Calling all 1990 Topps George Bush experts! Mystery needs your help!

[charnick]

Hello all! Does anyone out there own a 1990 Topps George Bush USA card? Either the "regular" or the White House "Glossy" edition? I have a mystery on my hand here with a card I've purchased. I will update the thread with pix if anyone needs/wants to see them, but I wanted to throw my story out there first...

Picked up a Glossy version on eBay about 2 months ago, for a pretty penny, my first time spending over a grand on a single card, but I thought it would be a worthy purchase. I know the regular versions have been dropping like a rock value wise with the discovery of the "Glossy White House" version, but this one was the Glossy, graded a 7.5 NM+ by BGS, so I thought it would be awesome to own one of the 100 given to the President back in 1990.

Well, for no real reason whatsoever, I prefer my high-end, pre-2000, non-chrome cards to go to PSA, so I sent the slab directly into them for a crossover, minimum grade 7. Came back no, did not hit minimum. Oh well... resend it in, minimum grade 6, again came back did not hit minimum. A BGS 7.5 doesn't equal a PSA 6?!?! OK, fine whatever. This time there was at least a note on the return saying "Looks like White House version." Nice, at least I have some sort of informal confirmation that it's the right one.

Next, I end up sending it to SGC, as I just recently picked up a 1990 Frank Thomas NNOF SGC 5, and thought OK, these would look nice together in the same brand of slab. SGC contacted me directly, said it would indeed cross at the minimum grade of 7 I had requested, but they didn't think it was the White House version. Basically said BGS got it wrong. Oy vey, what is going on here?!?! Had them send it back to me in the BGS slab. I should have left well enough alone, but I needed to know just what version I had. I don't plan on selling it any time soon, but if I or my kids ever do, and it's not what the slab says, it could become a bit of an issue, obviously.

So now, I needed to know what was up... BGS thinks it the Glossy, SGC doesn't, and PSA thought (though not officially) it was. I cracked it out of the BGS slab and sent it in to PSA raw. Figured it would be best not to bias the situation with the BGS slab. When I cracked it, I checked it out myself as well as I could. There was most definitely a coating on top of the card. Clear as day... and did not look like any other 1990 Topps card I ever had (out of the thousands AND the Thomas NNOF). So now I'm really confused. So as I said, sent it back in to PSA raw, and it came back an 8 (after not hitting a minimum 6 when sent in the BGS slab!) but they still don't see it as the White House version.

So basically, I'm trying to find anyone that may have either version to explain to me what their card looks like so I can some additional information to go by. Does anyone here own the regular version? Does it have any kind of coating on it at all, or does it resemble the matte finish of the 40,000,000 other 1990 Topps cards out there? Does anyone have the Glossy version? Does your coating extend past the edges of the card? How "thick" is it? Thanks in advance to anyone that may be able to help.