PWCC auction - OJ Bid McPhee
 

A friend pointed this out to me but since the auction is still running I thought I would share w everyone. PSA and PWCC both took the word of whoever wrote on this card and assumed it was Bid McPhee



Unfortunately a simple check reveals it is a Frank Fennelly card with the name changed by a previous owner...

I'm having trouble finding the words anymore....
 

Complete incompetence comes to mind on this one! Absolutely ludicrous.

This is going to make it far easier to finish my 19th century HOF quest!

I’d like Galvin, Rusie, Radbourne and Nichols please..:cool:

Wow!!!!!

The back of the card says Frank Fennelly, photo McPhee.

So.........., despite the label, who’s picture is it?

Looking at the other McPhee and Fennelly cards, they are very very similar. Same setup. But McPhee has a wider belt and this card’s belt appears to match the wider belt of McPhee.

But I do think the photo is Fennelly by the ears.

According to the Old Judge book by Miller, Gonsowski & Masson, this card is clearly Fennelly. Looking at the McPhee cards, there is no card that matches this image. There is a similar pose of McPhee, but it is clearly different (more straight-on), than the Fennelly (more from the side).

Steve

That depends on how you define “matches”.

Whoops!

Thanks for the warning! I might have been duped if I didn't take as close a look as you. That is HORRIBLE by PSA!

delete

I never realized how close these two guys look. These two poses are not the best at making out the player’s faces. One difference, however, is the sleeves. If you look at the cuffs you will notice that McPhee’s are rolled over once, like the jersey was a little long. Fennelly’s sleeves don’t exhibit this.

looks like the lot was pulled from eBay. Kudos to the find and, dare I say it, to PWCC for pulling the listing.

OJ
 

I thought that every card passes through 3 separate graders and all 3 agreed on this? And I wonder about the person who submitted it to PWCC? I would like to know the history of this card. Who submitted it to PSA, etc.?

Mistake
 

As per usual the board has the irrational standard of perfection. It must be amazing to be some of you guys who have never made an error. This one seems reasonable to me. I have seen players misidentifies in every single companies holders. You know why? Because these things are done by humans.

....
 

Sorry but this is blatantly unacceptable. How many continued errors do we see weekly? Don’t they claim to be “professionals”? SIG-Sloppy inconsistent grading.

I dunno. You'd have to know your n172's backwards and forward, or be an ardent Cincy collector to immediately catch this one. Look at 156-1 and 317-3 in the OJ book. I know I didn't catch it until this thread pointed it out.

There are much more glaring tpg errors...like this Steinfeldt on ebay the other day...

Mmm
 

I get back to my original question. Aren't 3 separate graders supposed to agree on this? Not one of them said -"The name printed on the card doesn't match the handwritten name?".

I just got a new pair of reading glasses upped to 2x today, so my eyesight is not the best. I don't see a name on the original card, other than McPhee written in pencil. When I glanced at the listing last week, the image was close enough to the McPhee image that I know, that I didn't notice the missed id, and I look at every OJ auction that comes up. I can name Connie Mack w/o the name-tag, but I think there are many cards that I could not i.d. by the photo alone. Rob

You forgot the guys who complete the Research stage, and also the dudes working in the Quality Assurance 1 and Quality Assurance 2 stage. But to be fair based on what I've read, I think the third grader is only called when the first two differ on grade. Still makes 5-6 people who looked at this card and got it wrong. Here are some more egregious errors:

https://img.comc.com/i/MultiSport/18...&size=original
1888 Allen & Ginter's The World's Champions Second Series - Tobacco N43 #BIED - Billy Edwards [PSA*1*PR]
Courtesy of COMC.com

https://img.comc.com/i/MultiSport/18...&size=original
1888 Allen & Ginter's The World's Champions Second Series - Tobacco N43 #HGCR - H.G. Crocker [PSA*3*VG]
Courtesy of COMC.com

https://img.comc.com/i/Baseball/1966...&size=original
1966 O-Pee-Chee - [Base] #50 - Mickey Mantle [PSA*1*PR]
Courtesy of COMC.com It's shocking how many OPC they label as Topps and vice versa. Vintage Breaks had to return like 20 1971 OPC cards in a row that PSA labeled as Topps.

Not even in 1969 MLBPA set...
https://d1w8cc2yygc27j.cloudfront.ne...0307675576.jpg
https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ighlight=mlbpa

Pinholes in multiple PSA 7s...
https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...light=pinholes

I could go on and on. And PSA is considered the Gold Standard...... only because he who has the most gold, wears the gold-colored glasses.

Hi Glyn
 

Hi Glyn,
I like to pick on PSA, but I have to say, sometimes when I am looking through my eBay listings, I find things that are really screwy. Putting the wrong photo in a listing. Incorrect spelling in the title and many other things. Sometimes I think to myself, what in the hell was I thinking when I posted that listing?

But, it is much more fun to pick on the grading companies than it is to point out my own mistakes. Maybe I should start a "Rick's screwed up eBay listings" thread.

Take care, Rick

The cards absolutely are very similar, but you should be able to expect the grading company to get the player right.

I didn’t create the thread to be a “gotcha” - I really didn’t want someone to buy a 50 dollar OJ common under the impression it was McPhee.

I enjoyed this thread and learned that Fennelley stooping right, and McPhee stooping right look very similar, as if they could almost be the same player from the same photo shoot.

My early experiences with sending cards in to all 3 tpg's were that they really don't know a whole lot about vintage cards. They mostly grade new cards. If they had the OJ book, they could have double-checked like your friend who caught the mistake. I doubt the tpg's have a copy of the OJ book...Rob

Rob-The do have copies of the book. They also have a research group that checks new cards. They have contacted me twice in the last year with questions about 19th century discoveries. I actually think they are very thorough in their work. It appears that in this case, however, a few graders got lazy.

This is an interesting discussion and makes me think about PSA's process.

One person researches and logs the card.
One person grades the card
The card is encapsulated
One person reviews the grade (QA1)
One person reviews the holder (QA2)

So, in the case of a misidentified card, it appears only two people really check to make sure it's the correct card and label. The grader probably has no idea how the card has been identified and logged. The QA1 person is likely only concerned with whether the grade makes sense and the QA2 person's job is (per the PSA website) "labels have been reviewed for errors, and holders were examined for defects." So QA2 is likely doing a sense check on the label and a quick look to see that the holder isn't damaged. I doubt for some of these obscure identification issues the QA2 person would be equiped to pick up on everything.

That's good to hear, Jay. I guess I shouldn't be so quick to sell the tpg's short. I guess they get it right most of the time. I wish they wouldn't give high grades to n172's with sharp corners and faded pictures, but that's a topic for another thread...Rob

My issue is how do you tell the difference between faded, something that occurred after production, and poorly developed, which is how the card came originally. Remember we're still in fairly early days of photography in general and the VERY early days of mass-produced photography.

With PSA’s protocols, they are not responsible and anyone who wants to Recover their costs needs to find the person who originally wrote the note on the back of the card.

Scott, it's an interesting and complicated topic. Here are 2 Bradley's from my collection. These were presumably taken on the same day. One is very faded, and one is very sharp. It does seem that some photoshoots produced sharper images than others, but in this case, I think my Bradley with bat has faded over time.

In keeping somewhat on the original topic, for a free DQ coke at the next National held in Texas, name this n172 subject without looking it up...

Since these cards are, in essence, photographs it wouldn't be the shoot so much as the development, which is why even identical cards can be so radically different.

I think the good news is that OJ buyers that I have sold to are much more interested in image quality than numeric grade. I've sold 1's for more than 4's.

I am certainly not an expert on 19th century photography. I took a photojournalism class in junior high and they had a dark room where we developed the b/w photos we took with 35 mm cameras. If you've ever seen the Columbo episode with Dick Van Dyke, that's about how we did it.

Do you believe that the Bradley with bat that I posted was placed in a pack 130 years ago with the same faded image quality that it has today? I know this topic has come up before, I guess I should go back and look for some old threads.

I believe it's possible, certainly not definite.

That is just so sad and sloppy. It would have been interesting to hear what PSA would have done about it if the person that unwittingly would have paid a grand (or more) would have made a claim on PSA's complete lack of competence in something they are supposed to prevent.

The claim would have been denied because it should have been obvious to the buyer that the card was not as labeled.