[rfardella]

Im prob gonna be asking a dumb ? that common sense should be my answer.. If I have some good cards that aren't worth a lot yet (example brett favre rookie worth 10 bucks) wouldn't it be stupid for me to spend money on grading,shipping etc. My main question is, is it worth to grade cards and spend the money if there worth at least a certain amount? thank you

[y2hood]

I won't tell you what's good for the entire community, I'll tell you what I've done and learned with grading:

Mistakes I've made:

Back in the day (2009) when BGS was running weekly specials I almost ran myself broke. For instance, the Steelers/Cardinals super bowl they ran a special for any cards by any player that played for those 2 teams at any point in their career, $5 a card (or something silly low). I sent in so many cards that had no business being graded. Matt Leinart Fleer base rookies? Sent in three of them. Limas Sweed cards? Sent them in. Josh McCown jersey cards? Sent those in as well. Random Ben Roethisberger base cards? Yep, all sent in. Easily invested with shipping at least $8.00 a card. I didn't check for surface problems, centering issues or anything and wound up with 50 something graded cards and easily 20 of them were 8s or less. There are cards from that batch that I still consistently try to sell in various avenues. I'll never recoup the losses from that. One of the cards in the batch has a BV less than $2 and even though it's a 9.5 I doubt I could really get BV for it.

So point I'm trying to make: Be selective on what you send in.

*MY* general rule of thumb now that I've slowly whittled my PC collection down to mostly PC cards is if the card's book value does not exceed the cost to grade then there's no point. If I paid a hefty sum for a card you can almost guarantee I'm getting it graded.

It's important to note I grade primarily for preservation and presentational purposes nowadays. Without igniting the "grade a 1/1" debate, I do. If I'm paying $100+ for a card you are darn right I'll drop another $20 or so for the best protection I can get.

As far as your Brett Favre rookie goes, I have a few of his rookies from various sets and I did grade them all. All of them but one graded low. I don't know if that's a testament to the set or if I had a bad batch of cards, just giving you that little tidbit.

So I guess to summarize, when I'm getting my order together, if I am sending in 10 cards for grading with whatever the deal happens to be and I've calculated a total of (for argument's sake) $100, if any card in that list is worth less than $100/10 ($10) then I yank it. I *HAVE* (and still have some in my to be graded box) graded cards with a book value of $10, but they would get pushed back to a future order where I'm sending in either a larger number of cards or a cheaper per card price.

Hope I wasn't too wordy and that I was coherent, I just woke up. Plus I didn't think this was a simple yes/no matter

[linstead collection]

Im prob gonna be asking a dumb ? that common sense should be my answer.. If I have some good cards that aren't worth a lot yet (example brett favre rookie worth 10 bucks) wouldn't it be stupid for me to spend money on grading,shipping etc. My main question is, is it worth to grade cards and spend the money if there worth at least a certain amount? thank you

Not a dumb question at all!

I will not be able to add much that has not already been said, but my opinion it is what is important to you. A Favre RC could be worth much more than $10 to you, therefore grade it. If it is MINT grade it, as graded Farve will be worth what you spend on it.
I grade many cards that have a BV less than $1, but I am also a Set Registry collector, not just a big $/Star collector.
so it depends on you are collecting.

hope this helps!

[y2hood]

I am also a Set Registry collector, not just a big $/Star collector.

I didn't even think of that angle. Very good point and thanks for bringing it up.

[dmasci]

The other thing to consider is not what the BV is for a raw card but what is the BV for that same card with a high grade? You have to get good at judgeing what your card will be graded at, after a while you know if it's gonna be a 9 or even 9.5. With cards that are from the 80s for example when the market was flooded the BV may be quite low for a raw card but if it grades high it's BV can be more than 10x the raw BV.

So it really depends on the card and the condition to me