Quote:
Originally Posted by T.S. OConnell
I read these posts with some interest, initially because I wondered why the cellophane-enclosed business was somehow being honored. Then after awhile I noticed all the talk about whether or not Sy Berger had actually dumped the cards in the Long Island Sound. Since I wrote the story from an interview with Sy - one of a half dozen I did over 20-plus years - where he told the story, I can offer my assurances that he was almost certainly telling the truth at the time. There would have been no reason to make the story up, and in any event Sy wouldn't have done so. And he did tell me 400 cases. As to my initial interest in this thread, why was the cellophane wrapped arrangement given a pass in the first place? Seems to me that finding eight unopened 1952 Topps packs would have prompted immediate slabbing and grading and then simple sale through a major auction house.
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I suppose that Topps may have had a concern that 400 cases disposed of in a much more cost-effective way, such as landfill, could have resulted in a lot of packs being pilfered by waste workers or others along the way. But, why would Berger have worried about that, since cards as collectibles were hardly a booming market at that time. Even so, having the disposal supervised by a company with a large incinerator also seems like a much cheaper - if less dramatic - method than hiring a barge to haul them out to sea. Is there some other consideration that is not so apparent?