SGC grading of this card?

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Posted By: Wesley

No need to dig about the different stamps. There is nobody here arguing that Toy Town advertised a particular product or came from the manufacturer that way. The only question here is whether the cards are properly identified. If the above E-unc Wagner card is in fact deserving a SGC 50, what about the label makes it confusing for you?

To you, the specific Toy Town designation can be treated like an MK and you can treat it like a flaw. You can bid or not bid accordingly. To someone who follows all the different issues the original stamper stamped near the turn of the century, then it is and attribute. In both cases, more information is a good thing.

I do not remember the E97 that you are talking about. Maybe the card really is a SGC 30 card with or without the stamp.

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Posted By: jay behrens

The only problem with putting a premium on TT stamps is that the stamp still exists. If you get your hands on a stamp, then you've got yourself a little money maker. I persoanlly have never put a premium on any overprint, especially with today's scrapbooking craze. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to duplicate the stamps that were used for the e94 overprints. I'm just surprised no one has tried doing it yet. The inital cost of an e94 probably keeps the standard eBay scammer away since they seem more interested in misrepresenting 5 cent reprints.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: tbob

Wes- I have a gorgeous E97 Birmingham which might a registry leader if not for a Toy Town stamp on the back and it fell way down in grade. I can only attribute this to the stamp as the card is a beaut. I've never personally seen a TT stamp on the back of an E94 or E98 (doesn't mean they don't exist, just haven't seen one in person) but have seen several on E97s which are probably rarer than either of the aforementioned caramel sets.
bob

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Posted By: Richard

Jay - until a toy town stamp is actually uncovered, I don't think you can say that one still exists any more than an Old Put stamp or an E94 overprint stamp, etc. In all of the years of collecting, to my knowledge, no one has ever found one.

In addition, who is to say that a decendent of a worker bee from the George Close factory doesn't have a stamp in his grandfather's old trunk?

As for reproducing stampers, I would think that a good shop could create a stamp for any of the "accepted" and "not accepted" overprints - Niagara Baking, Toy Town, George Close, etc. Why this has never been done before? Who knows. But I know that if someone were to use their resources to forge a stamp, the Toy Town would not be the first on their list.

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Posted By: Richard

In addition, I don't think that anyone is arguing that the Toy Town stamp adds any super premium to value, such as many of the other overprints/stamps out there.

However, it is a curiosity and an identified period phenomenom in the pre-war hobby. It is cataloged. It is recognized. It is collected. The fact that SGC identifies a toy town stamped card as so, I believe, is accurate and justified.

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Posted By: Josh K.

I think that wes and richard are arguing a different point than jay, quan, tbob and myself. I have no problem with recognizing the TT stamp on the flip. My problem is that SGC (on this particular card - the wagner) not only recognized the stamp, they did not consider it when judging the technical merits of the card. Under their own grading scale, a card with ink or pencil marks can not grade higher than a 30. The wagner graded a 50. That means that they have lumped the TT stamp into the catagory of an overprint - my position is that since the TT stamp is not an advertisement, it is no more of an overprint than any other vintage stamping on the back of a card (such as my young which is stamped "RS").