Graded Spalding Cut out Pictures/Revisited

[Exhibitman]

An accurately labeled cutout listed as authentic isn't going to collapse the industry...

My collecting interests have always run towards the offbeat items, so I am perhaps a bit more receptive to grading co's slabbing non-traditional items than others, but I also remember that on the great spectrum of hobby weirdness what we do isn't that recently mainstreamed. In 1976, for example, my mother wanted to kick my father's @$$ for lending me $45 to buy 1952 and 1953 Topps Mays cards at a show in NYC. When I was a kid, collecting cards was something that only a small group of oddballs did--people would hand me boxes of old cards happily to free up garage and attic space. And even I never thought to save the wrappers and the boxes from the cards I was buying at the local candy store...I just bought a 1975 box [thanks Larry] to replace the two I threw away in 1975. Even now, planning my trip for the National, some people still look at me like I'm from Mars or something when I say I am spending my summer vacation in Cleveland collecting baseball cards.

The Hobby evolves as different items interest different people. Look at the last several years at how vintage photos have come into the mainstream in the Hobby. Yes, TPGs slabbing non-card items legitimizes cut-outs to some extent, but the funny thing to me is that it has taken so long for sports collectors to start in on that sort of vintage paper ephemera. Collecting items clipped from periodicals is a big part of other paper collecting fields. At a paper collectibles show I attend there are usually a couple of vendors whose entire inventories are cuts from old magazines and books. I am not seeing how TPG encapsulation of oddball items diminishes the card collecting end of things. Has anyone's 1968 Topps Ryan lost value because PSA slabbed a cutout? Will the Joe Jackson New Orleans team shot that started this thread lead anyone not to pick up a CJ Jackson? If not, what's the harm? As long as the buyer has the information necessary to understand the purchase, no harm is done, and if someone wants their item encapsulated, as long as it is accurately listed on the flip, again, no harm. My feeling is that it is just as likely that items like the ones in question can serve as 'gateway' items to more mainstream card collecting.

I readily admit to some personal bias in this: I have a number of pieces that were parts of newspapers, magazines and/or books. Sometimes they are the only realistic way to collect items issued during the careers of the athletes involved. Early 19th century copper plate engravings of boxers from Pierce Egan's Boxiana book. Might look nice in a Beckett slab...







Other times they are nice additions to a player run.



Regardless, I am not comfortable telling people how to enjoy their collecting.