[brian1961]

Hi Dmurry. Welcome.

You have gotten some decent responses thus far. I would also agree that you contact the auction firm of Huggins & Scott. They indeed have auctioned numerous Briggs Meats Washington Senator cards in the past.

I for one would tend to encourage you to have the auction house send them away to be authenticated, which also includes grading the card. Since the Briggs cards were to be hand-cut from the paraffin-coated cardboard hot dog box, youngsters often cut them out on their own as best as they could. The quality of the hand-cutting depended largely on their age when they cut them. Kids did their best, depending on how developed their fine motor skills were.

The standards today for what constitutes a hand-cut card worthy of being numerically graded are sometimes ridiculous. Though the Briggs were high quality cards, they still had to be cut off the hot dog box. It was left to the youngster's own discretion how he wanted to cut his free prize baseball card out. Sixty years later, the grading industry has deemed a very insanely high standard for a hand-cut card. They claim that they won't grade hand-cuts the same as a regular machine-cut Topps card, but I think that's precisely what they do!!!!!!!!!!!! They grade them tougher, so to speak, than the toughest English professor you ever had in high school or college. Having said that, those who collect regionals well understand this dilemma. Those meat regionals are very tough to locate, and while thinly traded, the prices paid for them are frequently by no means a thin wad of $100 bills.

Please insist that the auction house offer the five Briggs cards individually. That is paramount. A collector might need two of the five, but then he'd have to sell the other three. Go for selling them individually, by all means. Also, get with your Uncle. Have him tell you his personal memories of collecting the Briggs Senators. This is important because it will allow the auction house to paint a very tender, personal story of the provenance of these rare cards. Rare is the time that a card this tough and this old will come from the original child who got them as a youngster and saved them all these years. It would behoove Huggins and Scott to provide a decent size paragraph on this very thing. Collectors love history, and this is the sort of thing that would be very meaningful and add much to the aura of those great Briggs Meat cards.

Wishing you the very best. Keep us posted, ask more questions, and thanks a million for doing this for your Uncle. That is a great gesture, and will spare him from a shyster. ----Brian Powell