hard lessons learned

[ajjohnsonsoxfan]

This is how my collection got started. My first 14 Cracker Jack purchased. Roger Bresnahan no number in a BVG 4 holder. Buy it now on eBay for $1500. Wanting uniformity with PSA, I broke it out and sent it in for grading hoping for another 4. Dismayed and heart broken to learn it had been "altered", I spoke to customer service and unfortunately PSA couldn't/wouldn't tell me how it had been altered. I think I spent with shipping close to $100 to have it graded. I was a little annoyed that I wasn't given specifics on how it was altered. Wanting a second opinion I sent it in to SGC and they confirmed that it was altered and that someone had taken off the "number" on the back to make it the no number variety. I couldn't believe it! Who in their right mind would mess with a 100 year old beautiful work of art? It's not like the no number version is valued at a huge premium over the other one. Another $75 down the drain. Next I sent it back to BVG with the original serial number and tag asking if they'd just put it back in the original holder. They had their top guy take a look and he too came to same conclusion and because I had broken it out of the holder they couldn't put it back in. (my dumb mistake) Finally I sent it back to PSA and now it sits in my collection the most expensive "Authentic" ever slabbed! :-)

p.s. if you look at the back scan you can see a little smudge at the top over the "han" in Bresnahan but for the life of me can't see anything out of the ordinary above that where the number normally is.