Baseball Card Values: Grading & Condition

Video Transcript

"Previously we were talking about grading companies. And when they do grade it makes the card like a commodity so it has an absolute value and it's not a subjective call. So the company that does it, I mentioned PSA is one of them, they put out a monthly publication and, as you can see, Mantle is the guy. But let me tell you some of the things they look for as they grade them. There's some specific criteria. Of course condition. If you see something that's bent you know it's damaged. If it's obviously damaged that brings it right down to in between twos and threes in terms of the grading scale. But on a card like this, and this is a fascinating fact, but it has to do with the way the card is centered when they cut it. I always found this so fascinating because it's not like you can do anything about it. You either have a centered card or you don't. And this particular Mickey Mantle, if you take a close look you can see that there's a bigger margin on this side than there is on that side and that is a serious debit to the value of your card. So serious collectors, they may start with a Mantle. That's why he's graded a 4. That's probably the fundamental reason he's graded a 4. And so they will start with this card and then they will work up. But centering, it's probably the first thing, after bad condition that I look for on a card, obvious bad condition. Centering is number 2 that I look for."