Calling all 1990 Topps George Bush experts! Mystery needs your help!

[charnick]

Hello all! Does anyone out there own a 1990 Topps George Bush USA card? Either the "regular" or the White House "Glossy" edition? I have a mystery on my hand here with a card I've purchased. I will update the thread with pix if anyone needs/wants to see them, but I wanted to throw my story out there first...

Picked up a Glossy version on eBay about 2 months ago, for a pretty penny, my first time spending over a grand on a single card, but I thought it would be a worthy purchase. I know the regular versions have been dropping like a rock value wise with the discovery of the "Glossy White House" version, but this one was the Glossy, graded a 7.5 NM+ by BGS, so I thought it would be awesome to own one of the 100 given to the President back in 1990.

Well, for no real reason whatsoever, I prefer my high-end, pre-2000, non-chrome cards to go to PSA, so I sent the slab directly into them for a crossover, minimum grade 7. Came back no, did not hit minimum. Oh well... resend it in, minimum grade 6, again came back did not hit minimum. A BGS 7.5 doesn't equal a PSA 6?!?! OK, fine whatever. This time there was at least a note on the return saying "Looks like White House version." Nice, at least I have some sort of informal confirmation that it's the right one.

Next, I end up sending it to SGC, as I just recently picked up a 1990 Frank Thomas NNOF SGC 5, and thought OK, these would look nice together in the same brand of slab. SGC contacted me directly, said it would indeed cross at the minimum grade of 7 I had requested, but they didn't think it was the White House version. Basically said BGS got it wrong. Oy vey, what is going on here?!?! Had them send it back to me in the BGS slab. I should have left well enough alone, but I needed to know just what version I had. I don't plan on selling it any time soon, but if I or my kids ever do, and it's not what the slab says, it could become a bit of an issue, obviously.

So now, I needed to know what was up... BGS thinks it the Glossy, SGC doesn't, and PSA thought (though not officially) it was. I cracked it out of the BGS slab and sent it in to PSA raw. Figured it would be best not to bias the situation with the BGS slab. When I cracked it, I checked it out myself as well as I could. There was most definitely a coating on top of the card. Clear as day... and did not look like any other 1990 Topps card I ever had (out of the thousands AND the Thomas NNOF). So now I'm really confused. So as I said, sent it back in to PSA raw, and it came back an 8 (after not hitting a minimum 6 when sent in the BGS slab!) but they still don't see it as the White House version.

So basically, I'm trying to find anyone that may have either version to explain to me what their card looks like so I can some additional information to go by. Does anyone here own the regular version? Does it have any kind of coating on it at all, or does it resemble the matte finish of the 40,000,000 other 1990 Topps cards out there? Does anyone have the Glossy version? Does your coating extend past the edges of the card? How "thick" is it? Thanks in advance to anyone that may be able to help.

[charnick]

I think I'm finally getting down to the nitty gritty with this in discussions with PSA's customer service department. The confusion arises from their web articles saying the original, regular versions resemble standard issue 1990 Topps cards. The truth I now discover is that they don't. They readily admitted to me that the "regular" Bush cards are also glossy in appearance, just not "laminated" like the newly-discovered version. So to someone like me that hasn't seen a regular issue, and only went by the "Glossy" notation on the BGS slab, you can see how one would get confused.

So now it appears BGS is one of the parties in the wrong here. They are slapping Glossy notations on some of their slabs of regular issues, and unscrupulous sellers (like the one I bought mine from, I do believe that for sure) are selling them claiming their White House issue. BGS does have both versions in their pop report, so I don't know if any of the other "Glossy"-notated cards are regular or White House versions.

So all in all, I went from thinking I had a White House issue to not, but my card went from a BGS 7.5 to a PSA 8, so other than all my grading and shipping fees back and forth, I should hopefully not be out too much should I ever decide to move the card (right now it's strictly PC). And much like the recent hubbub over the obviously-fake Wagner, I'm glad to have the matter settled, because if I ever did move it, claim it to be the White House when it's not, it would have opened an even larger can of worms for me!

Either way, I've asked PSA to update their web articles to note that the regular versions are also glossy. It's very contradictory to say they resemble regular 1990 Topps issue, but also still have a glossy appearance!

[bnorth]

I hope I am remembering this right because I can not find the article.

I believe the gloss on the White House card is super thick.

[ALR-bishop]

I have a ho hum version that I got before the stories about the white house version started to circulate ( By the way, the original source of those, according to the stories that came out, was not the president but someone on his staff....so no telling how many of the white house versions truly exist either...and, by the way, why are there no signed versions of any of them yet ?). I have never compared mine to a glossy, and am not worried about it since for collection purposes I have all I need for my collection, a legitimate example of the card.

I tend to think a lot more of both were made by Topps than 100, even if they just gave 100 to the President. One reason I was never interested in pursing an upgrade to a white house version was my doubt that some grading company minion, or any seller, would truly or accurately know the difference

[charnick]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

I have a ho hum version that I got before the stories about the white house version started to circulate ( By the way, the original source of those, according to the stories that came out, was not the president but someone on his staff....so no telling how many of the white house versions truly exist either...and, by the way, why are there no signed versions of any of them yet ?). I have never compared mine to a glossy, and am not worried about it since for collection purposes I have all I need for my collection, a legitimate example of the card.

I tend to think a lot more of both were made by Topps than 100, even if they just gave 100 to the President. One reason I was never interested in pursing an upgrade to a white house version was my doubt that some grading company minion, or any seller, would truly or accurately know the difference

Thanks for the info! It really is quite an interesting mess to be sure... a lot of the issue for me arises because as I mentioned, in all their web articles, PSA mentions the regular version looks just like any other standard issue 1990 Topps, but in their e-mail to me earlier today, they admit it is still glossy, almost like a Tiffany card (my words, not theirs, they just said it was still glossy).

What does yours look like? It's quite easy to tell in a PSA slab if it has some gloss to it. You can also tell by looking in the upper right corner at the white area, you can almost see the adhesive behind the gloss. This is one of the reasons why I thought I had a White House version, but upon looking at the sample on PSA's site of the regular version, you can see this color variance even in the regular version. A close-up of mine, in its new PSA slab, is below.