SGC Announces it will Professionally Cut and Grade Cards from Uncut Sheets So, I was minding my own business today, doing some work on my newly-established Dwight Gooden card collection when I received an interesting email. Said email was from SGC and I typically get messages from every month for the monthly specials. But a closer look revealed something else
Skip the price guides – pricing pre-war cards is an inexact science Todd Lichti was not a good basketball player. Well, okay, he was pretty good because he made it to the NBA, and anyone in the NBA is amazing. But comparatively to other NBA players, he was not great. He was a first-round pick but lasted only a few
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The National announced its hosting sites through 2023 The National Sports Collectors Convention was held in Cleveland, Ohio this year. If you didn’t get to go, you can (sort of) relive the madness through me here, here, and here. The biggest event for baseball cards has recently had a very much Midwestern feel to it. That, for the most part,
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Strip Cards Receive Numerical Grades … But Is That Correct? One of more interesting discussions when it comes to graded cards centers around strip issues. Strip cards, in general, are those cut from uncut strips or sheets. They’re generally more affordable than tobacco or caramel cards and the real benefit to them is they are without a doubt, legitimate early
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Jefferson Burdick is known for creating the American Card Catalog (ACC), the standard book in the hobby that helps us to categorize early trading cards. But while that is his claim to fame to most, Burdick himself was an avid collector. His massive collection, in fact, is on display at the Met in New York. But while Burdick collected cards, he
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Rookie cards are among the most sought after cards by collectors. When the rookie craze began exactly, I couldn’t tell you. But I know but the time I was collecting, it had already started. I jumped into collecting during the late 1980s and that time, folks were spending their hard-earned money on guys named Gregg Jefferies and Ben McDonald. Didn’t
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When trade cards became popular in the 1800s, few could have imagined their future importance. But those issues coupled with the emergence of American sports came together to provide the earliest sports cards and give the card collecting hobby its origins. What are Trade Cards? Trade cards, quite simply, were a mode of advertising for businesses, products, events, and all
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A Few Tips to Collecting Sets in the Pre-War Era There are all sorts of collectors out there. Some focus on individual players or teams. Some have a regional focus. Others are into type collecting, the art of trying to find a card from as many different types as possible (or some variation of that). But since I got into
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I have to preface this by saying, I’m not a huge graded card guy. As a set collector, my cards are often of the lower-grade variety. And I’ve generally handled enough cards in my time to be able to see/feel when something isn’t right with a card in one of my sets. That’s nothing against graded cards and, as I’ve
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Finding the first cards of early athletes can prove challenging Lots of collectors consider themselves to be rookie card enthusiasts. The idea of finding a player’s first card is often a lot of fun. Collecting rookie cards of modern players isn’t too hard. The biggest ‘problem’ is that rookie cards of baseball players these days usually come out long before
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Commence Shenanigans Against my better judgment I’m doing this for another day. Beyond that? Ehhh, I don’t know. I can only sing and dance for so long. If you missed yesterday’s post, you better start here. We’re onto Day 2 if you’re confused already. The National was open yesterday but it was more like a cold open. Dudes were riding
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What is this? Living in nearby Pittsburgh, I had every intention on going to the National this year. I’d never been to one and, as I’m only about two hours away, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Things, though, were just too hectic and getting away for even a day wasn’t too reasonable. I could have done it but I’d
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