[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by 68Hawk

OK, you broke it down bit by bit so I guess I understand your thinking, however I'd suggest the aesthetic when viewed as a whole has a throwback vintage look and not at all modern. But that's fine.
Wood slice is NOT behind any plastic, none of the memorabilia cards I own are sleeved behind anything...

Its really a matter of perspective I think. I'm not intending to disparage the cards but rather explain why they aren't for me. I know they are going for a throwback look, but it just doesn't work for me, for the reasons I outlined earlier.

Originally Posted by 68Hawk

I wonder if the same people thinking desecration and destruction hated and still loathe the 60's action of hot-rodding...taking a perfectly good 34' Ford and cutting down its roofline, messing with fenders, cutting and changing etc?

There is a huge difference between the two in terms of value added though.

The cars used by hot rodders would have simply been junked without their intervention.

Game used bats of HOFers on the other hand would not have been junked without Upper Deck or whoever buying them to turn them into cards: they were already considered quite valuable. They would have been preserved without really requiring much in the way of cost or effort to do so.

Also, while hot rodders were altering the original condition of those cars, they were doing something qualitatively that was vastly different from just cutting them up into little pieces. They spent a lot of time, effort and imagination to turn something that society at the time placed no value on into something useful and interesting. Its quite creative what they did.

Buzz sawing a bat into little wood chips and putting them into cards isn't even remotely the same. The bat already had significant value. There isn't much artistic originality involved in cutting them into little squares. I just don't see the same value being added as I do with the hot rods. The only benefit I see is that cutting them up and distributing them like that makes physical contact with the bat (or a small part thereof) more accessible to more people. But I'm not sure that is on balance worth the cost of the destroyed bat (and of course destroying bats to make cards makes contact with an intact bat less accessible over time).

Originally Posted by 68Hawk

Or how about this piece.....the auto I promise has not resided in this card since inception. Cut auto's ok even if they destroy the integrity of their original housing? What if there was text immediately before the auto giving context and history to it's penning...?


I'm going to guess most don't feel the same about signatures. How come?
This attitude that the jersey/bat have been destroyed, as if nothing remains, is patently untrue. It exists in miniatures to be sure.

I'm not a huge fan of the cut signatures either, often times it is obvious that the original signed item (photo, card, etc) was a much more attractive piece than the card they put them into after cutting out the autograph. But the cost/benefit analysis is significantly different than with bats or jerseys. In terms of accessibility, cutting a bat up might turn 1 bat into 500 woodchips (or however many? I have no idea), thus significantly increasing the distribution of that "piece" throughout the hobby. Cutting an autograph doesn't do that though, you start with 1 autographed photo, you end with 1 autographed card. On the other hand though the qualitative level of destruction is usually much less with cut autos - sometimes its just an autograph from a piece of paper where all they've done is trim the edges a bit and nothing of significance was lost (as opposed to an entire bat, jersey, etc being destroyed).

So I don't know. Personally I'd prefer to get a redemption card for an autographed photo, piece of paper, check, whatever of a famous person than I would to get a cut autograph in a card.