Crossing Over

Having only recently gotten back into collecting baseball cards, I am still relatively new to third-party grading. When I first started purchasing 1933 Goudey cards about six months ago, I bought both SGC and PSA, with the intention that I would cross all PSA cards over to SGC. At that point, I was intending to collect the set in Very Good condition, which is SGC 40 or PSA 3. I found, however, that many of the PSA 3 and 4 cards that I purchased dropped a grade when I submitted them to SGC for crossover. At that point, I decided that I would limit my PSA purchases, so that I wouldn't end up paying the going rate for a PSA 3 or 4, only to have it drop a grade at SGC. This made collecting more difficult, though, since PSA-graded 1933 Goudeys are more prevalent than those graded by SGC, especially on eBay.

Over the last month or so, I decided to raise the quality of my set to more or less Excellent condition (SGC 60 or PSA 5), except for the super-expensive cards. In doing so, I sold off my lower grade cards and have been purchasing higher grade examples. I have found that higher grade PSA cards cross over to SGC much more consistently. As a result, I have started purchasing PSA 5 and 6 1933 Goudeys when the price is right. I recently submitted three such cards to SGC for crossover: #99 Tony Cuccinello (PSA 6), #157 Sam Byrd (PSA 5), and #193 Lynford Lary (PSA 6). All three are nice examples and, if they cross over to SGC 80 (Cuccinello and Lary) and SGC 60 (Byrd), I will have gotten a great deal, as I purchased them at a reasonable price as a lot on eBay. I will post the results of the crossover once they are available.