@loveyourimagination49 wrote:
Why aren’t you sending them in to get graded?
good question! i seriously considered it, but decided not to for 2 reasons...
1- Timing
This set has 86 cards in it. unless i am willing to spend 20 dollars PER CARD, i would need to use the monthly special or the bulk rate. that cost on a PSA 9/8 set would make sense, but not for this set.
the lowest price PSA offers now (they had rate increases) is 8 dollars per card if graded in bulk, but i would need to submit at least 100 cards to get that rate. the monthly special allows us to submit less than 100, but then it is 10 dollars per card. yet, the problem with either service is that now the bulk AND 'monthly special' turnaround times are 85 business days! given that there tend to be about 20 business days per month (they subtract out holidays, too), that is about 4 1/2 months before the cards come back--including shipping times.
It is truly worth the wait for the higher-grade cards, but not for these. PSA is working to bring the turnaround times down, but that is the timing for now.
2- Cost
As i explained in the listing, these would not grade quite high enough--after expenses. a collector would do well to grade and keep them, since the cards are likely to go up in value. but for selling (i need the money now), i would eat up most profits on grading.
as stated, i would expect them to grade between Near-Mint (7) and Excellent (5) in a PSA grade. for the sake of calculations, let's say the cards all graded in the middle -- PSA 6, which is the EX-NM defined PSA grade. then cards in this set would be worth about 8-30 dollars each, where a complete set will not be as valuable as the individual cards. (yet, the work of listing and shipping 86 cards makes it easy to accept the lower prices realized by selling them all in one set).
I actually don't know if a complete PSA 5-7 set has ever sold on ebay. whether one has or not, it is unique enough that it could possibly garner a premium price. but, that's a gamble. obviously, as a seller, between the grading fee, the shipping costs (to and from PSA with insurance), the ebay fees and the paypal fees... cost per card will average around 10-14 dollars plus all the work of entering them into the PSA system/paperwork, sleeving them, getting them boxed up and shipped. since these are almost all my own cards, the cost of the card itself is minimal...but you can add in about 5-10 dollars for those cards i had to buy--as i had to pay a bit more to ensure the cards were of the quality i needed for this set.
if it wasn't so much work, it would prob be worth a try. and lots of collectors would surely love to have an all-PSA graded set--even if it is a lower-end set.
but, if i can sell this one as-is, i will. it would save me the grief and would save the collector money by not having to pay for a graded set. the buyer can always decide later to send in for grading.
similar sets of this caliber (non-graded) have sold on ebay for between 750-950 dollars. i am hoping for somewhere in the middle of that. i have invested so much already in graded sets...this is a reprieve to be able to not have to do all that work! LOL
