5 Steps to Prep & Submit Your Cards for PSA Grading! 📦💰

If you're new to grading or if you want to learn some great tips or tricks, then you must watch this video because we're going to teach you how to tell if it's worth grading your cards, what grading companies you should use, how to assess the condition of your cards, how to clean your cards, how to create your grading submission, and how to safely ship your cards away for grading. Hello, sports card investors, and welcome to what is going to be an awesome video today. and I am joined by one of the preeminent grading experts, Joe Davis from Got Baseball Cards. Joe, welcome to the show. >> Great to be back. >> It is great to have you here. If you've watched our show over the years, you've seen Joe a bunch of times on the show because this man has processed literally hundreds of thousands of cards. You think we might even be in the millions in terms >> We may be there at this point. maybe in the millions in terms of the number of cards that got baseball cards and Joe and his team have submitted for grading. So, there is nobody better to take us through all of the steps to successfully assess and submit cards for grading than this man. And we're going to jump right in. So Joe, my first question for you, how do you determine, how do they out there determine when they're looking at a binder of cards or a stack of cards and top loaders or cards that they just pulled out of a box, which ones are worth considering for grading? >> Well, first of all, you got to start with value. You want to look at the cards, make use market movers or use whatever tool they use to see what graded values could be. Because before you have to worry about will this card grade a nine or a 10 or whatever. First you want to see what is it worth in that in that grade. So you want to start with that first to evaluate is it worth putting the money into this card because it is a big investment putting the money into grading to hopefully achieve a better you know a good result on the back end. So we start with value whether you know whether we're assisting clients with that or we're looking at our own collection of things we've purchased. That is >> is there a rule of thumb? Is it, you know, a card that's maybe under a certain value isn't really worth considering and a card that's over a certain value is something you should maybe always consider? >> Well, I I would say uh our threshold has gone up because of the cost of grading has gone up over the years. I think a few years ago when we discussed this topic, I said typically $50 is our cut off. We now typically look a little higher than that, more in the $60 $70 range to feel like it's going to be worth putting the $20 and change into it to grade it in the first place. >> And you're when you say like $60 or $70, that's what the card would be worth if it came back graded gem mint 10 from PSA, for example. >> Well, it's going to vary whether you're looking at modern or vintage. Okay? You know, so if we're looking at a collection, we'll try to pinpoint what we estimate the grade is going to be and therefore what the resale value will be in that grade and then we make that determination. Yes, if you're talking modern ultramodern cards, obviously you're shooting for tens or nines worst case scenario. So you've got to look at what's a nine or a 10 going to bring and then decide does it merit being graded, you know, but starting point is value. >> There you go. And a free way to do that, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, you can download the Sports Card Investor app. That's completely free. And the Sports Card Investor app will let you look up the sales history of millions of cards. Or if you want to get an even larger database, you can get Market Movers. And you can go right into a tool like that. You can type in the name of what type of card you have, the player, the set, the year, and you can see sales results come up in different conditions. So you can look at what that card would be worth if it got a PSA 10, if it got a PSA 9, etc. And so I assume Joe, if you're if you're looking at a card that maybe somebody pulled out of a box from 2025 and they're looking this up on one of those on uh the Sports Card Investor app or Market Movers and they're saying that like a PSA 10 of that card is currently selling for maybe around $40 or around $50, that's when you would probably say it may not be worth submitting that card for grading because when you figure that the grading fee is going to be 20some dollars, you know that the there's not maybe enough money to be made from getting a 10 for it to really be worthwhile. >> Yeah, you've got to weigh risk versus reward. And so if your highest return is only going to be slightly above the cost of grading, it doesn't necessarily make sense to put the money into the grading in the first place. Yeah. >> So you're better just to sell the card raw, you know, and move on and you hold off for other cards that are going to have a better return. But conversely, if let's say you have a a card that you find out raw the card's worth $100 and if it were to get a PSA 10, that card could be worth between maybe $3 and $400. At that point, the $20 you're going to spend or the 20some dollars you're going to spend for grading starts to seem like that's very worth it. >> Correct. If your card checks out conditionally as having an opportunity, if you assess the card, and we're going to get into that in just a moment, how to assess a card to ensure it has an opportunity to actually get the type of grade that you would like to get. >> Correct. >> You manage you mentioned vintage is a little different. Sometimes with vintage, even getting a low grade like a PSA 2 or a PSA 3 can be very valuable because that means that the card has now at least at a minimum authenticated. >> Correct. Uh there are many times we recommend grading low-grade vintage just because of the player just because like take Mickey Manel for instance. There are counterfeits on every mantel card out there. I mean I I've literally had clients come in with boxes full of counterfeits. They had no clue it was mantel cards throughout the 60s that were all counterfeit. So often just getting those authenticated is a big important step to take regardless of grade. Uh, and of course the higher the dollar the card, higher the value of the card, the more it makes sense to have it slabbed regardless of condition just to help authenticate it and to authenticate that it hasn't been altered in some way. >> Right. And we're going to spend a lot of this video talking about submitting cards to PSA because PSA as we sit here at the end of 2025, PSA has has very much been the market leader this year with the both the number of cards submitted and then also the value that you know those cards get on the secondary market. But there are other grading options than PSA. >> Yes. When should somebody consider one of the other companies whether it be back at BGS or CGC or SGC? >> Well, for instance, SGC is still for us a great secondary alternative to PSA. When clients come in and they they need the card back quicker that they want to get it resold in the next 6 weeks, 8 weeks, whatever, I'll tell them, well, right now PSA is averaging about four months on the bulk service. So if they have vintage SGC is always our second option for vintage. Uh when it comes to TCG right now CGC has really raised the bar and you know the the demand for CGC graded gaming cards has really picked up. So they're a great alternative to PSA right now. BGS of course still has the shot at the black label 10. And BGS right now has better turnaround than PSA or CGC, at least from what we're seeing. So therefore, BGS is often a really good option on modern cards as well right now because you do have that shot at black label pristine cards which can bring a big premium, >> right? And then that's on on the grading scale. That's a little bit of a difference between some of these companies, right? The Beckett BGS grading scale has really three levels of a 10 or or I should say two levels of a 10 and it has a 95. Its 95 grade is considered gem mint which is what PSA labels as a 10. But then Beckett also has a pristine 10 and then a black label 10 with a black label meaning every element of the card all four subgrades are all perfect. >> Correct. Yeah. Four 10. four 10 which is extremely difficult to achieve >> but if you achieve it it becomes very very valuable. >> Yeah we recently got back a large number of pristine tens and not one of them was a black label. Okay. So yeah it just because you get pristines doesn't mean they're black label. >> Yeah that can become very very difficult. Uh Beckett also has subgrades unlike the other companies that we mentioned. So if somebody prefers to get the individual grades for the four elements of the card, so you can see how surface compared to corners compared to uh edges compared to centering. Becket gives you that advantage which which I personally like when it comes to thicker cards because when you are dealing with a thick card like a rookie patch auto that has a a patch of the you know the jersey within the card often times those cards grade lower because of the fact that there's more cuts in the surface. there's there's additional windows created. So, the card has more edges and additional >> room for something to go wrong in the card manufacturing process. And so, if it's a card that maybe isn't 100% perfect, um I like the subgrades which can show like, yeah, maybe there's some edge issues because of the fact that they had to cut additional edges into the card to display the jersey, >> but the corners are still, you know, perfect. The, you know, the um surface is still perfect. The centering is still perfect, >> right? Yeah, we do see that and and there are certain collectors who still BGS used to be the king as we we've had this discussion many times, but uh they still have their place in the grading hierarchy and there are those who still love Becket for love BGS for that reason. They know exactly why their card got the grade that it got. Yeah. >> And they love to know that and then if it gets a low grade at least they know which of the four quadrants, you know, was was lower. Yeah. >> And with with all of that said, there's reasons to consider all the different grading companies, but PSA, undoubtedly, as we sit here at the end of 2025, is the king. >> Their cards are commanding the highest resale values on the secondary market. A PSA 10 is going to outsell the equivalent grade, which in Beckett's case would be a 9.5. Um, and it's going to outsell your your CGC10. It's going to outsell your SGC10 in terms of market value. Um, and the grading numbers, the millions of cards that are going to PSA show PSA's power right now in the sports card market, and they've really worked their way into the number one preference of most collectors who are submitting cards for grading. >> Yeah. They're still 10x every other company. Yeah. So, in terms of volume each month, even though like CGC has has moved up dramatically lately, they're still doing about a tenth of what PSA is. So that just shows how dominant PSA still is in the industry. >> Yeah. So it it is definitely a stark difference, but there is good reason to consider all of the different grading options. So now that we've given you a little taste of what cards to grade from a value perspective and also what grading company to consider, we want to get into the nitty-gritty of evaluating your card so you can assess what grade they will likely get. We're going to dive into that now. All right, Joe. When assessing a card to determine its condition, to determine if it's even worth submitting to grading or not, what is the first element you look at? >> Well, I have some painful lessons in my years in the hobby, and the first thing I learned is centering. Okay. Because that's the easiest to catch because uh many many years ago, I was a huge Tony Gwyn investor, you might say. I was buying large quantities of Tony Gwen rookies and I would send them in and my first huge batch I sent to PSA back in 1998. I got back a lot of them that were graded OC and I was like, "What in the world is wrong with these cards?" And then immediately I'm like, "Oh yeah, corners are great. Everything else is great, but the centering was off." So now I instinctively as soon as someone hands me a card in our shop to examine, I'm like, "Oh, your centering's off. Hand it back. Don't want to grade this. Centering's off." And that can be top to bottom. It can be left to right. uh you can actually you can look at something that might be diamond cut. There's all different factors that can play into the centering that can impact its quality and and deter help you determine whether it's worth submitting or not. >> And you've got a some examples here of cards that don't have good centering. That should give you pause as to whether you would want to submit them or not. >> Why don't we take a look at some of these? >> All right, sounds great. I'll start off with a 75 George Brett tops George Brett rookie which I just purchased last week in a collection and I was going through it and that one is blatantly off left to right. Top to bottom centering is pretty good but left to right it's about 955 or 9010 it's way off left to right. >> Yeah. And you can see what Joe's talking about right here. that bar between the edge of the white border and the edge of the card versus the edge of the white border and the edge of the card over here. You can see the entire image is shifted to the left. This one is so poorly centered that this would even if everything else about the card was perfect and and this card isn't perfect. It's got some it's got a corner issue right down here that you can see. It's got some white up in this corner. So, there's a lot about this card that's not perfect. But even if it were perfect, that centering alone would knock this card down several grade points. Several grade points. This would have absolutely no shot at getting a high grade because of that centering issue. >> Correct. >> That's a pretty extreme example. Most centering is not quite that extreme. You've got some other examples here to share. >> Yep. I've got a 65 mantel, which this one is pretty nice left to right, but you'll notice top to bottom it's off. Not as quite as bad as the breadth, but that's something collectors often miss. You'll look at left to right, but then you go, "Wait a minute, top to bottom, that's off." And sometimes you have to have examined enough from a a particular year to know that's an issue. But that one's definitely off. >> Yeah. And you can tell, again, what Joe's talking about, if you look at the top bar versus the bottom bar, that's where the bottom bar is much thicker than the top bar. And a lot of people do miss that. I see a lot of rookie collectors that would look at this card and say, "Oh, that card's really well centered." Because of the fact that the left and the right bars are approximately the same. So, that looks that's very good left to right centering, but top and bottom centering matter as much as left to right centering does. And so, the fact that the top and bottom is as off as it is will once again knock this card down several grade points. >> Yep. And looking at a couple of more modern cards here, we got a Jaden Daniels, which that one many collectors would submit, but when you look at it closely, you can see left to right centering is off. >> Yeah. So, once again, the bar on the right side of the card from the edge of the of the, you know, essentially the picture window to the right side of the card is thinner than from the edge of the picture window to the left side of the card. And really, you're looking actually at kind of this outer border. So, it's not just the picture, but you're looking you're including this blue bit here within the picture window. But if you specifically look at that side right there and the thickness of it compared to this side right here in the thickness, that's when you really begin to tell, oh, this one is is definitely not well centered. It's shifted to the right. >> Yeah. And that's a perfect example of cards that we see all the time that are sent in for screening because the collectors feel like, oh, this is fine. You know, it looks totally good to me, but it's things we catch and rule out. And here's another example, a Jackson Cheerio first bow and chrome. That one looks great unless you've handled a lot of them, and you'll realize it's slightly off top to bottom. >> Yeah, it becomes harder to tell with certain with certain uh card designs than others. the examping. This one's a little more challenging. So, when you when you say, Joe, that this one is off top to bottom, what what are you looking at to show you what that difference is? >> Based upon ones we've graded and know what PSA is looking at and how they're judging them, there's a little bit too much border. Okay. >> Here at the top. It should be the picture should be shifted up just slightly. >> And I I imagine what PSA is is likely judging is probably the distance between the top of the 1ST there, that space up in that area, which is also the space up in that white bar versus the distance from, you know, the the amount of space in this area down here. So, if you even kind of compare the thickness of that white bar that's running across the bottom of the card versus that little bit of white bar that's visible on the top of the card, that's when you start to see that there's quite a difference and then the whole image is shifted down. And one tip for folks out there that are looking at a card that has a design that makes it difficult to tell centering, one thing that I've done before that I find to be really helpful is look go on to a site like eBay or use market movers or the sports card investor app and look at completed sales sold items and look at other versions of that card that have gotten a PSA 10 grade and you can call up the images um and you can compare the image of other versions of that card and PSA 10 to your card and look at how the things on the PSA 10 are positioned versus how the elements on your card are positioned and do they look the same and that's how you can kind of compare centering. You might even call up a card that has a lower grade and see if you can see how the images shifted on that card as well because it might have been a centering issue or it could have been something else. It could have been a surface issue that caused it to get a lower lower grade. But looking at the looking at the card in perfect grade with the online sales and comparing it to your card is a good way to tell the centering on these more difficult designs. >> Yeah. Basically, you're pulling up what's the standard for that particular card and at least PSA's standard for it, right? >> And then you're able to gauge with what you have in hand. >> You've got one more example here of centering. Joe, talk to me about what we're going to look at right here. So, this is an 86, excuse me, a 96 Fleer Jordan Decade of Excellence, which was an insert produced in 1996, designed after the 86 rookie card. And this one, to the naked eye, looks really good. When you look at it closer, it's just slightly diamond cut, and it is slightly off left to right. >> And what do you mean by diamond cut? where where the inner photo is tilted just a little bit. >> And so which means your variance in the border is a little bit wider at one part than another. >> And you can really tell that if you look on the left border of the card, if you look at kind of how thick the border is down in here to the to compare it to up into here, it gets thinner. Correct. So the the distance between that yellow line and the edge of the card there versus the distance between the yellow line and the edge of the card here, it's thicker. So really the card was printed at kind of a little bit of a diagonal angle. You can see the opposite effect here where it's thinner there and thicker there because of the because of the what they call the tilt or the diamond nature of the cut. >> Yeah. And and it's also roughly 60/40. So would not fall into the parameters for PSA. Plus it's diamond cut as well. But uh you know and they have changed their centering standards of course and so now they've got to be 5545 or better. So, >> right. And so, and I want to show a couple examples of cards that have gotten PSA 10. The centering doesn't have to be 100% deadon absolutely perfect, but it has to be very, very close for it to get a PSA 10. As Joe said, the standard is now 5545, meaning you can have 55% of the border on one side and 45% on another side. in for it to get a 10. In this case with this Pete Crow Armstrong card, the left right centering on this one looks just about 5050 to me. It's very close to 50/50. Maybe I, you know, you can use your eye to judge. Maybe there's slightly less border there and slightly more, but it is within the 5545. I would suggest on this one that the top border is definitely a little bit thinner than the bottom border. Yet, it fell still within the PSA 5545 guideline, but I would say barely. I would say this card from a centering perspective is kind of right on the border of is it too far top bottom offcentered or not. If the image was slightly, you know, smidge higher, it definitely would have dropped to a PSA 9. This was probably right within the allowable standards, so it was able to get a PSA 10 grade. So, it doesn't have to be 100% perfect, but it has to be close. And just as another example here, this is um a show Otani card that is uh it it it it's pretty close. It's pretty close to dead center on this card. I think the left border is slightly wider >> than the right border, but it's within. So again, once again, it doesn't have to be 100% perfect, but it's got to be within 55% and 45%. And their their graders their graders in this case must have assessed that that border was probably more like 55% and that border was 45%. >> But close enough to still qualify for a 10, >> right? any more offc centered and this grade would have probably fallen down to a nine. >> Yep. >> This card, Joe, that I'm gonna show here, this is, of course, one of the very popular, you know, case hit designs. This is Kaboom. This is a card that people always have a difficult time assessing the centering of. If you're at a card show and you see this card in raw condition, how how would you go about assessing is this one centered well enough to potentially, you know, get a PSA 10 like this one did if it were to grade? >> Well, like we were sharing earlier, it helps to look at another reference that PSA's already graded. I would start with that. You can typically pull up, you know, in your phone and say, "Oh, here here's what they allowed on a 10. Here's where Bryce Young was placed on the card. here's where his helmet landed. You know, how much space that was the main thing I would look at for the centering is how much space like for instance is above him. How much space is to the left of the rookie card logo >> and so forth. And you know where how the exclamation point how how does it land on the card? How far cut off is it or not cut off. So look at one that they've already graded when at all possible. But if you don't have a reference to look at, you want to make sure the photo is not cut off in any way. You know, if the rookie card logo is literally cut on the very edge of the card, then it's not well centered. If the player's helmet's touching, for instance, on this one, if his helmet were touching the very edge of the card, then it's not well centered. If you can't see much of the exclamation point in the kaboom, then it's not well centered. So, there's there's things to look at. Um, it's part of an aesthetic feel, you know, on when you've seen millions of cards like we have. But the first thing is use a reference because these are really tough. There's no border there, right? So, it's great to say, okay, PSA, what is your standard for this card? How have you graded other 10 before you're going to feel confident paying for a big dollar card like that in raw state? And sometimes when you see enough of a particular type of card, you can you can also kind of learn little tricks about how PSA assesses it to get a visual reference. And my son Reeves actually educated me on the kabooms because he is a big he loves kabooms and and you know, so he's he's constantly buying kabooms and he he wanted to learn how can I assess a raw kaboom as to what the centering is. And so through a lot of what you're talking about looking at kabooms that have PSA 10 versus kabooms that got lower grades at PSA, >> one thing that he determined on this car design in particular >> is that PSA is looking the kaboom pattern is supposed to start I'm talking about the kind of the background pattern here >> uh is supposed to start >> right in the center of the card and work its way out. So in this case, you can look at the four corners of the pattern to see how even they are when it comes to the four corners of the card. >> Great point. >> And in this case, they're it's quite it's quite even. If you look at kind of where that that uh you know, reflective pattern hits >> in each area, it's it's pretty evenly spaced. You'll see other versions of this exact same card where one of these comes to a complete point before it hits the edge of the card. And if you see it come to a complete point over here, yet this part of it, you know, kind of cuts off like right there, then you know you're shifted pretty far over um as opposed to it being well centered like this cop. This is that's just one example. A lot of cards have kind of little tricks like that. You learn those over time if you if you if there's a particular type of card that you just kind of look at repeatedly, >> right? Absolutely. >> Yeah. The more of them you handle, the more you become an expert on that card and know what to look for. >> So centering is is, you know, as Joe said, the first thing you should look at. It's it's also the most obvious thing when you're looking, you know, across a case of dealers cards or cards in a binder. It's the easiest to assess without having to actually handle the card. But then equally as important are corners, edges, and surface, >> right? >> You want to talk about uh corners and edges next? >> Sure. And when it comes to corners in general, this isn't always the case, but in general, most ultramodern, let's say, you know, chrome stock, prism stock cards, typically the corners are going to be pretty clean. There are other issues with the modern cards we'll deal with, but for the corners, the bigger issues typically land on vintage cards because they've been handled. It's more obvious. Yeah, they're chipped on the edges. So, I um I brought there's a 60 Yas rookie, which this one has multiple issues. Uh and you may have to even take this one out to get a better look at it, but you can see very slight bumps on the corners here. It has major surface issues, which we'll get to, but there's just a little bit of Yeah. fraying right there on the lower left corner. >> Yeah. So, so you can see right there in the corner of the card, you've got you've got uh some of the card stock that's actually frayed off there. And the corner is what you would call soft, >> which if you read the PSA grading standards, they want to see four sharp corners. That's what their grading standards say for a card to get PSA 10. And really none of these corners are what you would describe as sharp. That corner in the upper left there as well definitely has some softness to it. This one in the upper right has quite a bit of roundness to it as well as some fraying. And then you've got the same issue repeating down here in the lower right as well with that corner. So really the all four corners of this card are showing quite a bit of signs of wear and that would significantly knock down the grades of this card. >> Now I'll shift to a more blatant issue here on a 71 pete rose. 71s of course with the black border design show so many conditional issues and you can see like the top two corners there are blatantly bumped. >> Yeah. So you can see you've got creasing there. >> The corners were kind of uh probably bent back at some point in time and so you can see the evidence of that with the creasing that's occurred on the card. Sometimes um looking at the back of the card can also reveal damage as well. Correct. That the front of the card doesn't reveal. Especially if you're dealing with a card that maybe has a white front yet the back is a darker solid color. Often times the back of the card can reveal damage that the front of the card doesn't show. Um and so it's important to flip the card over and look at, you know, look at corners and edges on both sides of the card because you'll see damage on the back as well. Yeah, I recall sitting down with the head grader at PSA when we were reviewing some things we had graded in the past and I had a beautiful Steph Curry uh Topps Chrome that was a BGS 95. We were trying to cross over and we were at a PSA event and front was flawless and he turns it over and he's like look on the back there and see that corner and there was just a touch of white on the back corner so they wouldn't cross the 95 to a PSA 10 because of that. So >> So that that little of a thing can make all the difference in the world. can like you said the back here's a you know common card it's an Aussie Smith World Series card from 88 but bottom right corner when you hold it >> vertically >> I see what you're saying you're saying uh okay >> yeah yeah when you this bottom left corner when you hold it that way >> or bottom right if you hold it this way >> that corner right there because really if you look at this from a distance the card appears to be in pretty good shape the card looks well centered the color on it's really Nice. Uh but then as you look closer, you do see what begins to appear a corner issue with that part of the card. And and although that may not look like much to those watching, that issue alone is definitely causing this card to fall down probably multiple grade points. >> Yeah, that would land as a seven or eight at best with that corner. Yeah, it's not as noticeable on the back, but on the front of the card, you can really see that that corner is uh has a bend and it it catches there in the light. The other thing that's I'm noticing about this card, Joe, which kind of takes us into the third element that you have to look at on cards, is I am noticing that if you look at the top border of this card, you can see quite a bit of white. So, even though this is a red bordered card, >> there appears to be white up there. And that is uh can often be a danger sign when you're looking for how a card might grade in terms of its rating on its edges. >> Correct. >> Edges is uh the third element which graders are going to pay quite a bit of attention to. >> Yeah. And one of the challenges with brightly colored borders is they will show those issues so much more than a white border card. Right. >> So, uh I'm back to the uh Pete Rose here. 71 tops not only show fraying on corners very well, but they also will show edge issues all around this one, which is why high grades on 71 tops brings such a huge premium because there are so many things that can go wrong with them. >> Yeah, you can really see how I mean, you're not supposed to see any of this white at all. The fact that you can see white along really all four sides of the card, that's not what you're supposed to see. That means that the edges have been, you know, kind of frayed and it's it's uh affecting the card design with that black border, >> right? And here's another. This one has both centering >> corners and edge issues. That's my favorite card in fact in the hobby months. And it's such a classic card. >> It is the neat card, >> but uh you can see right at the top chipping. >> Sure. >> Chipping on the lower left there, chipping on the bottom. Of course, it's offc center as well, but still a beautiful card, but that the edge wear will definitely downgrade that one. >> Yeah, this one would grade very poorly because it's got multiple issues. The centering is very far off. You can see the border over here existing and the border over here not existing at all. So, very offcentered. It's got the issues, you know, with the uh edge all around the card. The corners are soft. So, pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Maybe with the exception of surface, surface is actually the hardest of the four elements >> for especially for new collectors to assess that something is wrong with the surface of a card. You brought us several examples of cards that have a surface issue. It's going to be important to pay a lot of attention to this because I'll tell you the number of people that I encounter who say, "Hey, take a look at this card for me. I think it's in perfect condition to grade. I think this could grade a 10." and I'll look at it and I'll say, "Yes, the centering looks really good. Yes, the corners are sharp. Yes, the edges look really good. They look sharp." But then I'll start to tilt the card in the light and I'll start to catch surface scratches or little dimples on the surface and I'll have to break the news. >> I'm sorry to say this card's not going to grade well because it has surface issues. Those are the hardest things to find. >> Yeah. You know, I was running the numbers in the last year alone. We've rejected uh so many cards. We've probably saved submitters about half a million dollars in submission fees in needless submission fees. And most of the things we eliminated cards for with surface above everything else because it's the easiest to miss because collectors who submit cards in will often catch corners or edges or centering, but surface is so tough. So, I'll give you an example you were just talking about. Griffy looks great. >> Oh, this looks like a nice sharp 1989 Ken Griffy Jr. card. The centering on that card looks pretty good. Uh, and the edges and the surface look pretty good. >> What's wrong with the card, Joe? >> When you flip it. >> Okay. >> Look really close at the hologram. >> Look really close to the hologram. >> The very top of the hologram is not fully squared off. >> Oh, yeah. I see that. >> It's a little bit rounded. And they will count off for that. >> Okay. >> So, the smallest thing in the surface >> right there, you can see that that hologram is not sharp. That top corner of the hologram is rounded. Whereas, you know, the the hologram is supposed to have a sharp corner. That corner on the left of the hologram is a very sharp cut, but that top one is rounded. So, that alone is considered a surface issue and will cause this card not to grade well. >> Yeah. As beautiful as it is. >> And so, that just shows the smallest detail has to be examined on surface. >> Interesting. The top bottom centering on this one is slightly off as well. You can see on the back of the card the border being thicker at the top than the bottom. And I think that carries over to the front of the card >> as well, even though it's not quite as easy to tell. >> Although I should mention that PSA in terms of centering, they are more lenient on the back of the card. >> Correct. >> The front of the card they're more focused on. We talked about the 55 45 requirement on the front of the card. On the back, they allow you to get away with more. Correct. In terms of the centering. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, that's one type of surface issue. Here's a uh Topps foil league leader card. Looks really clean until you see under and that one I only caught. I haven't even mentioned this yet. A lot of this we catch only with magnification. So even the camera may not catch this fully, but there are slight roller marks on that card. >> I actually you can see them. So what Joe's talking about, if you look right here, do you see those lines coming down in the card? That's lines there as well. So that's not you're saying are those the roller marks I'm catching there, Joe? >> Yeah, in the middle of the card. >> Yeah. Interesting. So that's that's actually not kind of an intended part of the card design. That's actually from one of the from one of the print rollers >> left a line going down the center of the card that is that is not supposed to be there. >> And when it's a foil card, it's that stands out more than on a just paper stock. This has that foil finish so that um the roller mark kind of blows up a little bit. It's a little more obvious. Yeah. >> But again, this is these are minor things that are very tough to catch. >> Yeah. But considered a surface issue. Correct. Interesting. >> Yeah. And they're not only looking at it, you know, most collectors who submit with us, they're they've looked at the card naked eye and they're like, "Oh, it looks pretty good to me." And they turn it in. Understand the grading company's looking at under 10x magnification and that blows things up. So, speaking of surface issues, I grabbed just a few Steph Curry cards we had recently purchased, and I've already pointed out the issues, >> but and you may not see it until it's out of the sleeve, but it just goes to show that modern chrome stock, modern Prism, modern optic, modern select, >> just right out of the pack, you can't assume it's going to grade high. There are countless cards being submitted that should never be submitted in the first place. Which is why I always encourage submitters, don't just drop your cards off. Don't just hand them off. Learn how to examine them or use a service that will help you examine them. >> Whether it be ours or someone else's, but >> it's, you know, we we do this all the time and we know what to look for. >> Yeah, that's such an easy thing for a a collector to miss, especially a new collector. That scratch right there. All right, let me see this other example here as well. >> Again, another modern select. >> So, there you go. Again, it's got some surface >> scratching, >> some scratching right along there. You can see there's a little scratch right there. Scratching right along there. A whole bunch of like little issues there that probably aren't super evident when the card's just in somebody's case or something like that. But, you get it here under the bright studio lights, you tilt it, and you start to see those those uh issues really show up and appear. And as you said, Joe, a lot of ultramodern cards come right out of the pack with issues just like those. It's a very common problem with the print processes that they have these days. I can't tell you the number of cards where I pulled a good card out of a pack and I'm like, "Oh, fantastic. I want to grade it." And the second I hit it with light, I'm like, "Oh, can't grade that one. It's got so many surface scratches. It would has no chance of getting a gem in 10." And not only is it the front this I my save save these two which are some of the toughest. There are issues on the backs of the cards. The fronts look beautiful. You'll probably have to take it out of the sleeve to even catch it because the sleeve masks it. >> It's a nice looking card. Looks good to me. >> Beautiful curry card. >> Joe found something on this one that I didn't. Let's see what see if we can find it here. >> Almost like a thumbnail mark in the card. Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't know if the camera is picking up on that. Let me see if I can get the camera at an angle on that to There it is. There it is. Right there. You see that? We had to get it right at the right angle. And that's what graders are going to do. But if you hit it right there with the light, right where my finger is. You see that dent running down in the card like that? That is something that got pressed in to the back of that card. It's an indentation mark that is going down running like this through the back of the card in that area. And unfortunately, that doesn't seem like a lot. It doesn't look like a lot, but that indentation will be noticed right there. It actually goes on for a little ways. It comes all the way down here. You can see that when you get it here in the right light, that indentation will be noticed by a grader who's doing what I'm doing right here under bright lights. And that will definitely knock that down and give that no chance of getting a gem mint grade. Same thing here. Upper left on the back. >> Let's take this one out and see if we can see it as well. >> And we catch this a lot on optic select prism cards like that. The front looks great, but they'll be these little we call them they look like someone's pressed their thumb into the card almost. It's very minor, but it's typically hidden in the surface. It's often near the top. We see a large prevalence of this on prism cards on the back. Yeah, that one's more difficult to catch and more subtle, but I think above that letter S, if you look closely when the light hits it, you can see a little bit of denting there. >> Yeah, it's minute, but >> you're holding either seven or eight in your hand. Yeah. >> You know, which looks great otherwise. >> All right, Joe, you've brought a couple of tools with you today that can really help when people are assessing cards like what we're talking about here. What do we have? >> Well, so you might see I have glasses on. I am a little older now than the last time we did a video like this. So, if submitters are wanting to examine their cards, just buying a simple pair of uh glasses at Walgreens, Walmart, whatever, to provide some magnification, can be greatly helpful to examine the cards. And then if you want to move up to 10x magnification, using a loop like this, which is 10x, which is what graders use to examine cards, and it's lighted, so they can light it. >> Oh, look at that. Y and look at, you know, corners. >> Sure. >> It's hard to catch that on the camera, but it'll really blow up any issues with the cards. >> Yeah, you can see a little bit there on the camera how as your mouse, you know, you're moving over it, I should say, you can start to see, you know, elements of the of the card. Oh, yeah. There we go. That's a better shot right there. You can see elements of the card there on the camera. Get a close-up look at things. >> So, basically, the bottom line is it's great to use some type of magnification, right? simple, you know, uh whether you have glasses that are designed such as for reading that'll help magnify the card or something you buy, you know, at a big box store, something to help magnify the card to help you catch issues or you can step up to a 10x loop like this, which will really blow up corners, edges, surface, etc. >> You sell these on your website if I recall, right? We do. Okay. So, somebody who wants to pick one of these up, it's got baseballcards.com. Gotbaseballcards.com. There you go. >> And also, lighting is critical. Uh we've learned over the years that too many light sources is a problem. So uh my head of grading, Doug Giles, he will literally sit there in the dark most of the day examining cards. His room will be dark, but he will have one single light source, okay, to to help examine the cards because when you don't have all the other light sources flooding in, you can really get a much better look at the card and with the issues with the card. These are you can buy these on Amazon, you know, 30 40 bucks for for a light source. >> This is this is like a H hallogen light. Uh looks like it's brightness. Oh yeah, look at that. We get it real bright here. Brightness level adjusting single light source and then that's the perfect in a dark room that really allows you to hit the card at a bunch of different angles. >> Correct. >> Uh and really really see those surface issues. >> Yeah. Well, I was just at a show this weekend and uh submitters were like, "Can you pre-screen this for me in person?" And I'm like, not accurately because the lighting in here is not what we need. >> It's hard to do at shows. It's hard to look at surface issues at a show. And and uh with the lighting in a show, it makes it real difficult. Um PSA, the president of PSA, Ryan, was in our studio and we were talking about uh how, you know, they assess grading, how their grading room works, and he said they operate in the dark. So their grading room, similar to what you do, they've got the lights out and they've got a bright H hallogen lamp on the desk of their graders. Correct. And that's how their graders are looking at it and assessing surface issues. >> Right. So basically do what the graders do. That's the way they're going to examine it. So why not examine it the same way to get the clarity that you need. >> All right. Appreciate you sharing those with us. >> Yeah. And speaking of these small details, Joe, this is something that you and your team at Got Baseball Cards do for customers who maybe have a stack of cards that they want to grade, but they're not 100% certain in their own assessment or they simply don't want to take the time to assess in detail like we're doing in this episode. They'll send them to you and you'll do this assessment for them and then if they pass, you send them on to the grading company. Is that right? >> Correct. With grading costs going up, with turnaround times slowing down, it's more important than ever to be careful about what you're grading. I hate it when someone just blindly sends in hundreds of cards and says, "Nope, I don't want any screening." And then they get bad grades because they didn't know how to examine the cards. That's disappointing for them. It's disappointing for us. But, uh, I had a client send in a beautiful looked like a beautiful Eli Manning rookie auto and he got a four. And I was like, and he goes, "Well, I I thought I knew what I was looking at, you know." And he was like, "I absolutely don't want y'all to screen them. I just want them graded." I'm like, "Okay." And so we honored his request. But, you know, we love assisting clients with their collections and helping eliminate cards like these that shouldn't be graded in the first place. And so, we try to help clients with that. We charge $3 just for a pass fail to help examine the card if it should be graded or not. and $5 if they want a full detail with an estimate of the grade. And so, uh, we have thousands use our service. As I said, in the last year, we've saved, by my math, we've saved submitters over half a million dollars in grading fees they would have paid and they pay a small small percentage of that to find out what's wrong with the card. >> Wow. And there you go, guys. And we've got Joe's services available for you on our sportscardinvestor.com website. What you all you have to do is go to sportscardinvestor.com, click grading in the main menu bar, and right there you can start a submission with Joe and take advantage of his pre-screening service. And so a collector would go to sportscardinvestor.com, they'd click grading, they'd put their information in there and indicate what grading company they want to grade it with, and then they would ship you their cards. And if they've selected pre-screening, >> right, >> you'll screen them all. The ones that are that you've deemed have a shot at getting a good grade, you'll send on to grading for them. Correct. >> And the ones that you deem has have a flaw, you'll kick back and ship back to the to the uh customer. >> Yeah. Well, actually, the submitter always gets the final say. What we will do is we send in we send them images of every card that doesn't pass, and if they've selected detailed screening, we'll itemize what's wrong with each card. and then they they have the final say because some collectors will say, "No, I want that card graded anyway." We estimate a card as an eight and they say, "To me, that's still worth grading." So, the submitter always has the final say on what gets graded. It's up to them. >> There you go. All right, guys. Once again, sportscardinvestor.com, click grading in the main menu bar. Okay. Now that we've learned how to assess the four elements of your card for grading, let's talk about how to prep your card for grading, including cleaning it. What does that look like? What does that mean? What are you allowed and not allowed to do? Let's get into that next. All right, Joe. Cleaning cards has been a controversial topic recently. Absolutely. And and different people have different ideas of what that means. Some people think that means using sprays and waxes and all of this stuff that's not allowed and and others think it's using a microfiber cloth. What is the proper approach and the permitted approach to preparing a card by cleaning it? Yeah, cleaning uh definitely controversial topic. Do not use any liquids on your cards. Do not spray them. Do not pour water on it. Just you're running the risk of ruining the card. You're running the risk of the card not being accepted by the grading company because they detect things. And we use microfiber cloth as part of our screening services. When someone asks for that, we will actually wipe off fingerprints. We will try to remove residue from wax. We review so many vintage collections. We literally have a process. If I'm reviewing a vintage collection for screening and I catch anything on the surface, like an old wax stain on the surface, um, I'll flip the card in the semi- rigid so that our grading team when they look at it, they know, okay, there's an issue we've got to try to resolve here and I just use a clean microfiber cloth. For example, this Carly Strimsky we looked at earlier, which has surface issues and it can be cleaned off without damaging the card if you're very careful. Let me take a look at what we're looking at here. So, so we're talking about like for example that and that up there. >> Yep. >> So, that is some that is something on the surface. It looks like a little grime of some sort that got on the surface of that card, >> right? >> And that can't always be cleaned off. Oh, you can Oh, you know what? If you catch in the light, you can really kind of see You can I caught it in the light a second ago. You can even really see it a little. Yeah. Right there. You can really see >> that's definitely some type of >> residue. >> Residue. Yeah. And you It won't always come off, but sometimes the process of using a microfiber cloth will do will help it out some. >> So, show us Joe how you would approach. >> Going to test it and see. >> Okay. So, you've got just a a standard microfiber cloth. So, this is the type of cloth you could buy, I assume, on on Amazon, right? >> Target, wherever. And see that most of that has already come off. The the main thing you've got to be very careful with is you don't want to snag the corner in the process because you if you don't know what you're doing, you might remove the residue, but you might damage the corner in the process. >> Wow. Actually, yeah, it's definitely coming off. That's actually made good progress on that just by rubbing it with a dry microfiber cloth. >> Yeah. So, you can see Yeah. Let's look at this again now just on that edge. Look at that. That's a big difference. A lot most of that residue, if you remember, there was a lot of residue right there and there was a lot of residue down here. And most of that residue at this point is gone from the card. And you can even see it in the light. Remember when we caught in the light before? And you could see how much residue was in this lower left of the card. It it is significantly improved, much reduced. And actually now the card looks a lot nicer and cleaner as a result of what you just did. >> Right. And so, yeah, there's more in the center as well. And and often this is a wax stain where the card was the the card in the back of the pack where the wax was sealed on top of the card. And so that will typically come off, but there are other types of residue that will not. But again, using a clean microfiber cloth is what we recommend. and what we use, you know, anytime we're screening a card for someone and we catch something like that, we will do our best to improve it, but that's totally allowed. Uh, you know, removing fingerprints same way on Chrome stock cards. Those chrome stock cards will show the fingerprints and so you have to be very careful to make sure the card is clean before you send it in because we've literally gotten cards back and you could see a fingerprint impression uh from submitters who didn't ask for screening. So, we did exactly what they asked and sent it in. But that is uh you know, use a microfiber fiber cloth, clean one. Uh buy a lot of them if you go through a lot of cards and so uh because they can assist with both modern and vintage as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. I've got a number of microfiber cloths and I do like some of them you can wash. I like buying the you know I'll buy packs of them. You can buy a 20 pack on Amazon of the small ones. >> Ones that are used for like lens cleaning for example, camera lens cleaning. You can buy those small ones or eyeglass cleaning microfiber cloths >> and I'll just toss them out after I've cleaned a handful of cards because I don't want to transfer residue from one correct card to another. Um so you know I buy the type that are don't cost much and you can dispose of them. >> Um but yeah on chrome cards as you said very much they'll catch fingerprints. Yes. Um, and they'll also have surface issues. Sometimes the very light uh surface scratching on a card. Sometimes if it's if it's not deep enough, a nice uh, you know, wipe of the card can get rid of some of those types of issues on the surface. Not all of them. It's not going to resolve a big roller mark or a deep scratch. But sometimes what you may think at first glance when you look at a card is like, ah, this got a couple of surface issues. It turns out to be something that is just kind of accumulated on the top of the card. a very surface layer issue and wiping it down will will you know clear the front of the card of that. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Yeah. Okay. So, that's the proper way to do it. The improper way to do it is to use any type of wax or spray as Joe said against the rules of the grading company. Not recommended. Can potentially cause damage to the cards over time. Um, it it is unknown, but doing what Joe just did with a microfiber cloth is allowed, is permitted, and is certainly recommended as a step to getting your cards ready to go. >> Yes. >> All right. So, we've got our cards clean, but now we got to package them up. We got to get them put together the proper way, whether you're going to be shipping them off to Joe or you're going to be shipping off directly to the grading company. Let's talk about that next. All right, Joe. So, folks out there watching the video, they've hopefully looked at their cards. They figured out some that are worth grading from a value standpoint. They've done the assessment of the cards and have determined that they've got a shot at getting a good grade. And now they've wiped down the cards with a microfiber cloth. But now we got to get them ready to actually submit >> to grading. And the first step >> is to put them in the proper holders, the proper protection to actually get them submitted in the first place. Right. Yes. >> And that's where these things come in. What are what are what are these, Joe? Right here. >> So these are semi- rigids. >> Okay. uh not top loads, right? You do not want to use top loaders. >> These are these are these are top loaders. So most people when they are protecting cards, valuable cards for their collection, they're either going to put them in a a magnetic card holder or they're going to put them in a top loader. Top loaders being most common, right? Most people will put them inside a card sleeve and then once inside a penny sleeve, these are known as card sleeves. Once they put them inside of that, they'll put them inside a top loader, >> right? >> But you can't send them >> to PSA >> to PSA that way. They they don't want them that way. That's not how they want them to come to be shipped to them. They want them in these things. >> Yeah. And they're very blatant, very clear about that. >> Yeah. They prefer semi- ridges. It's much easier for the graders to handle. It's easier for them to, you know, remove a card out carefully, you know, and safely, right? And that's what they want everything. We we receive thousands of cards in top loads from submitters and then that's part of our process. We re-sleeve everything for them. >> But this is the right sleeve to use. Yes. >> And these right here, uh, these are BCW semi- rigid card holders. There are different brands. This is, uh, type number one. There's different types. >> The larger one. >> Yeah. There's different types depending on the size. Um, type number one gives you the universal ability to do most regularsized cards, >> including V, including pre 57 vintage. >> Yes. Right. Um, and so there's different companies that make these. We recommend uh BCW for all of our supplies here at Sportscard Investor. In fact, if you are in need of any semi- rigid card holders, you can get 10% off using promo code SCI if you buy them directly from bcwsupplies.com. Actually, everything on BCW's website from the card sleeves to toploaders and so much more, binders and card boxes and everything you can imagine. 10% off all of it with promo code sei atbcwsupplies.com. Okay, so you've gotten your semi- rigid card holders. Now, for certain types of cards, you still want to use a card sleeve in combination with these as well. Is that right? >> Correct. We always recommend that on modern chrome stock cards because you can literally possibly scratch the card by sliding it in the sleeve unprotected. And it's also important with your penny sleeves here. We always recommend using the thick card sleeves because they're wider, so it's far easier to get the card in. You can literally damage a card sliding it into a standard size uh soft sleeve because it can be too tight and especially with thicker chrome cards, you can damage the card. So, we definitely recommend using a thick card sleeve, okay, before you slide it into the semi- rigid. >> All right, so you need your thick card card sleeves, which are different than your normal card sleeves. These ones are simply they're simply bigger. So, they're made to go up to larger card sizes, thick card sizes, >> right? >> Uh why don't you hand me one of the cards over there? And um so, uh the first card Joe's handing me here is actually a vintage card. Now, vintage I wouldn't necessarily have to put into a penny sleeve. Right. >> Correct. >> So, if I wanted to >> that can go in without it. >> With a vintage paper card, you can put it in without it. One thing now, one thing you want to make sure to do, you don't want to damage the card going in, right? So, you want to have a good area >> for it to go in. I like kind of opening it up a little bit like that, giving a soft squeeze to the to the edge so that it creates a little bit of a hole for you to slide the card down into. And you can either kind of keep it propped open with your finger or you can slide you can, you know, you can kind of pinch the edges. Any tricks, Joe? What do you recommend in terms of how people put the you know, take the cards in and out of here? >> Yeah, same thing. My technique is always Yeah. Just >> create an opening. >> Yep. >> Make sure you're protecting the edges. And then as soon as I have the bottom edges inserted, then I hold the sleeve and carefully push it the rest of the way down. >> So, there you go. So, that is now how the grading companies are going to want to receive your card. They're going to want to receive it in that semi- rigid card holder. Just like that. And make sure to get it deep enough where the top of it is not at all sticking out so that it can't it's it's nice inside there. Now, at the same time, you don't have to wedge it all the way to the bottom either. Correct? And if you're putting a thicker card in there, then you definitely don't want to wedge it all the way to the bottom as you can start to damage the corners and the bottom edge if you start to get it too deep into there. So, that's about the deepest you're going to want to put the card. Uh, but make sure that it's got coverage kind of on both sides and the card's kind of centered within the uh semi- rigid card holder. >> Yes. >> Um, let's see one of the chromium cards there just to show how that process would work on one of these. So, in this case, we're going to start by putting the card into a penny sleeve. And much like how you put a card into the semi- rigid, I'm going to kind of twist the penny sleeve to create a little bit of a hole. >> Start with a corner. >> Go across and push down. And now that card is nice in the penny sleeve. Then we come back over to here. And as Joe said, you can kind of create a little bit of a hole with your finger there. Position it in there. And then it's just a matter of pushing it straight down. If it starts to stick at all, you can just kind of bend, put a little bit of light pressure on the two edges of the card, the two edges of the uh semi- rigid, and that makes it really, really easy to push it in. And now that's nicely inside there. >> Yeah. And just always be super careful not to add a new extraneous >> fingerprint in the process because then you're back to square one starting over again. >> Okay. So, we've got these two in the semi- rigid. So once you have put all of the cards that you're considering grading, you've got them all prepared this way. Now they're all in this stack of semi- rigids. >> Now it's a matter of either going on the website, going on an app, and actually preparing your submission. And every grading company's got a little bit of a different process for this. All of them can accept um submissions through their website. So whether you go to PSA's website or BGS's website, SGC's website, or CGC's website, you can prepare a submission through there. Or of course you can let Joe handle that for you. And that's when you go to sportscardinvestor.com. You click grading in the main menu bar. And Joe, when they submit to like let's say PSA, PSA requires that they type in the detail corre. If you're submitting 30 or 40 cards, that becomes quite laborious. That takes quite a bit of time to submit the uh the detail of each type of card. Um, if they submit to you, how does that process work? >> Well, we have a quick submit form to make the process easy. If they want to submit one card or a thousand cards, they can literally go on sportscardinvestor.com. They can click provide us their info, tell us how many cards they're submitting, and they're done. So, we had one submitter a couple years ago send us 7,000 cards in one batch. He gave us his info, sent us 7,000 cards. He didn't have to enter anything. uh on you know your typical submission that comes in. We literally check them all in under camera. We take photos of the cards when they arrive so that there's a complete visual paper trail of what we've received. We send that back to the submitter so they know what you know they have visual images of everything that's come in. But that way they're protected and so are we. But they don't have to sit there and type in card after card after card for hours. So, we have to do that anyway when we submit it to PSA or any of the other companies. So, why should the work be done twice because we're already doing it for them? >> That's a very nice reason to use Joe's service. I'll tell you that right now. It's going to save you a lot of time on your submission. So, once again, sportsguardinvestor.com and click grading in the main menu bar. Okay, we've got the cards properly in the semi- rigids. We've decided if we're going to send them to you or if we're going to send them one of the grading companies directly. The final thing we have to do is package them to ship. And let's talk about how to do that properly next. >> All right, Joe, let's get shipping. It's time. We've done all this work. It's time to get our order off to the grading company or off to your team, but we want to do this safely. So, how do we do this safely, Joe? We've got a whole stack here of cards now in their semi- rigid holders, and we want to get these ready to go. >> Yeah. So, the next step is, you know, boxing the cards, then protecting the cards within that box so that they can't ship because I've literally received shipments where submitters sent cards in in top loads and they slid out of the cards >> and then you can get that damage just when they're shipping. >> So, out of the holder, I should say. Yes, exactly. So, so you want to make sure each card cannot shift in the box. And then I always recommend and what we do, we double box everything. So, you've got your inner box that's going to the grading company. Then you put it in an outer box to protect the inner box. So if we want to demonstrate those steps here. >> So first of all, when you have your stack of cards in the semi- rigids, I like to take either piece of plastic or cardboard. And this doesn't have to be anything fancy. You can you can get, you know, you can cut up literally cut up a cardboard box to get two pieces of cardboard. But you wanted to be you wanted to be slightly larger than the card savers themselves. And you put one on the top, you put one on the bottom, just like that. And then what you're going to do is you're going to take some blue painters tape. I recommend using painters tape because it is the easiest to remove. So when they arrive to the grading company, the grading company can quickly cut through or remove the work that you did to, you know, put it all of it together. So I definitely recommend getting a roll of blue painters tape, getting a couple of, again, scraps of cardboard or pieces of plastic like these. And if you do a lot of shipping, there's actually precut ones that you can buy on different websites. You get them like that. You're going to do your painters tape around and on the top and the bottom to make this actually sealed up like that. And then that stack, Joe, is what you're going to want to put into a box. And here we've got actually one of the official boxes that PSA uses. And you can use different different types of boxes as well. The key is you don't want the cards to shift around. Correct. >> So, whatever box you're using, you really want it to be a box that is wellsized for the cards that are going to go inside. >> Yeah. You don't want to have to force the semi- rigids in. They've got to be able to breathe so that they can't shift in the box. >> And this one, as you can see, this one kind of works perfectly. It's got the two protective layers on the outside. The semi- rigids have a little bit of movement room, but of course if you would have actually taped this with painters tape, that's going to really keep the movement to a very minimum there. >> And there you just added in something magic there to really make sure it stays firm inside the box. >> So here you used a piece of foam, >> right? >> You could use bubble wrap. Probably a lot of people would do that. Or >> packing peanuts. >> Packing peanuts would work as well. But the point is, don't leave them loose in a box where they can shift back and forth during shipping. You want them relatively secure and tight in a box just like this so that as this thing goes through, you know, the postal service and gets dropped and all the bad things happen to it. That is, you can see throughout that whole process, those cards are staying in place inside that box. >> Correct. And then once they're in the inner box, we always recommend putting them in an outer box. Reason being, you don't want someone cutting into this box with a razor blade and cutting your card. And so you want another layer of protection beyond this box and so that they can cut into the outer box then get into your inner shipment which is already well protected because the last thing you want is to do all this work and then you send it off and it gets damaged when they cut it open. >> Yeah. Especially for valuable cards. That's you know that's be very very careful. So, you would seal this with probably a little bit of packing tape here. >> Yes, >> that would keep this closed. And then these cards are now nicely secured inside here. They're not moving around at all. And so, you know, and then you're going to place that into a little bit of a larger box. And I assume maybe some packing peanuts or some more bubble wrap around this. Often times when I get these from PSA, they'll do the double boxing and they'll do some bubble wrap around this one and then drop this bubble wrapped into a little bit of a larger box and then that's what they seal and ship, >> right? And of course, you got to include your in if you're sending directly to PSA, you've got to include your invoice. If you're sending to us, we're already going to know it's on the way and we're already going to have all your information. So that's not an issue. But if you are sending directly, you want to make sure include your invoice paperwork in the shipment. >> Okay? So there you go. And then you ship it off and you hope you get some tens back. It might take a few months. It might take four months these days with how PSA is going, but you hopefully hopefully the wait is worth it for you. And of course, if people are submitting through you or they're submitting through PSA, there's updates during the process to let people know the status. >> Correct. Yeah. Uh let me touch on one last point about the shipping. There are many ways to ship cards off. We recommend the higher the value, you may want to vary the type of service you use. For us, we use registered mail on any any of the really high dollar shipments because in our opinion, since 1998, we've been shipping them that way. We've never had a package lost. However, we've had incoming shipments on FedEx, UPS, and the mail that got lost on the way to us from submitters. So, for the higher valued stuff, I highly recommend registered mail. It's the safest method. You can ensure shipments up to $50,000 per shipment with them and it's very costefficient for the insurance as well. But to your point about providing the information and the updates and so forth. Yes. Once we receive shipments, once they've been sent off to the companies, we send out email updates advising submitters as their submission progresses throughout the PSA system all the way up to the time it's shipped back from PSA. And then we contact submitters when uh the day they're returned to us as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. There you go. And it's good good to be informed even if you have to wait a little while. Yeah. >> It is good to be informed. Okay, Joe, we've we've covered a lot of ground today and I think we've got in the audience ready to hopefully place their next grading submission or maybe their first grading submission. And once again, if you want to use Joe and his team at got baseball cards for the pre-screening and to handle the submission for you, it is as easy as going to sportscardinvestor.com and click grading in the main menu bar and Joe and his team at got baseballcards. They will help you out. If somebody has questions and they want to reach out to your team, Joe, I think we've got your email address on that page as well. >> Yeah, they can send questions to got baseballcards@gmail.com. >> There you go. >> Really easy. >> And Joe and his team will be happy to help you out. All right. On behalf of uh Joe Davis and Got Baseball Cards and our team here at Sportscard Investor, we appreciate you watching and good luck with your next grading submission. Take care.

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