Oh good, somebody altered my N172 (w/before and after photos)

[Anthony S.]

A couple days ago I came to the unfortunate realization that the N172 Sowders I was about to put up for sale had been altered. One of the alterations was so well done, and on a relatively low condition Old Judge no less, that I thought I would share both my story and before and after photos of the alterations as a warning to fellow collectors. Just because you buy a low grade slabbed card, doesn't mean somebody hasn't monkeyed with it.

I bought the N172 Sowders in its current SGC 10 holder on Ebay in July of this year (see 2nd photo). In the past few months I've narrowed the focus of exactly what type of N172s I intend to collect, so I'm selling off a few Old Judges that don't meet those parameters.

So I zipped over to Vintage Card Prices to get a sense of how much this card has sold for in the past (and to remind myself how my I paid). My card is inadvertently listed as an SGC A on VCP, but as you can see if you subscribe to the service, I paid $153.50 on July 18th, 2010.

Then I noticed that a N172 Sowders PSA Authentic had sold for $100.99 on March 7th, 2009. I decided to click on the photo link to see how that card compared to mine. That photo is the 1st photo beneath this text.

My first thought was "Hey, mine's in better condition. The PSA Sowders has two spots of paper loss near the top border." Then, I noticed that the vertical crease on the PSA Sowders that starts at the bottom border and makes a beeline for his groin (kind of like Paris Hilton) was identical to the vertical crease on my SGC Sowders. Coincidence, I thought. Then I glanced at the seemingly minor paper loss directly above Sowders' head on my SGC card and realized it was in the exact same location as the more extensive paper loss on the PSA Sowders. At this point I took out a magnifying glass (I make that part sound easy, but in reality I live in such a feral state it took about 45 minutes and several profanities before I found my magnifying glass), and realized that some restoration had been done to the SGC Sowders' paper loss. In actuality, the fireplace poker shape of the paper loss on the PSA Hornung is identical to the shape of the area on the SGC Sowders where the restoration had been performed.

That's when I realized it was the same card. But, here's the part that blows me away. Check out the 2nd area of paper loss on the PSA Sowders, the area directly above his pitching hand. That's pretty substantial. Now look at the same area on the SGC Sowders. Pretty damn hard to tell that anything has been done. Only on the closeup, the 3rd photo, can you barely make out the outline of the area that was restored.