13 Card-Grading Secrets Only Vets Know!
Getting your sports cards graded is awesome, but there are some things you should know before submitting your cards!
Each “Happy Hobby Sports Card Newsletter” pack has a handful of great sports card subjects, helping sports card collectors working with limited budgets – like me!
This Week’s Newsletter Highlights! –
🏈 ⚾ 13 CARD GRADING SECRETS ONLY VETS KNOW!
⚾ SPORTS CARD TRIVIA!
🏈 ⚾ 🏀 IF PATRICK IMHOFF BECAME CEO OF FANATICS!
🏈 ⚾ 🏀 REMEMBERING THE BEST ROOKIE CARDS FROM 1981 IN EACH SPORT!
🏀 NEW HAPPY HOBBY ZOO MEMBER
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⚾🏀🏈 13 CARD GRADING SECRETS ONLY VETS KNOW!
You might know some of these card-grading secrets – you might even know most! But we’re trying to help both beginners and veterans with this newsletter and our YouTube channel, so let us know in the comments if there are some secrets you know that others don’t!
1. A PSA 8 of a Modern Card is Worse Than Raw
Why worse? The value might be the same as raw, but if you choose to crack the slab, you risk damaging the card. So a card without a slab/grade of 8 is actually a better thing.
2. Graded Cards are Climbing
GemRate.com shows that graded cards are climbing at a pretty good rate (PSA is +21% year over year), which means there are more slabbed cards out there, pushing values down. Buying pregraded cards is sometimes a better investment than buying raw and paying for grading.
3. CGC is Growing Fast, But SGC is Now 2nd in Sports Card Grading
CGC is the spot for TCG card grading, and PSA leads everyone in everything. But SGC is the second-most popular grading company for sports cards.
4. After a Major Card Release is When Most Cards From That Sport Get Graded
Early birds, flippers and big card stores send in tons of cards to get graded so they can be first to the eBay market with their cards. If you wait a couple months, you can buy those same graded cards at a much lower price.
5. Baseball Rules First Half of the Year, But Basketball Cards Rule the Second Half
Among the athletes with the most cards sent in to PSA for grading each month, baseball players rule the first six months, but there are more basketball players among the top 10 in the second half of the year.
6. SGC is Known For Vintage Cards
Sending a 2024 Topps card to SGC for grading might give you less resale value than PSA, but older cards in SGC slabs are much more competitive.
7. Older Labels Can Bring Discounts
Whether it’s PSA (without the lighthouse logo), SGC (with the green labels) or even CGC (with the green CSG labels), you can often get cards at a cheaper price because of those older labels.
8. HGA Offers Horizontal Slabs and Custom Labels
Hybrid Grading Approach (HGA) is a newer grading service, starting during the pandemic, and it hasn’t caught fire like the other companies, but they have some beautiful slabs and cool labels. My favorite thing about them is their horizontal slabs and team color label choices. I’ve sent 10 different landscape cards in to them to get graded, and I’m working on building a special horizontal card display for them! But they’re for my PC, so if you are trying to resell them, then you’ll want to use one of the other grading companies. Unfortunately, you have to wait for them to start accepting new orders again, as they are temporarily on pause.
9. The Real Cost For Grading is Different Than What You Think
A grading service will tell you it costs $19.99 to grade a card. But that’s not really your cost. That’s just the grading fee. You’ll want to also include the shipping costs they’ll charge to send the slabs back to you, and you’ll want to include the postage/shipping costs you’ll pay when you send the cards to them.
10. Pop Reports are Wrong
A card’s population report on PSA or SGC might tell you one thing, but the reality is, they don’t know the true answer. No one knows the percentage, but there are many people who are unhappy with a grade, so they will “crack” the slab, remove the card, and resubmit either to the same company or to a different one.
11. SGC 9.5 Cards Could Be PSA 10s!
Since PSA doesn’t do a half-grade between 9s and 10s, an SGC 9.5 card could in fact be a PSA 10 if they round up. But, if you crack a 9.5 and send it in, PSA could also end up rounding down to make it a PSA 9. This same effect doesn’t work for 8.5 cards, since PSA does in fact use 8.5 grades.
12. SGC Grades Autographed Cards at No Additional Cost
While PSA still charges if you want both the card and autograph graded (we’re talking about an autographed card that came from the manufacturer), SGC will grade that card for the same price as a non-autographed card, and give you an auto grade of 9 or 10.
13. Baseball Prospect Fans Love BGS
Just like how SGC is known for vintage cards, Beckett is known for baseball prospect card grading, like for 1st Bowman cards.
Let us know in the comments if there are some card-grading secrets you know that I don’t know!
🏈 FOOTBALL CARD TRIVIA!
Send me the answer to this question – you could win this free card from me!
What was the year Topps didn’t produce football cards for the first time since 1955?
Email your answer to gonoscards@gmail.com and you can win this 1986 Topps John Elway card! Rather than take the first person who answers it right, I’m going to do a random drawing of all the people who answer this question before midnight, Friday, November 8.
We had TWO winners in the past week for our past two trivia questions!
Previous Question No. 1 from Oct. 31: What was the first set of baseball cards to use color photographs?
Answer: 1953 Bowman (Here’s a great article on it from 2019.)
Prize: 1970 Topps Jim Palmer!
Winner: Spicy Bear (Dan M.) got it right, among a few other guessers! His name was randomly drawn as the winner, though. Congrats, Spicy! (We got a bunch of wrong answers, also.
Previous Question No. 2 from Nov. 7: Jacob Bowman would go on to create Bowman baseball cards, but what was the first famous set of baseball cards (including the year) he manufactured?
Prize: 1971 Topps Al Kaline!
Winner: Announced in Next Newsletter! Get your guesses in by midnight Nov. 15!
🏈 ⚾ 🏀IF PATRICK IMHOFF BECAME CEO OF FANATICS: #17 of 23
Imhoff breaks down all the moves Fanatics should make, just two years away from when they unify the baseball, football and basketball card licenses in 2026. He shared his first move in our June 20 newsletter, and he’ll continue to share more of these going forward.
No. 17 – FIX BOWMAN PRODUCTS
This initiative would be focusing on three specific products:
Bowman Draft
Bowman Baseball
Bowman Chrome
When I look at Bowman, the appeal and draw is typically with the prospect cards. The pro-level MLB cards are good, but they are not what most collectors are looking for. What I would consider would be to slightly alter the three products into the following:
Bowman Draft Series 1: All prospects, with the focus on 1st Bowman cards from players selected in the most recent MLB Amateur Draft.
Bowman Draft Series 2: All prospects as well, while focusing on 1st Bowman cards from international signings, and any drafted players left out of Series 1.
Bowman Chrome: A mix of MLB rookie and veteran cards along with prospect cards, including any 1st Bowman cards that were missed.
All products would be sold as jumbo boxes, hobby boxes, or Hobby Lite boxes, along with blasters.
You can subscribe to Patrick Imhoff’s Substack Newsletter here, and get his Thrifty Thursday picks!
🏈 ⚾ 🏀 REMEMBERING THE BEST ROOKIE CARDS FROM 1981 IN EACH SPORT!
In 1981, Indiana Jones was hating snakes, Rick Springfield was falling in love with Jessie’s Girl, and Gargamel was making trouble for The Smurfs! Here are your top sports rookie cards from 1981!
Baseball:
Basketball:
Football:
Hockey:
🏈 NEW HAPPY HOBBY ZOO MEMBER
Here’s our latest Artificial Intelligence re-creation of one of the most iconic sports cards ever — the 1988 Fleer Michael Jordan All-Star card.
Is there a classic card you’d like us to get AI to re-create with an animal replacement? Let us know!
Coming Next Week!
⚾🏈🏀 9 TRICKS EBAY SELLERS USE THAT WE HATE!
🏈 ⚾ 🏀 SPORTS CARD TRIVIA!
🏈 ⚾ 🏀 IF PATRICK IMHOFF BECAME CEO OF FANATICS
⚾ CARDS THAT MAKE US HAPPY
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