Blog, Batta, Blog!

Time to sell a bunch of stuff.

Really, it's been slow lately. Not a lot of pickups (although the Diamond S Hoss Radbourn has really got me jazzed). I sold a bunch of stuff on eBay two weeks ago and took a beating; it does seem like prices are a little soft right now.

All this softness has caused me to re-focus and re-tool a little bit. As much as I love the Nifty Fifty, sometimes you have to take a step back in order to take a step forward, so I'm selling off some pretty special cards. It stings to get rid of them, but I know I'll be replacing them with cards that are equally special. Sometimes that's what this hobby is about, right?

So take a look at the sale page, see if there's anything there you like.

Cleaning out the card room is always an exercise in futility, since even though it's clean, it's still a mess.

That said, whenever you clean out the card room you're bound to find some cool things you'd either lost or forgotten about, and today was no exception. I found:

- My checkbook. Heh
- A 1979 Kelloggs set
- The envelope from my 1934 Gold Medal Foods find
- A 1936 R311 Dizzy Dean
- A Jackie Robinson youth model glove
- My badge from the National

So there you go.

I lost out on an N29 Buck Ewing this past week. I didn't realize I wanted an N29 Buck Ewing, but I decided that I want a Cap Anson and a Buck Ewing, maybe even before I get an N162 Kelly. I don't know why.

So I set a high snipe for the Ewing and got my doors blown off.

I'm very intrigued by the 19th Century stuff lately. Can't wait til the spring auctions.

PSA switched to half grades today.

Most colossally stupid decision I've ever seen in business.

Boy, today was fun. Tomorrow, better.

Even I fell for it. For a day.

Now it's pretty clear. This company is dead, or pretty close to it. Anyone trying to convince us otherwise is just hurting their own reputation at this point.

Buh-bye.

Looks like they were just moving.

We should have known that, because it's entirely normal to just shut your phones down, take your website offline, stop returning phone calls, and not address internet rumors of your imminent demise when you're moving.

Sigh.

Big disclaimer up front, in case you didn't read the home page: the company where I work does marketing for SGC. So statements I make about grading companies may be viewed as being biased.

That said, my presence here is as a collector, primarily of graded cards, and not as SGC's ad guy. The things I post here are my own opinion, and this post is no exception.

Several people have mentioned over the last few days that, if in fact Global is going out of business, that is bad for the hobby.

My opinion is that Global going out of business is decidedly NOT bad for the hobby. In the world of graded cards, nothing could be better. They might be the nicest guys on earth, but that doesn't absolve them from the myriad of mistakes that they've made, costing collectors confidence and money.

Nothing about this company has been "good for the hobby." They can't go out of business fast enough.

Virtually all my collecting life I've owned T206s. When I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11, I used to go to a card shop in Ridgewood, NJ. The owner kept a shoebox full of cards for me - 1951 and 52 Bowmans, and T206s. The Bowmans were fifty cents, the T206s were a dollar. I'd buy a few of each with my allowance money every week.

Since then I've always picked up T206s whenever I could find a bunch of them cheap. And last year I started working on a T205 set.

After looking through my collection this weekend, I've realized that lately I've been dumping a good portion of my collection, but keeping the T205s and T206s. And the more I look at them, the more I enjoy them. The art, the poses, the detail, the ads on the back. Thankfully I haven't gotten to the point where I need to have these in high grade (if I do, shoot me), but they're an awful lot of fun to have around. I can't see myself buying these one at a time yet, as I'm still too far from completion on either set to make it worthwhile, but it's an awful lot of fun to latch onto a big slug of them at auction, and then go through a big pile.

'Sup?

Decided to add some new pages to the site over the next few weeks. I'll be creating a page for Henry Johnson Confectioners cards, as well as a Want List page. I may also create a page for my National Chicle R311s, as well as some other odd stuff I've managed to sock away.

Huggins & Scott closes this week; I like those guys, and think they're doing a great job growing their auction. I've got my eye on a few items, though, so nobody bid.

Yep. I've had just about enough.

Cards get doctored. Yessir. And when somebody trims a card with the intent to deceive a buyer and artificially inflate the price of a card, that's wrong and unethical and all sorts of bad karma is going to hit that person. People should learn what they can, and should stop patronizing sellers and auction houses that doctor cards.

But when people start suggesting that you need a team of forensic scientists to spend hours evaluating every hair of paper fiber on the card to ensure that no foreign elements have ever been introduced to the cardboard, they've gone completely off the deep end and should start a more harmless hobby. I recommend decoupage.

Seriously. There needs to be a 12-step program for Wacky Hobby Conspiracy Theorists or something. And there needs to be a special set of shackles in the catacombs of the world's deepest dungeon for these guys who are tossing around veiled threats and accusations in an effort to further their weird agendas. You guys are transparent as glass, you are doing nothing for the hobby, and most of what you say is wrong anyway.

And everyone else - quit freaking out and enjoy the hobby, already.

Greatest player I've ever seen in my lifetime, swelled head or no.

Huh.

So I went "dark," with the sole purpose of doing a little re-tooling to the website and renovating my kitchen.

And in the process, I got totally disenchanted with my entire collection. How does that happen?

Well, it started with the postwar HOFers. In advance of the auction season, I decided that, to raise funds, I'd sell off my postwar HOFers. After all, they're very easy to replace.

But after I did that, I was left with a HOF collection that had been decimated.

Then, I decided to abandon a short-lived quest to build a T206 HOFer set with odd backs. Which left me with about 25 of those.

Before I knew it, I was questioning the whole damn collection. So I decided to take it in a new direction.

I'll be selling off most of my W502s. After I decided to pass on the near-set that was offered in the Mastro auction, I realized I was never going to get that set built as long as I live. So the whole purpose of creating this blog became moot.

I'm also going to be selling a TON of my HOFers (see the "50 Cards" page for my latest whim). There are a lot on the "sale" page now.

I'm still collecting T205s and Henry Johnsons. For now, I'm also collecting 38 Goudeys (although I did have those on eBay a couple of weeks ago and am considering consigning them to REA). And I'm considering a number of other sets, among them 1934 Gold Medal Foods, 1952 Bowman, 1955 Dormands, and a few others.

And I finally picked up a set of Perez-Steele Great Moments. I've always liked those.

So basically, I just turned the whole thing upside down, shook it violently, and I'm still waiting to see what fell out and what didn't.

But I'll be back here more often now; I promise. For those of you who actually read this, I mean.

A couple of days ago I posted a lengthy rant about a grading company. It was, umm, inspired by a ridiculous post on Net54.

After I posted it, I left it up for a few days. It got no comments, but I kept thinking about it anyway. See, in my professional life, I do some work for a grading company as well - a competitor of the company I was ranting about.

After giving it some thought, I decided to remove the original blog entry. Some people might question whether I can effectively separate my professional life from my hobby (I can), or whether I can post an objective statement on a grading company without letting my professional objectives seep in (I can), or whether I can even be honest on the subject (I can and always am).

Rather than have people question me, as has happened in the past, I've decided to remove the entry altogether and replace it with one sentence:

I don't think that Global is a good grading company, by any ridiculous stretch of the imagination.

Collector 1: "This card looks fake."

Collector 2: "Of course it's fake. Goudey didn't use the Big League Chewing Gum brand until 1933."

Collector 3: "How do you know it's fake? Are you a paper expert? We need to get the paper tested."

Collector 2: "No you don't. There was no such thing as Big League Chewing Gum in 1930."

Collector 4: "Testing the paper won't prove anything. Anybody can get 1930 paper. You need to test the ink."

Collector 2: "You don't need to test the paper or the ink. Just read the words on the card. It can't be possible."

Collector 5: "All the hobby experts who looked at the card say it's fake."

Collector 6: "Yeah, but how would they know? They've never seen the card before. Somebody OUTSIDE the hobby needs to authenticate it."

Collector 2: "THE CARD IS FAKE. THE BRAND NAME ON THE CARD DIDN'T EXIST WHEN THE CARD WAS ALLEGEDLY PRINTED."

Collector 7: "Send it to a paper expert outside the hobby. They can date the paper and the ink. If it dates back to 1930, there's a chance it's real. Then let the courts decide."

Collector 2: "What are you TALKING about? If you saw a baseball card dated 1897, and it said 'Amazon.com' on it, you'd know it was fake without having to test the paper..."

Collector 8: "It's pretty easy to get 1930 paper and 1930 ink. Just because the ink was from the period, doesn't mean it's real."

Collector 2: "Are my words being written in some kind of invisible typeface? Can you see what I'm writing? Is there something wrong with my computer?!"

Collector 9: "I vote we put the money in escrow and then pull together a panel of leading paper and ink experts, do a thorough forensic analysis, and then have a secret ballot vote on the issue."

Collector 2: "Hello? Hello?"

Collector 10: "That sounds great. Maybe we can also do some radiocarbon dating if we can get a large enough core sample of the paper fibers. Sometimes card doctors use enhanced robotic equipment and nanotechnology to do sophisticated paper fiber stitching, to make new paper appear old, and then they artificially age the card in a hyperbaric chamber, and then laser print the image utilizing ink taken directly from the Shroud of Turin, so paper analysis might not be conclusive."

Collector 2: "I have a Coca-Cola ad from 1492..."

Collector 11: "Wait - I just thought of something. What if PART of the card came from 1930, but not the WHOLE thing? What if the image was created in 1930, but the Goudey name was printed onto the card later, like in 1950, utilizing some sophisticated printing process that's since become obsolete?"

Collector 2: "I have all the receipts from George Washington's stay at the Holiday Inn in Hoboken, plus his Taco Bell wrappers..."

Collector 12: "I hadn't thought of that. Has SGC looked at the card? What did they say?"

Collector 2: "THERE WAS NO BIG LEAGUE CHEWING GUM IN 1930!!!!!"

Collector 13: "I think it's fake. But if the paper test proves that it's real, I'll give you $25K for it."

Collector 14: "It's not worth $25K"

Collector 15: "Sure it is. It's the first Goudey baseball card. It's a piece of history."

Collector 16: "Sure, I acknowledge that - but $25K is a lot of money."

Collector 17: "Dude, it's Babe Ruth. I'll bet it's worth TWICE that. It's the first Goudey Ruth!"

Collector 18: "Yeah, but is it really a baseball card? I mean, there's only one in existence. It was clearly not mass-produced and distributed as a means of promoting a product, which is the definition of a baseball card. This is more of a postcard, I think."

Collector 19: "Nah, it's not a postcard. It couldn't be mailed. It's more of an advertising display piece."

Collector 20: "Can it be graded?"

Collector 21: "I don't think so. PSA wouldn't grade it because they'd never seen one before."

Collector 22: "I have a CDV of George Wright that they'd never seen before, and they wouldn't grade that, either. They suck."

Collector 23: "I agree. Anybody who collects graded cards is a fool."

Collector 1: "What were we talking about?"

Collector 23: "I can't remember. PSA, I think."

I respect anyone who is older than me, and who has been doing something I like to do for a longer period of time than I have.

But you know what makes me crazy? Absolutely batshit crazy?

Reading hobby message boards and having old-school collectors not only reject the way I choose to collect, but ridicule it.

I've been reading it for months now. Every couple of days, the same discussion. A handful of old-school guys reject the concept of grading, and will do whatever they can do to jump in and criticize it. Even if the thread has nothing to do with grading, they'll find an angle. Jump right in and slam the grading company.

Then they'll make comments like "I wish we could go back to just talking about the cards."

Except they don't WANT to talk about the cards. They want to bitch about the grading. Post a thread about cards, they'l trip over it while they're looking for another opportunity to insult a collector of graded cards. I know, I've tried it. Multiple times.

Funny how the truly knowledgeable old-school guys don't get involved in the debate. Somehow, they manage to just talk about the cards.

I collect some other stuff too, besides what's on this website. Sooner or later, I'll get them all up here.

I collect 1936 R311 premiums. I have 17 of 'em, and all I care about is what the fronts look like. I had a couple and then I had Mickey Cochrane slabbed by SGC in the new oversized holder, and I fell in love. Eventually I'm going to have them all slabbed, and then I may hang them all on shelves in my office.

I collect 1973 Topps 1953 Reprints. Reluctantly. I used to be a '53 Topps guy. I bought a few of these as a companion piece, and then I let them go. Thanks to my friends Anthony and Bruce, who keep giving me the cards, I'm one card short of having a complete set, despite only having bought two of the cards.

I collect 1939 R303s and 1936 R344s. Mostly because I think the R303s are gorgeous, and both those and the R344s are related to the 1938 Goudeys.

And then I have another thing I collect, sort of in secret. I'm afraid to talk too much about them, because I pretty much scarf them up whenever I see them. They're fairly obscure - not TOO obscure, but obscure enough that people don't chase them. I know a few type collectors who have one or two, but none that actively chase them like I do. Each time I find another one is like a small victory for me - and I've found four new ones in the last month.

And no, I'm not telling what they are.

Over on the CU forums this week there was a brutally ugly exposure of a guy who had been organizing pack rips for a bunch of guys on the board. He would purchase unopened "vintage" (mostly 1980s) cases from BBCE, collect the money from all the participants, and then ship out unopened boxes. He started threads for the CU forum members where they could share scans with their best pulls as they were ripping their packs. It seemed like a lot of fun - from experience, it's definitely a lot of fun to share scans on message boards, and is a great way to build excitement about a set. I've been participating in a thread like that for two years, and it's shaped my entire collection.

Anyway, after a couple cases of off-center stars, bad collation, suspicious wrappers and few big-name cards, some guys got suspicious enough to do some detective work. Seems that the guy was buying wrappers and large lots of commons from the years of the pack rips, and re-sealing commons into packs, dropping them in boxes, and shipping them out. Then he was, I guess, keeping the unopened material to himself. You can read the whole thing over at CU.

Reading the thread made for great drama but I couldn't help but think that this guy bilked a lot of people out of a decent amount of money. But more importantly than that, he betrayed a lot of people.

I guess if you're a scumbag you're a scumbag, and you don't care who you betray. So this note is for the NON-scumbags who get to know other people on message boards: before you trust someone you've never looked in the eye, be really, really sure. If something seems fishy - like if a guy insists on shipping the individual boxes of unopened packs out to you rather than having them ship from the seller's warehouse - it probably is.


On a related note, last night I got together with a bunch of guys who I know from message boards at the Reading show. In light of all the above, it would have been pretty easy to be suspicious and wary of each other, but not so. I've been pretty lucky to have met a bunch of outstanding collectors and friends, and it was great to see them. I drove all the way to Reading and spent $35 on a Henry Johnson common that I already had (which I didn't realize when I bought it - gotta start carrying lists around again), but had a great time anyway because I spent it with friends.

One interesting point related to tie together my last blog post and this one - word at the show was that cards in Global holders were being submitted to PSA and SGC in large quantities for crossover, accompanied by comments like "I don't care how the cards grade - just get them out of those holders."

Really.

That means I an never ollet raker Jaks.

So I attended the big summit, as stated, and have thus far refrained from commenting, because I didn't think anybody cared. But Jason L asked, so...

I left my office a little late, stopping off at SGC to drop off a bunch of cards. I just bought a new car, and I got the navigation system option, so I decided it would be fun to let the car tell me the best way to get to the meeting. Of course the car thought it would be fun to drive over the GWB instead of the Tunnel, so a 1 hour delay ensued. The car kept telling me I was just 8 miles away, 10 minutes from my destination, and I was stuck on the Jersey side to the bridge and couldn't move. For almost an hour the car said I was 10 minutes away.

Damn car.

Anyway, I arrived late and walked into a host of folks, some of whom I knew and some of whom were introduced to me when I arrived.

My basic observation, which I communicated in the meeting and then later in a 54 post, is that any "association" who's goal is to create some sort of watchdog group that develops a code of ethics and some sort of penalty for anyone who doesn't abide by the code is doomed to fail.

There currently isn't any single resource to find out information about individual sets. If you ask questions, you may be lucky to find someone like Mark Macrae or Rob Lifson, who are both unbelievable resources and very willing to pass along information that can help you learn. But too many others keep their knowledge close to the vest, and spit out garbage like "If you want to learn how to detect an altered T206, you just have to buy a bunch of them and get to know them over 40 years like I have. Then you'll know."

Until then, presumably you have to be duped by people selling you trimmed cards.

What's funny is that there were many long-time collectors in the room that night, and when Dave Forman of SGC passed around a bunch of slabbed samples (some of which were altered and some of which weren't), I don't think there was a guy in the room who guessed - and most were guessing - all of them right.

Don't get me wrong here. I think card alteration is bad. I think it's rampant. I think guys like Rob Lifson deserve to sit at the top of the hobby, not only figuratively but LITERALLY - in terms of sales dollars.

But I don't think you can hand an unethical person a code of ethics, have him sign it, and expect that he won't keep on doing what he's always done.

I'm talking about a large hobby resource here, someplace where you can go to find out not only how to determine if a Goudey has had rebuilt corners or if an OJ has been rebacked, but also to find out just how many different parallel sets Upper Deck issued in their 2006 set, and how to determine if a Refractical Shinything has had a 64th of an inch sliced off the top edge.

A place where you can go and read up on people's experiences with Auction House A or Dealer B or Grading Company C. Sort of like a Better Business Bureau, only without the heavyhandedness.

My suspicion is that the cream will rise to the top, and maybe some people will have to change their business practices and take the high road for a change.

And I also suspect that the people I choose to do business with today - including Rob Lifson, SGC, Huggins & Scott and others - won't have to change a thing.

Nine days til pitchers and catchers. Reminds me of what this hobby is all about, yo.

So I'm going to get together tomorrow night with some collectors who want to discuss some of the "issues" that have polluted the hobby message boards over the last two months. The "issues" essentially amount to this:

There are people who fraudulently alter trading cards with the intent of deceiving card collectors into thinking that they're getting a nice card that has lived through history in nicer condition than it really has.

There are people who like to buy cards who have until recently found that they are either too smart to have the wool pulled over their eyes, or depend on grading companies to do the work.

It seems that the latter is just realizing the degree to which the former exists.

Now, they're struggling to figure out exactly how much fraud they're willing to accept.

And they're probably also trying to square in their minds the dollars that they've spent on their collections.

The reality is this: the hobby has decided to value higher-grade cards at a premium. The logic behind this is that the cards have managed to survive in magnificent shape, and as such, are more scarce and more valuable than the same card with, say, a wrinkle across it.

The other reality is this: it is entirely possible - and unbelievably common - for people to use common household items to alter the condition of a card in such a way that it appears to be in better condition than it really is. As a result of doing this, people can dupe unsuspecting buyers into thinking they're getting something better than they really are. And if they can manage to slip their cards past a grading company - and many do - then the plastic slab becomes a license to steal.

The other other reality is this: it sounds simpler than it really is. It sounds very black and white. But consider the following:

* If the degree to which this is a problem is really brought to light, does it become an indictment of the competence of any grading company?
* If it does, what happens to the people who have invested hundreds of thousands - maybe even millions - of dollars in high-grade cards?
* And what happens to the dealers who have thousands and thousands of cards in inventory?
* And what happens to the auction houses who make a living selling this stuff?
* And what happens to the hobby - which is now driven by internet sales that are facilitated by third-party grading - if collectors lose confidence in the grading companies?

And don't think this is just a "high grade" issue, either. While the incentive to turn a 6 into an 8 represents the greatest financial upside (and potentially is the easiest alteration to make), the 6 may turn into a 7 instead. Or the "doctor" make take a wrinkle or crease out of a nice 4 or 5, and the card turns into a 5 or 6 due to some other issue. Or a scarce card is turned from a 1MK to a 3, as evidenced by a high-profile card that was rejected by my client Robert Edward Auctions and later found its way into a different auction.

And don't think this is just a "graded card" issue, either. Because the cards that are poorly altered are rejected for grading, and remain raw. And some of the old-school, super-knowledgeable collectors out there would be amazed at how many of these bad cards wind up in their collections because they really look pretty good.

Which leaves us here. A few guys are going to get together and try to make heads or tails of the situation, and try to figure out where to go from here.

My prediction? There will be good ideas kicked around, about hobby regulation, trade associations, codes of ethics, et cetera. But when the rubber hits the road, when a thief sees an opportunity to steal, and when a collector sees a card that they need, dollars will exchange hands and everyone will look the other way.

I've done it myself. Do I think I have altered cards in my collection? Of course I do. Wanna see some? Look here. It's an entire collection of moderately high-grade cards that were issued to CHILDREN inside packs of CHEWING GUM, almost 70 years ago. The cards were likely passed through two generations and never withstood so much as a corner ding? Puh-leeze. I'd be willing to accept the possibility that SOME of my cards lasted this way, but all 20-something of the Near Mint or better cards in the set? Not on your life.

A little closer to home (for you and not me), consider the most popular prewar set: T206.

Ever open a pack of 1980 Topps cards? You get a bunch of off-center cards, some corner dings, maybe a factory wrinkle. Right out of the pack, most of the cards are 7s.

What do you think it was like in 1909? When nobody cared about condition? When nobody cared about print registration, centering, rough cuts, or wrinkles? When the cards - which were primarily "stiffeners" that were designed to keep cigarettes from breaking or bending in a pack - were pressed up against loose shards of tobacco, eventually taken out of the pack by hand and delivered to some young collector?

Am I to believe that somehow a T206 card managed to make it INTO the pack of cigarettes in Near Mint condition? And then once it was IN the pack, it wasn't jostled or bent or crushed or folded or stained, for the entire time it was in the pack, being transported from factory to store to smoker to home?

And then it lasted in the collection of some adolescent turn-of-the-century boy who was smart enough to preserve the cards, never look at them, never expose them to sun, never drop them, fold them, touch them with dirty hands, wrinkle them, ding them, store them near something harmful.

And then the cards were passed to another generation, who treated them the same way.

And then probably another generation. And THAT generation discovered grading, and submitted the card to a grading company.

And through all that, the card somehow remained in Near Mint condition.

Impossible, right? I mean, when I think about it, I stop at the damn FACTORY, and say "no way they came out of the factory in that shape."

And yet the PSA pop reports would indicate that this has happened more than SIX THOUSAND TIMES. 6,176, in fact, which is the number of cards they've graded 7 or better. Not counting the qualifiers. That's almost 9% of all the T206 cards they've graded.

For the heck of it, I figured I'd take a look at other sets - similar sets, with similar stock, distributed a similar way - to see what percentage of those cards graded 7 or better by PSA. Here's what I found:

T205: 6.5%
E92 Crofts Cocoa: 0%
T207: 7.7%
T213 Type 2: 0%
T216 People's Tobacco: 0%
T214 Victory Tobacco: 0%

It seems odd to me that the card set that's most widely collected in the prewar arena, that has the highest number - BY FAR - of graded cards, that has a litany of people collecting graded sets in all conditions, happens to have the highest percentage of cards graded NMT or better.

Is it some anomaly? Some weird fluke that has resulted in a higher percentage of turn-of-the-century collectors taking better care of their T206 cards, despite probably not knowing the difference between a T206 and a T213?

Or is it because there are so many collectors of the most popular prewar set that there's more of an incentive for fraudulent behavior on the part of card doctors who can generate more aggressive bidding on a high-grade T206 common than they can on a high-grade T213?

So I really hope to see progress made, some monumental conclusion drawn. More likely, though, I'll be thrilled to meet some guys I've only spoken with online, share some stories, agree that card doctoring sucks, and then bid against them in the next auction for high-grade '38 Goudeys.

I feel bad for Tony Romo.

There. I said it.

It's so damn easy to get discouraged lately, what with all these allegations of wrongdoing and all.

There are good guys in this hobby. Lots of them. I talk to them every day.

I belong to a community of some of the most honest, knowledgeable, straightforward guys you'll ever meet in the hobby. They're my friends. We look out for each other, help each other out, share personal experiences with one another. They come from every conceivable walk of life. When I first met them, they made the hobby better for me. Now that I've gotten to know them all, they've made my LIFE better. They're my friends, and they all have two things in common: cards, and personal integrity.

I do work for a number of companies that make their money in the hobby. I trust them implicitly. In each case, I started as a customer, and gradually built a relationship with them. In most cases I've become fairly knowledgeable about their businesses, and I'm very comfortable with and confident in them. The management of the two companies I'm closest with - SGC and Robert Edward Auctions - have become my friends, and I enjoy their company and respect them immensely. I respect the way they run their businesses, and the passion they have for the hobby.

Through my work and my collecting, I've met a number of others in the hobby that I've grown to like and respect. Some are friends, and some are people I've only met once or twice, but who have impressed me. Huggins & Scott. Chet Woods. Ron Vitro. Marshall Fogel. Barry Sloate. Jimmy Spence. Levi Bleam. Brett Hardeman. And so many more.

So once in a while, look around the hobby and try not to think about which auction house is fixing cards, which grading company is doing favors for dealers, which seller is shilling his auctions, which grader is slabbing trimmed cards. Instead, look at your cards, and your friends, and try and remember what got you started in this hobby in the first place.

It worked for me today. I got home after reading all the crap that went down today, walked into my card room, sat down, and immersed myself in the hobby. I still feel pretty good.

That's Alex "Some Tough City" Rodriguez. He plays third base for the Yankees.

Just in case you've never heard of him, I mean, since you're all wrapped up in your Ty Cobb and your Tris Speaker.

Anyway, Topps, which is a company that makes baseball cards (they actually started in 1951

, but you don't collect anything after 1943, so how would you know?), produced a set this year that's modeled after the T3 Turkey Red set.

The cards are small, though. Not particularly attractive, either, but they WOULD be, if they were the right size. Real nice illustrations, gorgeous backgrounds, stuff like that. There's a great card of Randy Johnson, doing what he does best - chatting on the mound with Jorge Posada, stalling for time while the Yanks get a relief pitcher warmed up.

Anyway, if you buy a whole box of these Topps Turkey Red cards, there's something called a "box topper" in it. It's a big plastic envelope, with this B18 blanket thingy inside.

Best-looking shiny card I've ever seen.

EVERYTHING about the blanket (except the Topps copyright info) is true to the old B18s. Similar material, similar design, even that weird, warping thing that B18s do. They're the same size, even. I've got A-Rod in a frame, right next to the real B18s I have of Bobby Wallace and Zach Wheat. They're cool. I saw a complete set of them sell on eBay for, like, $50 the other day. Worth every penny, if you ask me. They're just cool.

This has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood card geek.

I retired my 1938 Goudey registry set.

I'd considered doing it for a long time, and gave it some hard thoughts after the recent grading mishaps I've had. I considered crossing the entire set to SGC, but I'm a stickler for display, and it seems I need to upgrade some of my cards before I can cross them to the same grade. I don't want to take downgrades because of the money I have invested, I don't want to sell the ones that won't cross because I don't want holes in my set, and I don't want to cross only some of them because I don't want a mixed set.

At the same time, I no longer want to play the registry game. My set had gotten to #5, and I'm convinced that it's one of the most carefully assembled, high-grade '38 sets in the hobby. There are still some weaknesses in the set, but without the competition of the registry, which I somehow became a victim to, I can be more patient and focus more on acquiring great CARDS, rather than better GRADES.

The straw that broke the camel's back, I guess, was this Al Lopez.


Al has a 7 on the flip, but he's more like a 5. He came with a 7 price tag, though, and a lousy scan and a "no refunds on graded cards" stuck me with the card. Okay, I can't blame PSA for making an obvious, blatant mistake in grading, as we shouldn't depend on the grading company. There could be any number of reasons why the three graders who review each PSA card agreed that the card was worthy of a 7. Or perhaps the corners and edges got damaged while the card was in the holder.

What pissed me off about this was that I bought it. Based on a lousy scan, I saw the "7" on the flip and pulled the trigger on a BIN because I just KNEW that a PSA 7 would be an upgrade to the PSA 5 I had. And when the card arrived, and it wasn't, I realized that I had bought the holder, not the card.

I don't collect holders.

So I got depressed for a while, threw some weak bids at the PSA 8 Medwick in the Mastro auction, submitted my set to SGC for review, and ultimately just decided that I love my '38 set, and think it's one of the nicest ones anyone will ever be able to assemble. But I can't tolerate the fact that I started buying certs to bump my overall grade.

I'll sit on the sidelines and collect my set quietly. I'll upgrade with true upgrades and I'll post my new cards here; my set will stay on this website and I'll continue to have a gallery. Whenever I discover something new about the set, I'll try and write something about it.

But I won't buy a 5 in a 7 holder, ever again.

This is my favorite baseball card.

Actually, not that PARTICULAR Waddell, but this one.


I bought this card in roughly 1983 or so, from a card shop in Ridgewood, NJ, called Dollars and Sense. The owner of the shop was a character named Greg. I used to go there with my childhood friend Dave (who sells cards on eBay for a living now), and Greg knew I liked T206s, as well as 1951 and 52 Bowmans. He used to throw a bunch of those cards in a shoebox, and sell them to me for a buck a T206, and a quarter a Bowman. I pulled the above clipped, beaten Waddell out of the box one day.

My grandfather told me about Rube. He didn't describe him entirely accurately; Rube wasn't a simpleton, he was more of a fun-loving country boy. The stories about Waddell are tremendous. He's my favorite prewar player, and I could sit and listen to the stories all day. My grandfather never actually saw Rube pitch; he wasn't born until 1918. But he was a student of the game, and knew all the stories about all the great players that played before he was born.

I'll have to tell you about my grandfather someday. But I digress.

The Rube card got me thinking about the concept of "value". I bought another T206 Waddell in EX-MT condition in about 1991, to "replace" my old Rube with the clipped corners. Somewhere along the line, I lost it. I replaced the lost one with the one you see above in the SGC holder - nice-looking card, rough back accounts for the grade. I'm now talking to someone about buying an SGC 5 to replace that one.

Clearly the EX-MT version was valuable (although it only cost me $20 in 1991). The SGC 1.5 would also fetch a decent price, due to the eye appeal of the front. I don't know, maybe $80-100. And I'm sure the 5 I'm thinking of buying will run me a few hundred.

But the beater with the clipped corners?

That one got put away through high school and college, when baseball cards were of no interest to me. It was kept in a screw-down for a long time, and then when I got sick of screw-downs it was put in a card saver. It moved with me through 5 or 6 residences, always kept in a special spot so I wouldn't lose it in transit. Today I keep it tucked away, right in the middle of my other tobacco cards. Nothing - NOTHING - could pry it away from me. It is one of the most "valuable" cards in my collection.

All this talk about PSA 8s on the message boards got me thinking about this recently. With such high dollars being spent on cards (I'm guilty of it myself), it's easy to start thinking of these things in terms of their investment potential. It's easy to write off the lower-grade cards as useless, and a waste of money. But how do you quantify the value of that beat-up Rube at the top of this post? As a kid I TREASURED that card. It was a Hall of Famer from 1909! The oldest card in my neighborhood, one that everyone wanted to own. I turned down Schmidt rookies, Rose rookies, Rice rookies, Seaver rookies - all the cards that were huge when I was a kid.

I like having some nice cards, but there's WAY more to the hobby than that, for me.

I give you Sunny Jim Bottomley.


Jim, as pictured on his R311 card (which I just acquired) had a problem with his cap. It's kind of endearing, actually, as the cap is always tilted off to one side. Here's his 1929 Kashin:


Yup. Off to his left just enough. It's a thing with Sunny Jim, always wearing his cap tilted off to the left.

Bottomley played when my grandfather was a boy, the same grandfather that taught me that it was disrespecting the game to ever set foot on a ballfield in shorts, or without a proper cap. If a player had his cap on backwards, my grandfather (who I called "Pal" or "Willie", even though his name was Joe) would lose his mind. He also hated long hair and earrings on men, tight jeans, and short skirts. I'm pretty sure that if he were alive today, he'd flip his lid if he saw the kids wearing the hanging-down baggy jeans and the hanging-out boxer shorts, with the pant legs dragging behind them as they walk.

But then I realized something.

The frickin' hat thing is a 1930s EPIDEMIC.

The hat thing is the hanging-out underwear of the 1930s.

Check out Kiki Cuyler. His hat's so messed up, it looks like he's wearing a wash rag on his head.



And Charlie Gehringer? Yup. Tilted to the left, yo.



Lefty Gomez? Dresses left.



It goes on and on and on and on and on.



And it doesn't start in the 30s, either. It goes way back to the turn of the century.




These guys were THUGS, man. THUGS. Even Fred Clarke. FRED CLARKE! Wearing his underwear, hanging out the back, with all that jewelry and those earrings and stuff.

What's next? Did Connie Mack have tattoos? Did Rube Waddell travel around with a posse?

Umm, actually Rube DID travel around with a posse.

Sometimes it takes something stupid to remind me that the world really hasn't changed ALL that much.

They even had plastic Devo hair in the 30s.

I use a lot of propane in my life.

It heats my house and my water, it fuels my oven, and it dries my clothes. It fuels my barbecue grill and powers my mosquito repeller in the summertime. It fuels a tool I use to burn weeds.

For about 90% of the propane I need, I use Suburban Propane. Suburban is also a client of my company. We do their marketing, their ads, their website, and a lot of their internal systems.

For a small portion of the propane I need, I use Amerigas. There's a gas station a mile away from my house that has an Amerigas propane tank exchange cage - I bring my empty cylinders there and replace them with full ones. It's cheap and convenient. When I need to fill the gas tank for the tractor, I bring the propane cylinders and swap them out in one, big "gas run."

Last summer I went out and bought an Amerigas tank, and when I got home and hooked it up, I discovered that it leaked. By the time I discovered it, the tank was empty, my whole deck smelled like propane, and I had no gas left to cook with. At that point, the gas station was closed and I couldn't barbecue. It was sloppy service, and I was pissed. I bitched about it to everyone who would listen.

Not a single person I bitched to thought it was weird or unethical that I was bitching. They all seemed to understand that I'm entitled to buy propane wherever I want, and once my wallet comes out of my pocket I become a consumer, entitled to all the same expectations and rights that everyone else has.

Somebody please explain this shit to me, because the more I think about it the more frustrated I get.

And no, there's nothing wrong with the back. And there are no wrinkles, no writing, or no invisible print lines, footprints, tooth marks, or chocolate stains. The upper left corner has a ding.

There's a dartboard in Newport Beach with ten numbers on it. Jimmy the Grade Monkey tosses a dart, it hits he number 4, and bingo. Add one PSA 4 to the pop report.

I'm not one to bash grading companies, and I'll willingly disclose that the company I work for counts SGC among its client base. But I've always been pretty fair about touting both PSA and SGC, and using both companies regularly as well. I've submitted a significant number of '38 Goudeys to PSA, in all grades, and over the last six months I have seen a definite increase in the number of grading oddities.

By the way, this Foxx was on the same submission as the Hank Greenberg I posted last month (that was rejected for trimming after being a PSA 4, 3, and 2). Also on the submission was a 38 Goudey Demaree that was once an SGC 50 that is now a PSA 6, a T206 Joe Kelley that was blatantly trimmed that is now a PSA 5, and a '38 Goudey Medwick that PSA rejected three times in a row for trimming (it took me a while to find where the trimming was, but now that I can see it I'm thankful that PSA is so consistent).

I grew up a Yankee fan in Northern New Jersey in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It was the time of Billy Martin, The Bronx Zoo, and the great Yankee comeback of 1978. My hero was Graig Nettles - as a young little leaguer with major league aspirations, it was Nettles' defensive play that taught me that the glove was not just something you wore inbetween at bats. It was Nettles that helped shape my belief that a perfectly-turned double play was more exciting than a home run, and that an impossible, diving stop was what made baseball such a great game to me.

Anyway, during that time, I always considered the Yankees' greatest rival not to be the Red Sox, but the Kansas City Royals. That team gave us fits with the Yankee-killer pitching of Larry Gura and Paul Splittorff, and the pesky offense of Al Cowens, Amos Otis, and John Mayberry. But the Royals had one guy that I hated above all.

George Brett.

Brett was the best hitter in the American League, a guy who could kill you at any point in the game. No pitcher was immune - not Guidry, not Figueroa, not Lyle, and certainly not even Gossage, as evidenced by his playoff performances.

That's why the Pine Tar Game gave me so much pleasure. It was Nettles that pointed out Brett's gratuitous use of pine tar, another example of how in baseball, intellect trumps everything. Watching Brett lose his mind when he was called out was worth the eventual loss to me; the vision of this guy who was always so cool at the plate coming completely unglued and having to be physically restrained from killing the crew chief that day made me laugh uncontrollably.

A few years after that Game, Brett was doing an autograph signing for a promoter in New York. One of the guys who was working for the promoter, acting as a "handler" for Brett, spent the entire session riding him; ragging him about the Yankees, the Royals' inability to beat them, and the Pine Tar Game. Then, in the ultimate display of moxie, after the session was over, the guy hands Brett a baseball and asks for an autograph.

The result was this treasure I was able to add to my collection about a year ago, a message Brett seemed to be constantly sending to Yankee fans throughout my childhood.

Well, I got some grades back this week, and the W502 Speaker I bought back in June, once the highest-graded PSA 5, is now a modest, midgrade SGC 50. One of several PSA-to-SGC downgrades I took in my submission. Thing is, unless I absolutely need the card to cross, I always crack the card out of the holder before submitting, so SGC had no idea what the original grades were. I did get one bump.

I also got some PSA grades back, on '38 Goudeys - a Gehringer that I had that was initially mislabeled by PSA (in a 6 holder), came back with the right label, in a 7 holder. And a Hank Greenberg that once came back a 4, was resubmitted for a 5 and came back a 3, came back a 2. That's right, it's been a 4, a 3, and a 2, and I keep submitting it, hoping for a 5.

Ah, well. Love those red flips, though.

Picked up a few more cards recently, but have been doing more selling - unloading my '38 DiMaggio and the rest of my '61 Fleers. I snagged a 1936 Canadian Goudey Premium of Bobby Doerr that is quite cool, and got an E95 Sam Crawford in the 19th Century Only auction. And I picked up my first Scrapps Tobacco card, of Charlie Comiskey. I'll post scans when I get a chance.

Also added six new T205s to my collection, all SGC 40s and a 50. Very nice-looking. I'm slowly getting back into that set.

I also decided to consign my 1953 and 1961 sets that I refer about in a previous post to Robert Edward Auctions. Sure, Rob is a client, but I also think he gets the highest prices for cards because he knows what he's doing.

So I've been giving a lot of serious thought to what comes next. Not just because of the trouble I've been having in acquiring nice W502s (I didn't buy that lot at Mastro, by the way), but because of how my collecting tastes have evolved over the last year or so.

See, I had a goal of collecting one complete set from each year the Yankees won the World Series. I referred to it as my "Yankee Run." I completed half of 1936, 1938, most of 1939, 1943, 1953, most of 1961, half of 1962, 1977, 1978, and most of 1998. I was also working on - ahem - 1928. But it started getting disappointing to me, knowing that a T206 wouldn't fit into my collection. Or a 19th Century card. Or a 1957 Topps. Or a 1991 Upper Deck.

So I started working on a Hall of Fame collection. I discuss it in the HOF section of this website.

Buying Hall of Famers injected fun into the hobby for me that I'd never experienced. There were actually eight or ten friends who were all doing the same thing, sharing our new acquisitions with each other, educating each other about different card types. Suddenly I could buy any card type I wanted - and I wanted as many as I could buy. More people joined us on the journey, their enthusiasm made it even more fun.

As this went on, the amount of money I spent on my Yankee sets (except for 1938 Goudey, which has taken on a life of its own) began to dwindle, and my interest in prewar HOFers began to grow. I began working on a T205 set. I sold off my Diamond Stars, and then my 1961-62 Fleers went next.

Now, I've decided to repurpose my entire collection. My primary pursuit is going to be Hall of Famers. No longer will I strive to have only one card of each (as evidenced by the three Roger Bresnahans in the photo album). I'll be striving for at least one card of each player, and as many different card types as possible. I'd rather have a few hundred really cool cards than ten thousand 1950s commons. I can't look at ten thousand commons.

Oh, sure, I'll keep collecting Yankee stuff. I'm going to start a collection of cards and memorabilia that tell the story of the Yankees, from their humble beginnings at the Polo Grounds through the Steinbrenner years. But I'm going to do that later.

For now I'm having too much fun doing what I'm doing.

Which reminds me. I have a complete set of 1953 Topps baseball cards for sale. Overall, it probably grades EX. 60% of the cards have been graded by PSA, ranking the set #29 on the registry. Most of the cards grade in the 5-6 range, with more 6s than 5s. There are a few higher as well. The Mantle is very nice but has two trimmed corners. Aside from that, it's a great set, and if you keep checking back I will post scans if I don't sell it first. If you're interested please contact me.

And, of course, I will be selling a very nice, clean 1961 Topps near set. Mostly raw, VERY HIGH-END EXMT to NMT, with some better and a handful worse. A few minor HOFers are missing, and a bunch of high numbers (including the Mantle A-S card). The regular Mantle is a PSA 7, the Mantle MVP is a 7PD. If you're interested in this, contact me as well.

I'll continue to use this blog to chronicle what I'm doing. I'll also continue trying to build a W502 set (but not at $500 a card, which is what's been offered to me since I started this blog). I may even start an E91 set (believe it or not, I like these). But at least I'll be able to post more to the blog...

Just checking in here, since it's been awhile. There's a W502 HOFer as part of a lot of W-cards in the upcoming Mastro auction, but I think I'm going to steer clear. The other cards in the lot include some top-tier HOFers, and I don't need those, so I'm not sure I want to spring for the entire lot just to get at the one card.

If anyone out there wins the lot, though, and wants to sell off the W502, I'm a buyer.

Meanwhile I've been focusing on other areas of my collection. I recently picked up a handful of HOFers for my collection from a friend, and also picked up the elusive, "low-grade but presentable T205 Joss" I've been looking for, to fill a hole in my T205 set and add to my HOFer set.

And then, of course, I broke the bank on a new '38 Goudey Joe D.

Sent in a submission of mostly prewar HOFers to SGC today (including an out-of-place 1984 Donruss Rod Carew that was broken out of a PSA 9 holder). The grouping included the Abner Doubleday CDV that you see on the home page. It's debatable as to whether Doubleday belongs in my collection, since he's not really a HOFer and didn't really have anything to do with baseball, but in this case I'm willing to suspend reality and recognize baseball lore for what it is.

I also picked up a couple of nice, midgrade 1954 Topps HOFers (Whitey Ford and Phil Rizzuto), a couple of Gold Medal Foods, and last weekend found a nice V61 Neilson's Chocolate Burleigh Grimes to add to the HOF set. So while the well has been dry as far as W502s are concerned, at least I've been keeping myself busy with other stuff!

How discouraging.

The only W502 that I've found since my last entry is a PSA "Authentic" HOFer that's currently on Ebay. As I have no interest in the "authentic" card, I have not seen a nice W502 in over a month.

This has got me thinking about how I'm going to handle this blog, and this quest, since it appears that this set is as scarce as it is unpopular.

I've considered resuming my T205 hunt, which is currently something like 20% done and could be a decent idea, considering that T205 pricing is pretty depressed right now. I've also considered adding a more modern set like 1951 or 1952 Bowman, and building a nice, raw, EX condition set. And I've considered beginning a collection of Yankees cards and memorabilia to serve as a companion to my "Yankee Run" of complete sets. Not sure which direction I'm going to head in, but I'll tell you - I have to head in SOME direction, because if I sit around and wait for W502s, it could be YEARS before I get another set complete!

I realize that building a set requires patience, don't get me wrong. But this requires a whole different KIND of patience - I began this blog on May 30, and have added precisely one card in that time. Today is July 25. Almost two solid months, and I've gone from three to four out of 60 cards. Drag.

Here's my George Kelly.

It's a very nice card - but clearly has some corner issues, and perhaps a little staining or marking along the top border. The back appears clean but could have some very light staining; it's tough to tell inside the slab. But a card like this, if I were to look at it outside the holder, I might call it a VG-EX card.

I'm very curious about the grading on these. There are very few high-grade examples graded by SGC or PSA, and I simply haven't seen enough of them to be a good judge. Like I said, I have four out of 60 cards in the set.

Unfortunately I have managed to locate three more high-grade examples, but the seller is asking, in my opinion, WAY too much money. Like more than $400 each, for second-tier HOFers.

So if I search for a couple of months, latch onto the Speaker, then search a few more months and find three overpriced HOFers, is this realistically a set that can be completed? A couple of weeks ago I passed on a lower-grade, raw Ray Schalk because I thought it wasn't up to the standard I had set for myself on this issue. Was that a mistake?

I know it's important to stay patient when building a tough set, and I'm most definitely not thinking of abandoning this quest, but I am most definitely considering starting a more mainstream set just to keep myself occupied.