General Forum

Curious if anyone out there besides myself actually removes slabbed cards from the acrylic containers?  I personally do not enjoy cards in their cold, lifeless slabs, so I use pliers to bust open the container and extract the card to hold in my grubby paws...  Or does everyone just think this is lunacy?

I break them FREE!!!!!!!!! I've gotten a few slabbed things through the years as part of lots, or just a great deal considering the card instead (i.e. didn't pay a premium). The all got busted open, well, except one from Beckett. I still need to go buy a special tool to punch that beast open.

When I was assembling a collection for a binder, I cracked open a slab. Unless a card is a high-price, oft-counterfeited showpiece, I find slabs generally off-putting.

I haven't yet but I will once I get my collection back in order, which will be when I finish scanning everything...so probably sometime in the mid-2030s. If I live long enough. 

I will, however, be using my modeling saw to cut the ends of the slab off, not going to use something like pliers. 

I've cracked a few and kept a few.  For me it depends on the card and the grade.  If the grade is high enough and the card valueable enough, I leave it slabbed.  If the grade is low and I wonder why anyone ever bothered to get it graded in the first place, I set it free.

A few years back, I was back-filling my team collection cards as well as a few various sets that I wanted. Several of the team cards were graded and I got at prices that were very good for the cards (graded or not), one of the sets had 3 of the cards graded, and I picked up another one to complete a set that was graded. I watched a video on the best way to free them, and I freed all but 2 of those (one team card because of the card's history and the one set completion card because I was looking to get a "raw" copy and sell this one (this no longer looks like a plan).

All in all, I think I broke out 15-20 cards from slabs. No casualties (cards or myself).

Nope never done it.  My slabbed cards are cards that I wanted slabbed.  Slabbed cards that I don't want get sent to COMC.  If any collectors want to break a card out of the slab though by all means have at it.

I'm with Gunny. I have only acquired cards that I want slabbed (PSA 10 Jeter/Mattingly/Mantle). Not sure what I'd do with a slabbed card if it was needed in my collection. Maybe I'd open it.Maybe I wouldn't. Depends on where it fit in my collection. Everybody has a different favorite color.

I've purchased a few slabbed cards only because they were a great price for the card, regardless of being graded. I planned on taking my graded cards to my LCS and swapping for unslabbed versions.  But my LCS wouldn't do it. They didn't want graded because they don't sell.  So I bust them out so I can put them in my binders.

Some, especially the older ones, are very easy to pop open with no damage to the slab. 
A knife blade in the seam... twist, pry, pop!

And you have a reusable slab.

So you might want to think twice about buying graded in older slabs on ebay.

Beckett are the toughest to crack, followed by PSA, then SGC. I've used a vice grip to hold them and Dremel tool to saw the edge. Then a flat screwdriver to pop it open. I've tossed well over 50 PSA flips. Apparently they want you to return the flips so they can adjust their population reports. But since I consider population reports to be bogus and flawed statistics as well as an illegitimate way to gage scarcity, then I couldn't care less about them.