I don't understand the debate. People get cards signed every day. Sometimes they are common cards and sometimes they're super rare. While your preference might be for a super-rare card to be maintained in it's original shape, people can do what they want, and usually do. I thought for a second the story was that the guy was collecting these in order to make one big patch out of the jersey bits or something, which really would destroy them, but if he's just getting them signed then I don't get what the big deal is.
As to calling it a historic artifact or whatever, yes it was one of the first baseball jersey cards (and baseball wasn't even the first sport to have them), but there were plenty of these made, more than were packed out because they were used as replacements for other things. I had a Frank Robinson 500 HR Club POH card that had something wrong with the surface. I sent it in to be replaced and was told they couldn't but sent me the Griffey jersey card instead. I'd heard from a couple people at the time that they also got Griffey jersey cards as replacements as well.
I just wonder if there would be such a debate if the target was Rey Ordonez.
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