I saw the subject line lol
TBH though Channel cards you showed in your post are quite common so you don’t have to send in if you’re not really into them. If you pull out Australian copies of those I would have told you to send them in immediately as the Australian copies are the real rare ones.
