I'm a veteran baseball card collector and while the slabbed, highest-graded cards have prices now going through the roof, it remains the playground of the ultra-rich investors and speculators. It's my opinion that most of the true hobbyists do not involve themselves with "entombed" cards, and the hobby loses a lot of its appeal by prohibiting the handling of cards, a tactile enjoyment that is completely removed once a card goes into a slab. Slabbing would also remove a very similar dimension of enjoyment from casino chip collecting. Chips were meant to be handled and wagered, not to be isolated in Lucite.

WMD