Illegal Motion... Eddie Jones... Failure To Return To His Original Position

Last month after I did the “So You Don’t Have To” segment where I plunged graded cards under water for a week and then cracked the cases, I tossed the cards in to my card drawer with the intent of putting them in to the proper storage boxes when I had the time. Well, the cards are still in the drawer, but Eddie Jones is a but curvier then he had been. Now, I love curves on a girl but curves on a card are a different subject. 

I figure that the water that got in to the case is what caused the bending. I know Finest, Chrome and Prizm tend to get a bit of a bend over time if stored improperly but I have never seen anything this extreme. It was graded a SGC 96, what do you think it would come back as now? 

Another Cavalcade Of Griffey Cards XII

Awhile back someone, sorry I don’t remember which blog, posted about picking up some cards that had gum stains on them. When I was a kid in the early 1980s a gum stain on a card was a mark of death, it was destined for the spokes of your bike or to be drawn on and defaced, nobody wanted them. 

Now Topps makes it a variant of the base card in their Heritage releases, like we need more parallels, but in collectors who collected when the gum stain was a bad thing now sees it in a different light. It now transports us back to flipping cards against the wall in elementary school and leaves us wondering how many 1980 Rickey Henderson and 1981 Joe Montana rookie cards were tossed in the trash over a stain.

I caved, I had to find a Griffey gum stain for my collection, which is kind of difficult because by the time his cards began showing up gum in packs was quickly becoming a thing of the past but I did find a 1989 Bowman rookie card with that mark. I have picked up a couple of Griffey damaged and error cards over the years, things like this make each card unique.

Why Must You Hurt Him Like This?

While I hit 1,300 unique Griffey cards a card that came in just prior is one that I am focusing on today. The card, #1,298 in the collection, came from a seller in the Seattle area in less than stellar condition. The card came in badly damaged, which was not the seller’s fault but from the post office. When I received the mailer it had a large oily circle that was roughly the size of a soda can smashed on to the middle of the padded mailer. I am guessing it was caused by some sort of machinery and even though the card was secured inside a rigid top loader it took some nasty damage to the top loader, penny sleeve and card.

The card has a circle stamped in to it that runs from Griffey’s waist and down his right leg and to add insult the card is creased above the circular mark. Ouch ouch ouch.  I contacted the seller to let her know how I received that card and I told her it was obviously damage by the post office and not her and that I was going to leave positive feedback, she immediately offered a refund and told me to keep the card. She even told me to look through her auctions and choose any card in the same value range and she would send that to me which I politely refused because I felt bad that not only was she out the Griffey card but the money too and I didn't feel right taking another card from her.

But while we were going back and forth I told her I used to live in the area and it turns out her and her husband used to run a card shop that I frequented in my town. It was totally random and had the card not been damaged I wouldn’t have contacted her and reconnected with an old dealer. Sadly, she closed the shop a year after I moved because her husband passed away but she is still selling cards through eBay.

Can Hit Roberto Duran, Can't Hit A Sticker

On Friday I wrote about the bleeding Leaf cards and while doing research for the post I came across this 2013 Leaf Sports Heroes Tommy The Hitman Hearns printing plate with a sticker auto that does not contain his entire signature. I looked in to his other Leaf autograph cards and half of the currently listed cards are as bad and those that aren’t as bad still have part of his signature missing.

I consider this a damaged product because the signature is not complete. It effects the appearance of the card and we already lost most on-card autographs should we be forced to accept sticker autographs with part of the signature missing?

I read a couple of blogs that cover Japanese cards and I have noticed that many of the sets that include autographs are signed on oversized stickers to accommodate Kanji characters. I would rather have a complete signature on a larger sticker than a cut off autograph on a small sticker, well I would rather have an on-card autograph but that is a given. 

I May Bleed For My Cards (I Don't Really) But I Don't Want My Cards Bleeding For Me

Have you ever seen a card or set that was just a mess and wondered why the company decided to continue with a similar follow up? Sure they get an “A” for effort and a bonus point for committing to something but occasionally you need to just call it a failure and move along.

Now this could be a description of a number of sets but today I am just talking about Leaf’s Trinity printing plate inscriptions released between 2013-2015. I came across a couple of bleeding signatures on COMC and started checking out eBay to see if this was just an isolated case but it appears to have happened often enough over three years that it is easy to find them.  

I did notice that most of the ones with the bleeding ink are on the Black or Yellow printing plates so the issue appears to be a mixture of the pen ink and printers ink for those plates. 

A perfect example showing the issue is obviously not something effecting the entire run are these 2014 Leaf Trinity Dalton Pompey where the Black plate his signature is bled away while the Magenta plate looks as if he just signed it.

 

Damaged By My Own Mistake

Is there anything worse than damaging a card yourself due to lack of attention?

 

I recently picked up a rare Griffey card, a 2003 Topps Kanebo #3 card. These cards were created by Topps and are exactly like the 2002 (Gold border) and 2003 (Green border) Topps baseball cards but the backs are in Japanese and the Topps logo was removed from the card face on the 2003 cards. They were created for and distributed by Kanebo Foods in Japan.

I have never seen the cards before and was instantly grabbed, I have an affinity for the Japanese culture, I didn’t pay a ton but it was definitely more than a base 2003 Topps Griffey card. The card was perfect when I received it but after opening the package I grabbed an armful of stuff and headed up the stairs, the card began to slide off of the top of the pile I had in my arms so I put it between my teeth without even thinking. Needless to say I realized my mistake too late and I left two teeth marks across the edge of the card. It isn’t noticeable in the scan or even when you look at the card but if you hold it at an angle you notice the slight marks on the surface. I am so bummed.

 

 

Last week I picked up a 2002 Topps Kanebo Ichiro #16 and made sure not to damage it (LOL)

 

 



Damaged By My Own Hands

I am not a big fan of modern graded cards, I would rather have a cool card in one of my binders or within the collection that it belongs, I don’t want one slabbed card here and the rest of the collection there.

So far I have broken 6-8 cards out from their encased prison and I have had no problems. Beckett and PSA slabs are pretty simple when cracking the case but today I came across an All-Star Grading case, which is sealed a bit differently. Today I inflicted damage on a poor defenseless Griffey card and I now feel sorrow for my cardboard sin.

The card is nothing major, a 1991 Front Row #9 blank back that cost under $3 so the pain I feel is pretty minor. Actually the seller sent the wrong card at first (which I already had) and told me to keep it before sending the correct card so I got two cards for the price of one.

The All-Star Grading cases are crimped along the edges so the flathead screwdriver does not fit in flat so to break away the case you need to be very careful to move the tool along the edge and unfortunately I caught the upper right corner on the front of the card and it separated the paper and bent the corner.

I knew this day would come and I was lucky enough it happened where there damage as minimal and the card had a low value.

 

Damaged After Being Graded?

Don’t you love that you spend $35 ($17 cost plus $18 return shipping) minimum to get a card graded and encapsulated and the card ends up sliding within the case and potentially getting damage.

I have one of these 1972 Primrose Confection Superman cards and they are extremely thin, even thinner than a piece of notebook paper, so I can see how it could slide in between the pieces but this would really suck. You would think that the grading companies would take things like this in to consideration. The seller at least realizes this is an issue and is selling the card at $3.99, which is actually lower than even a raw copy price.

Which Route Do You Take?

Does the buyer take on a certain "caveat" when they purchase a card and the seller offers free shipping using a PWE?

The reason I am asking is because I won an auction for a 2013 Topps Chrome Nick Franklin rookie card. It was only .79 cents and I figured it would be a nice addition to my Seattle Mariners collection. I knew the card was being shipped using just a plain white envelope but the auction showed the card in a rigid top loader so I figured it would be safe in transit.

I received the card today and instead of a rigid top loader that the card was pictured with in the auction the card was shipped using a flimsy UltraPro top loader and the card was damaged with a nice crease running about 1/3 of the way across the back. I never use these flimsy top loaders because they are to weak to use in shipping, to large to fit properly in a binder or box and they are notorious for pinching the cards. He didn't even use a penny sleeve, which is also visible in the auction photo.

Do I ding the seller for shipping the card in the UltraPro top loader, thus allowing the card to get damaged in transit, or do I let it go because I took a chance knowing that it was being shipped in an envelope (though I thought it was coming in a rigid top loader) and it was under a buck and an easy card to replace?

Posted with rigid top loader

Received with a flimsy top loader

Damaged section