Following. This is a great thread. My nephew is 15 and CRAZY about card collecting. I had been out of it for years and he started to tell me about the PSA process and how everything is worthless until it is graded. Really quite a racket the grading companies have created... $$ to get the card "assessed" otherwise it is worthless (generally). But that is the state of the hobby now. I have a ton of 70s cards and a bunch of hockey and baseball, but it would cost a small fortune to get them all graded.
Best of luck - I'll be following this!
(on a side note he loves Bobby Dalbac and has a ton of autographed cards... I'm too soft to tell him Bobby isn't long for this team...)
I think generally people overgrade a lot of cards in terms of what gets sent in relative to value. The ones Joe has be en doing all make sense to me for different reasons (personally I wouldn't have graded the Mookie with the damage but the WIlliams are higher end vintage and the more recent stuff are autos of premier players, I get it), but I feel like a lot of the sports card influencer types really push grading on cards that have no business having it. Some of it is personal interest, some of it is likely just bragging rights or speculation, but it's overkill for most cards IMO.
For me, I don't get much graded if ever, but generally I follow these rules - at least one needs to be true - ideally more than one
- If the card gets the grade I think it would, the net value would be higher (raw + grading costs < graded card)
- I want it slabbed for my personal collection for whatever reason
- It's a card that has a real number of reprints, customs, and/or fakes present in the market
- There is a sale and I'm speculating on a card's value increasing in the future*
Like, just to take an example from your universe - the 1972 Clemente "In Action" card. A late era Clemente subset card but still one of his more iconic and affordable cards - high end player from a well loved set. Ungraded copies generally range $2-$20 on Ebay. Let's say a raw copy is $20 mid-grade (ungraded is cheaper usually but this only works if a card has a chance at something in that mid-range and I saw those mid-range type cards around there). Graded, a PSA 5 of that card is $45ish, a PSA6 is 60ish. It costs ~25 or so to grade a card (with cost per card reducing with more cards sent. Your value is eaten up by the grading process - unless you get to that 6-7+ range. On modern or ultra-modern cards, unless it's something that is particularly difficult to grade (thick stock cards, 90s foil cards), I probably wouldn't send in a card unless I think it's pulling in an 8+ and meeting one of those above rules. I posted a Tony Gwynn 1992 Elite in the other thread. I don't think I'm ever going to grade it but that would need to be a PSA9 to justify the cost of grading.
Ungraded cards do sell for less than higher end graded cards but there's a spectrum and a lor of buyers are willing to trust their eyes on condition. Don't feel pressured into grading much. I think if you have cards that are hugely desirable (think high end HoFer, HoF Rookies, etc.) or are in absolutely pristine condition (the cards are like half a century old, if they are minty fresh they're worth something) it could be worth it but ungraded is just as fun and interesting IMO. I think about 85% of my 1953 Bowman set are ungraded cards and I only felt like two needed to be graded due to the danger of reprints. The rest were just the right deals (and in some cases I think a low grade brought the price down).
All of this to say, a LOT of people paid PSA 30 bucks and waited a year to grade their 2020Topps Luis Robert rookie cards to get this return
Luis Robert #392 Prices [Rookie] | 2020 Topps | Baseball Cards (sportscardspro.com)
*On the last bullet, sometimes PSA will offer a holiday sale or, like, right now SGC has $9 2023 Topps grading. That'd probably get me to send in some cards I'd otherwise keep raw, but then I see people sending in cards that are dollar box cards and it's like...what's the point of this?