Do graded bills sell for more?

News: Registration is free here at the CPMF!

Older circulated notes with a high degree of eye appeal are definitely NOT worth having graded.  The technical grade is not based at all on aesthetics, and putting a really great-looking note in a slab does not do it justice.  Raw notes with an eye appeal that exceeds the stated grade will do well with speculative buyers.  Slabbing such a note will subdue any second-guessing done by potential buyers who might think the note is actually a higher grade based on how it looks.

Not surprisingly, the notes that are most likely to stay inside a third-party slab are the grungy dirty yet firm ones.  Anything VF-AU that looks stained or just grubby is going to be quite unpopular, and getting an artificially high technical grade doesn't fool anyone.

I feel that it depends on the TPG.  I often see run of the mill notes graded going for much more than an ungraded version of the same notes.  When you get down to the real hard to find notes, though, you tend to see the grade come in handy for figuring out the worth of the note.  So, if a professional grades a $5 train note, it will likely sell for around catalogue value.  Whereas a fairly normal 1954 $1 Devil's Face graded by PMG as a 68 ultra gem or whatever they call is being sold for $200 when the catalogue says it's worth about $140 doesn't really make sense to me.

For the record, I prefer BCS.

I have had too many bills graded by dealers that come back from BCS at much lower grades, I will only be buying notes from one dealer who can actually grade or notes already graded by a professsional.  So yes, I am willing to pay a premium for a graded note, because I am already paying a larger premium for overgraded raw notes.