[the 'stache]

Every once in a great while something comes along where I'm speechless. This is that rare example. I can't believe what I'm looking at.

Part of me wants to say somebody with an obvious grudge against PSA has concocted this card and flip combination to make them look bad. Because who would send that card in to have it graded? That defies logic. The shipping charge alone is more costly than the card is valuable. But what's really scary? That's the best possible explanation about what we're looking at here. Because any other explanation necessitates somebody at PSA being completely incompetent when it comes to 19th Century baseball cards.

So, what are the other possibilities?

1. Somehow, somebody at PSA messed up, and put a flip meant for a real OJ Hank O'Day on a Conlon O'Day that may be worth a dollar.

2. Somebody looked at this card, and thought it was an Old Judge Hank O'Day. Meaning they never flipped the card over, which clearly denotes the card is from the Sporting News Conlon Collection. They never saw the circa 1994 copyright mark, and they missed the MLB logo which, of course, did not exist back when OJs were manufactured. Oh yeah, and they also don't know what one of the most important sets in the history of our hobby looks like. There's that, yeah.

The worst part of this whole thing is that we're never going to know what really happened. But if somebody were to lose their job over this, I wouldn't feel badly for them. There are some mistakes that just cannot be made. And for a company that prides itself on professionalism, and accuracy, an employee grading cards that can't tell the difference between a 19th century tobacco card and a 20th century insert card-type exhibits spectacular ignorance, and they should not be employed by PSA.