So, you send in an SGC grading submission and receive a dreaded and unexpected "A" grade. Or maybe a card comes back from PSA not slabbed at all, and you wonder why. Unfortunately, understanding "A" grades isn't easy. And making sure your cards will be slabbed even if...
I'm always surprised when I see cards listed for sale at a discount due to surface wax. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for these deals just because I like cleaning them up! Surface wax removal is quick and easy, as you will see in this how-to. And the results can be really...
What do we mean by "rare"? "Rare." It's a word that gets tossed around often in vintage circles. Is rarity in the eye of the beholder? Is it set-dependent, or some kind of absolute? If only 10 known examples of a card exist, is it rare? How about 100? 1,000? In this...
(Disclosure: I will use Boca Card Subs in the example for this post, in part because I wrote this while preparing an actual card grading submission. Boca is a supporter of Cardhound Vintage but this is not a paid spot or promotional piece. I use Boca because in my...
(Disclosure: there is no paid content in this blog.) What’s the Boomer Bust? We have all heard the Boomer Bust theory: “Vintage sports card values will tank once all the Boomers are gone.” As a claim, it does have some logical appeal: the Boomers are the largest U.S....
I founded Cardhound after years of running vintage groups both large (50k+ members) and small (500+ members). Cardhound will not replace Facebook, eBay, or your other choice vintage sites and groups. But it can live alongside those resources and enrich your...
(Reader, be prepared: this post is a long way of asking a simple question. What is your favorite card in your collection? If you don't feel like reading about mine, then just leave your comment below.) Why We Collect We all collect for different reasons. Sometimes...
It's no secret that SGC has slowed a bit recently. Even prior to the announced sale to Collectors, SGC was in a slight backlog. Their explanation is that holiday traffic plus some modern specials caused a slowdown from the advertised 5-to-10 business day turnaround...
PSA and Kurt's: What Happened? It is "breaking news" on various outlets that PSA recently made the bold move to decertify cards after learning that, prior to submission, they had been "cleaned" or otherwise "treated" by Kurt of Kurt's Card Care. I have found the...
Hank Aaron, Joe Torre and My Mom (Editor’s note: Bob Coldeen has been a long-distance collector pal of mine for a few years, and I have always appreciated his many stories about how he acquired his autographs as a kid, including but not limited to while serving as...
