Joe Shlabotnik Graded Cards

[frankbmd]

Whereas

1. Whereas there is an infatuation with PSA slabs within the flock of hobby sheep and

2. Whereas the current and perhaps future cheapest stab is $150 to encapsulate and

3. Whereas Joe Shlabotnik did not capture the hearts of young collectors during his undistinguished career and

4. Whereas pop reports suggest that most of the graded Shlabotnik cards were used on bicycle spokes by their original owners and

5. Whereas the total pop for all grades is less than 5 and

6. Whereas it is unlikely that mother's didn't save any of their son's Schlabotnik cards and

7. Then it would seem that future submissions of Shlabotnik cards are quite unlikely as no Schlabotnik card has ever been sold for more than 50 cents (and this is likely the case, but has not been verified) and

8. Then at the current rates ($150) population reports will eventually become skewed in the opposite direction with higher grades becoming dominant and far more common than there lower graded exemplars and

9. Then collectors not only infatuated by PSA, but also infatuated with rarity, will ultimately find PSA 1 Arnold Shlabotnik cards becoming their white whales and the prices will soar and

10. Then card doctors will be called upon to crack out all Shlabotnik cards graded 2 and above and rough them up a bit and

11. Then the hobby will be in awe when Goldin sells the first 6 million dollar Shlabotnik graded PSA 1 (and yes that's a 6 with 6 zeroes) and

12. Then collectors will liquidate their Wagners and Cobbs for pennies on the dollar to chase Shlabotniks and

13. Then Blowout with start a thread declaring that most, if not all, PSA 1 Shlabotniks have been tampered with and were formerly in much better condition and

14. Then Net 54 members will argue for months about the legitimacy of the Shlabotnik boom, claiming it is a "bubble" even when PWCC sells a Shlabotnik for $10,000,000 and

Who can claim that baseball card collectors are sane?

And please this thread doesn't need a card unless it's a Schlabotnik.

[mrreality68]

That All Sounds About Right

So Stock on those cards now and become wealthy in another Life

[D. Bergin]

[D. Bergin]

Turns out there's a whole universe of Shlabotnik fans online.

[D. Bergin]

[frankbmd]

The cards are appreciated, but I must confess that I made a spelling error and that Joe is the real Shlabotnik, not Arnold. My bad.

[D. Bergin]

[D. Bergin]

[steve B]

I'm waiting on the price surge for Chico Escuela cards.

[Peter_Spaeth]

They're coming to take me away, ha ha.

[brianp-beme]

All this Schlabotnik talk is making me hungry.

Brian

[Yoda]

But, Frank, everybody knows Lucy has a secret stash hidden away, just waiting until the collecting world is screaming for more JW cards.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

They're coming to take me away, ha ha.

[bobw]

[frankbmd]

I'm just going to throw out a question for the board.

How many Shlabotnik cards do you think are in the PSA backlog of cards waiting to be graded?

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

I'm just going to throw out a question for the board.

How many Shlabotnik cards do you think are in the PSA backlog of cards waiting to be graded?

PSA has at least a 100 on hand at all times. Problem is that each and every one of them end up getting crushed in the slab machine during the assembly process. From there they are disposed of in PSA's giant trash furnace...never to be seen again, and completely wiped out of existence.

They are then replaced by a newly printed 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. PSA 10, and shipped back to the original customer, who doesn't know whether to be pleasantly surprised, or low-key furious....thereby being stuck in the middle of some unknown information purgatory, and never making it's way out as news to the outside world.

Nobody knows why this happens, and it's probably best we never find out.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

I'm just going to throw out a question for the board.

How many Shlabotnik cards do you think are in the PSA backlog of cards waiting to be graded?

Another answer could be zero. Because grown-up Charlie Brown has been hoarding them for his entire life, already cornered the market before 3rd party grading became a thing, and gave up on getting any cards graded when his first 29 shipments to PSA got permanently lost while passing through the Kearny, New Jersey postal facility, during the mid-90's.

Ever since, set collectors across the hobby have engaged in a vast conspiracy to convince the rest of the world, that these cards never existed. Otherwise there'd be no complete master sets in any Topps collection, from the years 1957 to 1964.

[egri]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Another answer could be zero. Because grown-up Charlie Brown has been hoarding them for his entire life, already cornered the market before 3rd party grading became a thing, and gave up on getting any cards graded when his first 29 shipments to PSA got permanently lost while passing through the Kearny, New Jersey postal facility, during the mid-90's.

Ever since, set collectors across the hobby have engaged in a vast conspiracy to convince the rest of the world, that these cards never existed. Otherwise there'd be no complete master sets in any Topps collection, from the years 1957 to 1964.

I'm in that camp as well. Shlabotnik was clearly very short-printed, and Lucy threw away the only known copy. The strip where Lucy throws it away ran in August, implying that Shlabotnik was high number. If there were any others, they likely would've been tossed in spring cleaning, or when the kids went off to college. Or maybe they were dumped in the ocean along with the 1952 Topps high numbers.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by egri

I'm in that camp as well. Shlabotnik was clearly very short-printed, and Lucy threw away the only known copy. The strip where Lucy throws it away ran in August, implying that Shlabotnik was high number. If there were any others, they likely would've been tossed in spring cleaning, or when the kids went off to college. Or maybe they were dumped in the ocean along with the 1952 Topps high numbers.

Ah yes! The infamous Joe Shlabotnik chase card theory.

Inspired by the 1933-34 Nap Lajoie by Goudey, Topps decided to see if fans would notice if super-utilityman Joe Shlabotnik was missing from their yearly set.

Sadly, the dozens of letters they received from a single boy residing in Hennepin County, Minnesota was not enough to persuade them to release the card nationally.

They did pepper a few packs in the region the boys letters originated from with Shlabotnik cards, hoping this fans passion would help fuel bubble gum sales in the area.

Unfortunately, it became clear from year to year, that this increasingly unhinged fan was dangerously fixated on this ballplayer, and perhaps even more fixated on the young girl next door who became a fixture in his yearly diatribes (arguably morphing into manifesto's) to the company.

Hoping to avoid an "incident", Topps spun into damage control...not only trying to wipe the idea of Joe Shlabotnik cards from existence, but wiping from recorded existence, Joe Shlabotnik himself.

Newspapermen were paid off, statisticians were paid off. Camera footage, box scores, and any other evidence of Joe's existence, was either casually lost to time, redacted, or simply replaced with a different players image or stats. It was said, his game impact was so immemorable, that you could simply replace his batting stats with a random relief pitchers batting stats, and nobody would know the difference.

That boy in Hennepin County noticed...oh he noticed. Nobody else seemed to pay him any mind however. Often calling him a "Blockhead", and dismissing him and his "crazy" theories outright.

All he could do in his frustration was let out a sigh...mutter "Good Grief" under his breath, and then trudge towards the next thing the world was about to throw at him.

What happened to that at risk boy, you say? Well that's a story for another day my friends...another day.

[egri]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Ah yes! The infamous Joe Shlabotnik chase card theory.

Inspired by the 1933-34 Nap Lajoie by Goudey, Topps decided to see if fans would notice if super-utilityman Joe Shlabotnik was missing from their yearly set.

Sadly, the dozens of letters they received from a single boy residing in Hennepin County, Minnesota was not enough to persuade them to release the card nationally.

They did pepper a few packs in the region the boys letters originated from with Shlabotnik cards, hoping this fans passion would help fuel bubble gum sales in the area.

Unfortunately, it became clear from year to year, that this increasingly unhinged fan was dangerously fixated on this ballplayer, and perhaps even more fixated on the young girl next door who became a fixture in his yearly diatribes (arguably morphing into manifesto's) to the company.

Hoping to avoid an "incident", Topps spun into damage control...not only trying to wipe the idea of Joe Shlabotnik cards from existence, but wiping from recorded existence, Joe Shlabotnik himself.

Newspapermen were paid off, statisticians were paid off. Camera footage, box scores, and any other evidence of Joe's existence, was either casually lost to time, redacted, or simply replaced with a different players image or stats. It was said, his game impact was so immemorable, that you could simply replace his batting stats with a random relief pitchers batting stats, and nobody would know the difference.

That boy in Hennepin County noticed...oh he noticed. Nobody else seemed to pay him any mind however. Often calling him a "Blockhead", and dismissing him and his "crazy" theories outright.

All he could do in his frustration was let out a sigh...mutter "Good Grief" under his breath, and then trudge towards the next thing the world was about to throw at him.

What happened to that at risk boy, you say? Well that's a story for another day my friends...another day.

[frankbmd]

35267-80

Is the ICD-10 code for

Shlabotnikopathy

The only known remedy is peanut oil.