True Madness

In September I posted about a seller with 0 feedback selling a GAI graded Sweet Caporal pack with a Honus Wagner card showing. The pack sold for $3000.02. Two days later he sold an ungraded sealed pack with Honus Wagner showing for $550.00 and three days after that he sold an opened Sweet Caporal pack with a Sovereign (WTF?) Honus Wagner (insinuated that it came from the pack) for $178.05. In less than a week he made almost $4,000 and I’ve been watching the guy since and he still has no feedback, which seems odd.

If you look at the original auction for the opened pack with the Honus Wagner, the description was just copied from the GAI graded pack auction but if you look at the third picture you see the back of the Wagner and at the bottom it says reprint, so a buyer spent a lot of money for an opened pack of cigarettes and a reprint card.

None of this is as bad as this seller. The guy has three Honus Wagner T-206 cards (Two Piedmont and a Polar Bear) ranging from $40k through $90k and in the description says he is selling it as a reprint but may be real. Ignore his 3 negs saying he is selling fake/reprints. 

The other that was on my radar, the 1909 T-206 Honus Wagner graded PRO 2, that sold for $1,850 on September 13^th was relisted a week later at $1,7000, then $999 and it finally sold last week with an accepted offer of $500.

Someone Is Actually Going To Fall For This?

A bunch of questionable 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner cards have been showing up on eBay and for some reason there are bids. One graded by PRO as original and graded a PRO 2, with the required blurry pictures (that way you know it is real) sold for $1,850 after 11 bids. I would expect the card to show back up for sale because the winner has a 1 feedback but looking at his bidding activity and the bidder has made 33 bids over the last 30 days and only 2 of them were with this seller. They were bid up by someone with a 61 feedback (35 bids in 30 days, 7 with this seller) and there was a $1,700 retracted bid by someone with 2997 feedback. Look at them beautifully rounded corners, pure perfection.

Now there is a Sweet Caporal pack with Honus Wagner on the back and graded by GAI as authentic and a GAI 8 by a seller with 0 feedback. There are 14 bids currently, all by bidders with positive feedback, and it is as $15.50. Again, blurry images. The stuff all over the holder is tobacco from inside, which I believe to be a real cigarette pack but fake Wagner. I would like to point out that Sweet Caporal had a solid wrapper and the cards were inserted facing inwards, but hey… if people want to spend money without doing any research at all that is on them.

For reference, here is a real sealed Sweet Caporal pack showing that you can not see what is inside.

 

They had wax paper around them originally, which the one that is currently for auction has around it. There is no way the Wagner card was inserted outside of the cigarette pack between the wax paper and the wrapper. This is a case of someone with bad intentions opening the wax, sliding in the Wager, sealing the wax back up and got the oblivious people at GAI to grade it authentic.

Questionable Cards That Make You Go "Hmmm?"

We know that our hobby is not free of controversy, there are plenty of fakes out there. Sadly some hobby criminals have gotten so good that it is difficult to tell if a signature is real or if a patch is authentic. Then there are the cards that are so obviously bad there is no question about a card being fake.

 

This seller, who has 100% feedback with over 4200 ratings, is selling a 2009 Topps Unique Justin Morneau Solo Shot relic card. The card has a ticket stub in the cut out instead of a jersey piece and this seller is listing it as a “Factory Error”. There have been factory error relics before but I find this hard to believe, this would have required someone at Topps to knowingly insert the ticket stub on to the card during the construction phase. As you can see from Morneau’s other cards in the Solo Shot line Topps used the same orange/red jersey swatches for most likely all of the cards #/275 including the autographed versions, which are #/25.

 

OK, so now that we have gotten the logical argument out of the way lets dig deeper.

 

When you scan in a little closer (inside the red oval) you notice what appears to be an orange jersey relic on the right side of the die-cut window. You can also see at the edge of the ticket, the white border to the right of the SF logo, there is a shadow which would indicate a level change.

 

There also appears to be damage to the die-cut window on the right side (insider the red rectangle) near the jersey swatch. It is possible that this may be normal chipping but it just seems conspicuous.

 

What bothers me is that this person, who has been selling sports cards for 10 years now, is either oblivious to the card being altered or they are selling the card knowing it is a fake and is trying to profit from an unsuspecting collector.

 

I have to admit, I am completely lost by the addition of a Giants ticket stub on to Morneau’s card. The auction also says “POSTESEASON ticket?” in the description, the Giants did not make the playoffs from 2003-2009, why would they even make a reference to the playoffs?

A Slap To The Face Of Hockey Collectors

Here comes another one of those stories that just makes you cringe as a collector.

 

According to the NHLPA, the Anaheim Ducks’ Devante Smith-Pelly used a stamp instead of actually signing his autograph for five different releases from Upper Deck and Panini. The releases affected are

Upper Deck- SP Authentic, Ultimate and The Cup
Panini- Contenders and Prime

 

The NHLPA’s Director of Licensing, Adam Larry, said “There wasn’t any bad intention on his behalf”. Really, he had no bad intention? You mean that he knowingly took money from both Upper Deck and Panini to sign autographs and never planned to actually sign the cards and this was no bad intention on his behalf? Where I come from that is considered fraud.

 

Panini’s versions were redemption cards and Tracy Hackler said only a handful of Smith-Pelly’s Contender autographs were shipped out (there are 3 currently on eBay) and none of his Prime autographs were shipped out. Panini is remaking the cards for him to sign and they have contacted the people who have already received their redemptions and will replace them as well as send the recipient a pack of Rookie Anthology.

 

Upper Deck is in a different situation because his cards were packed out so they are asking that anyone that pulls any of the affected cards to contact their Customer Care center: Call 1-800-873-7332 or send an email to QA@upperdeck.com.

They have already begun the process of reprinting the cards for him to sign (I am assuming there will be a nanny watching over his shoulder this time) and once completed they will begin shipping the cards out as replacements to the collectors along with two packs of cards, I would guess probably from the set you pulled the card from.

 

I pulled these images of the stamped autographs from some of the auctions on eBay to get a side by side view; I am just surprised that nobody in QC noticed anything off here. These autographs are in nearly the same location on every single card, there are no differences in stroke, pressure, height or width changes. The only real noticeable changes are on a couple of cards where you can see the ink was wearing thin or the stamp had been re-inked and there was a splash of ink on the card.

 

On the positive side I have to say that Upper Deck has included some very cool patches in a insert that is #/249, usually multi-colored patches are only in smaller print runs and by the time you hit sets with #/50 or above you are usually stuck with those sweet single color jersey swatches.

 

 

 

Here are some of his stamped autographs from Panini Contenders that made it out to collector's hands.

 

Here are some of the cards that he supposedly did sign and you will notice there are slight differences in the signatures though I have a bit of a concern with the Ultimate Autographed Shield. This card goes the opposite way and is quite different from his other autographs. In fact out of the 15-20 real autographs that are up for auction I am hard pressed to find one that even comes close. If we know that this kid is not beyond using a stamp, including for other autographs in the Ultimate release, you have to wonder if someone else signed this card.

WOW! A Sweet Lou Gehrig Relic... But For Real This Time

Last September a Topps Triple Threads 1/1 Lou Gehrig relic (bat knob and dual relics) was posted up for auction and many collectors noted that the dual relics appeared to be made of a polyester fabric and not wool like the uniforms that Gehrig would have worn during his playing days. Polyester did not even make it in to player’s uniforms until the 1970s, well after Lou Gehrig had died so there was not even the chance this was an Old-Timers Game uniform or a Tribute worn uniform.

Within a week the news was all over the blogosphere (I found out about it while reading Sooz’s post on her blog A Cardboard Problem) and other hobby outlets. Some were claiming it was simply a mistake (Really, a mistake with a 1/1?) and some claimed it was an altered card by the collector who was fortunate enough to own this beauty but no matter what anyone believed the major question on everyone’s mind was “What will Topps do?’

Fast-forward three months and we find that Topps has stepped up to correct the problem, removing the questionable fabrics and replacing them with a Lou Gehrig cut-signature. I applaud Topps for doing the right thing. Topps has yet to explain how the problem happened in the first place but I figure we will never hear the truth on that one.

Again With The Production Errors?

So while the world anxiously awaits Topps explanation for the “production error” with the Lou Gehrig Triple Threads polyester game-used jersey we now come across a similar case with a Ty Cobb Quad-patch from the recent 2011 Topps Marquee release. From what I have read on the FCB board it was supposed to be a quad-bat relic card but somehow another player’s patches made it in to this specific card (#4/5). Apparently Topps has requested that the card be returned to them and are offering the collector who pulled it a couple of boxes of cards in return.

 I know it is just another error and that errors happen in card production, but as has been pointed out on a number of occasions when we are talking high-end cards in limited numbers you would expect these types of problems caught before pack-out and not after a collector pulls it.

WOW! A Sweet Lou Gehrig Relic... maybe not...

First I would like to thank Sooz from A Cardboard Problem for bringing this auction to light (courtesy of @JuddFamily Stone on Twitter) but it appears that once again Topps is giving collectors a middle finger followed up by a “Suck It!”

In the 2008 Topps Triple Threads release Topps included a fake Ruth/Gehrig autograph card:

 In the 2010 Topps Sterling release we saw this beautiful game-worn Honus Wagner polyester jersey card:

Now let’s fast forward about 10 months and take a look at this sweet Lou Gehrig 1/1 Bat Knob card (which would have been awesome on its own) but to make it even more awesomer (Is that even a word?) Topps adds in two game used relics including a pin stripe. How fucking cool is that?

Here is a close up of the game-used relics:

…Oh wait… aren’t those relics… um…polyester? Why yes they are…but didn’t polyester uniforms show up in the 1970s some 30+ years after Gehrig died? Why yes, you are correct again.

I expect to once again hear crickets coming from Topps corner when people start asking for an explanation. I do like the addition of “The Relics contained on this card are not from any specific game, event or season” as a way of CYA. Maybe they should consider adding in “Any specific player” to the list too to ensure complete coverage.

 If this card is indeed real and pulled from a sealed pack from Topps there is a serious problem, especially considering that it has happened before. Some sort of verification needs to be ensured with autographs and memorabilia and I thought cards like this were hand packed which means that it should have been caught during manufacturing or at least during the pack out. Anyone that spends any amount of time producing sports cards can tell you the difference between a polyester jersey  and a wool flannel jersey.