1951 Bowman Mantle PSA 7(OC) on PWCC tonight
 

Ending tonight, what a joke....Look at the smears on the back of this card. Brent just keeps on keeping on!

Not sure I’m following, what is the relevance of the smears on the back?

A card should not get a 7 with smears. Not a big deal as most avoid OC cards like the plague or pay the next to nothing they are worth.

How about a link to the item?

Here https://www.ebay.com/itm/1951-Bowman...MAAOSwkEFeEPIy

Current bid:US $10,100.00.

Bit its void of the typical roller Marks

:rolleyes:

Bowman Mantle rookies continue to be among the safest investments in the market and seem poised to only increase in value. Comes recommended by PWCC.

TOTAL BULL To The Sh&T

Thank You.

i think you mean 'what they should be worth' not 'what they are worth' i always thought something is worth what the market/people willing to pay for it. If they avoid a card and pay a much less price (then what everyone thinks its worth), then i think they are still paying what the card is worth...but maybe my logic is off...

7 does seem a little generous. I would have rather seen the ink stains mentioned in the description, but they're not exactly hidden.

I think the card was graded early on by PSA (as evidenced by the 011** slab number), and this card met the standard for a PSA 7 OC at that time. Things have tightened up in the meantime, but this looks like it was graded by the PSA standard from 20+ years ago.

As much as we want to chastise Brent (and rightly so) in most cases, I don't see what he is doing wrong with this card?

Scott S@r!@n

Yeah, hard to take issue with their scans.

nothing to see here...just a skipping record.

Not one comment on how loose it is in the holder?

I know the card size isn't always about trimming, but it's small both ways.

I saw it, and found it rather alarming. Wasn't going to say anything, since it's been said so many times now.

But if I were to shell out, this would not be one I'd ever touch. I don't see any evidence of trimming, but why on earth chance it? Waaaaaaay too much extra air space in that slab.

The people who submitted their collections to PSA twenty years ago must be laughing. Most of their cards would get two grades less if submitted today.

Anyways, I see that four 51' Bowman Mantles were sold by PWCC last night. I want to comment on a few of them below:

PSA 7(OC) - $11,500 US sale price (plus tax)

The back of this card clearly shows that it was once in an album. If I had been the grader, I would have given it a PSA 2. Now I'm not sure what the winning bidder is going to do with it. Will he try to remove the crap on the back? I'm pretty sure the previous owner attempted it but failed. When stains get absorbed deep into the paper, then you're screwed.

PSA 6 - $16,100 US sale price (plus tax)

Like the card above, this one too was graded long time ago. The centering is off and the corners look weak. On the back, I see what appears to be a corner ding (see PWCC scan - top left corner). This card would never get a PSA 6 if submitted today.

PSA 3.5 - $10,299 US sale price (plus tax)

Over ten grand for a VG card? :eek::eek:

^^^^ I was looking at that 3.5 mantle. It looked awesome (to me) as a 3.5 upgrade from my 2's. But i under-estimated its worth by a ton!!!!

The BVG3 had paper-loss on the back, right?

Plus 1, this too as well....If I, as a grader, was completely confident of this card NOT being trimmed, I would have given a grade of PSA 5 or 6 (ST) or (MK)

In general, it is absolutely amazing how many cards are so obviously small one or both ways in the holder. It's almost come to the point where every single card I look at (lower to moderately expensive) could've been trimmed. It is truly mind numbing. And I'm not talking about accepted minimal standard deviations in size, I mean very noticeable thinning side to side or top to bottom (like the card at the heart of this thread). I wonder if I investigated real cheap, common cards, would I find the same size differences everywhere (meaning it was just a universal result of the printing/cutting process from the last 50 or 60 years)?? Highly, highly doubtful. Something is clearly up.

If you do nothing else, protect yourself and see how well the card you're interested in fits inside the holder.

Ive heard and read over the years this is not always an accurate assessment. Holders have evolved over the years. However, if a standard card does not fit into a 2 1/2 X 3 1/2 holder, I do question that. They should be able to get that right.

What are others thoughts on this statement? I’d love it if it were that straightforward.

you build a smaller mousetrap, they build a smaller mouse

All I know for sure is cards vary in size from the factory.I still have insane amounts of cards I pulled from packs myself. Over the last few years I have been slowly organizing them. When I put them into 800(example size) count boxes you can clearly see slight size differences in them. I have noticed the width is almost always exactly the same but there is a difference in the height of many of them.

:D This pretty much sums it up. Brilliant!

quote of the week!!
 

simple and to the point.

"you build a smaller mousetrap, they build a smaller mouse"

Exactly Ben. I also have cards that I pulled from packs, and easily recall the same card from one particular set was cut to three different sizes.

Hence my question. Is this really a defined and accepted test?
"How well does the card fit in the holder?"

This is all crazy talk and half of you all sound like paranoid geeks :D
Cardboard could've shrunk through moisture and aging throughout the years.
All the more reason to stop caring about the grade and go for what appeals to your eye.

This hobby should be fun. Not analyzing every fiber and print dot.

It's important to read my quote precisely:
"If you do nothing else, protect yourself and see how well the card you're interested in fits inside the holder."

My point wasn't "If it fits inside snugly, it's good," or "If it doesn't fit snugly, it's bad." (Besides other methods card doctors use) The point is to pay a helluva lot of attention to how well it fits and make your determination from there. For instance, two sets I am always looking at are 1972 Topps and 1962 Topps green tints. With the former, it would seem well over 98% of the cards (this is an invented statistic and not based on actual research) would/should basically touch all 4 sides of the holder, whereas a huuuuge percentage of '62 GT's are naturally short one way or both ways. So, in general, if I see a high grade 1972 card that's a bit short, I would most likely move on from it. The card 'should' fit nicely, so there might be some deception involved (people's opinions may vary). If a 1962 greenie is a little short, I would be much more open to buying it. Still hesitant, of course, but it's pretty obvious that there were all sorts of problems with the cutting of those cards way back when. But...if I follow my own logic, it could still be very problematic. Say a GT was originally 'normal' sized. A serious card doctor would know that the vast majority of them were cut short, so he could do a trim job and get away with it, because it would then look identical to many of the ones already out there. Ca-ching!!! And on and on it goes...

Thaaaaaaaat's right...... Shrunk due to moisture :D You win for knee slapper of the day. THEY ARE ALL TRIMMED. maybe you didn't get the memo it's a billion dollar fraud. ;)

Steve and Joe could not have said it better….

Sounds like a promising contender for PSA's new Ad Campaign.

The card is an old cert and has nothing to do with Brent other than he accepted it as a consignment.

I think it originally came back as a PSA 7, then it was cracked, trimmed, and resubmitted to get the rarer PSA 7(OC) grade.

I heard that the old slabs had some issues with their seals. So if you lived in a humid climate the cards could shrink up to %5
If you study paper fibers used in the 1950's you'd understand the risks involved with post war era cardboard.

Ahhh, got it. I was trying to better understand your comment. Thanks for clarifying.

So all the cards that measure full size were oversize when they were made?

Also- That card is most likely more than 5% small both ways.

The fibers are mostly wood pulp, maybe with some rag content and additives like clay, plus some seizing. Except in the cards that are multiple layers, where the white front surface is either bleached wood fiber, or may have a high rag content, linen, cotton, maybe some silk or wool Plus some seizing.

What are todays cards made of?
The exact same stuff, except that the white paper/cardstock is now the entire card since 1992 for Topps, and earlier for the other companies.
30's cards?
Guess what?
yeah, the same stuff.

Paper shrinkage generally happens soon after the printing process. And it's less normal on things produced by offset lithography.
Stamps which are intaglio printed do have shrinkage immediately after printing under some conditions, which is why the BEP used experimental papers in the 1920's as well as different spacing on some sheets a bit earlier. Then changed to a "dry" printing process in the 50's. (The sheets are printed "wet" to help the paper get forced into the recesses in an engraved plate and then to retain ink. The edges shrunk faster than the center making the spacing and thus perforations uneven. With more force, less wetting was needed. )

Steve B, Glad that my sarcasm resulted in some real world information. Thanks for the knowledge drop.

Not so kidding aside does extreme fluctuations in humidity/drying in the air potentially cause warping and or shrinkage in typical card stock?

Let's say even a good old soak job?

Warping - Sort of. The non- coated side would expand more because it isn't sealed. Measuring a pretty serious warp and doing a bit of math, if the center is warped up by .61 (measuring a warp similar to my worst by bending a junk common and measuring how high the center is. )
Then the difference in length between the front and back is only about .005 Inches. Or about 1.6% And that's equivalent to the most warped cards I've seen.

Soaking should do that, but what usually happens if you soak and just leave it out is that the fibers expand in a somewhat random way, leaving a wrinkly surface that we'd all recognize as water damage.
Pressing flat to dry usually fixes that, but by forcing the fibers into sort of their original locations - Unless the soak removed too much seizing, or glue from between layers.

Excess humidity would expand a card slightly. I'd have to see about borrowing the moisture content meter from the makerspace woodshop, or buy my own to get some reliable numbers.
The Stamp sheets that they tried different spacing on were about 2 ft across, and they expanded the spacing by 1mm on four rows. (It didn't actually work, probably because the drying was dependent on the ambient temperature and humidity so the sheets shrunk sort of randomly. )
so you can see there wasn't much shrinkage expected in a paper that had a decent rag content.

The card in question is visibly short both ways, even going on a conservative 1/64th of an inch that's roughly 3x what I'd expect from humidity.

I've never tried shrinking a card. If it's very humid and I bake it, maybe. But I'd expect about as much as the warped cards.
Sounds like an experiment that should be done.

Another data point is that I've had a couple boxes of junk cards in the carriage house, which was for a time pretty damp. For maybe 22 years? They aren't warped at all.

That 3.5 was a very nice example, it looked better than 80-90% of the examples Ive seen over the years in any grade. Its a tuff card to get centered like that with clean registration and being in focus like that one was. Its more about eye appeal than the grade....

Check out the attachment*

If you compare this PSA 7(OC) to the PSA 2.5 below it, you can clearly see that the PSA 2.5 has bigger top and bottom borders.

Now there is one thing I want to point out here: according to Ted Zanidakis, the Mantle was printed on the uppermost left corner on its 72-card sheet. Therefore, some Mantle cards may be slightly narrower than 2 1/16, while others may be slightly wider than 2 1/16.

Now it's a bit difficult to tell if this PSA 7(OC) is undersized left-to-right due to the centering issues. I did compare it to a couple of off-centered examples and I didn't see anything.

So, is this PSA 7(OC) trimmed? Maybe. Maybe not.

I would rather have the 2.5

me too! With those thick borders it will be at least a 5 in no time at all.