Your Best Raw Card Success Story

[Chris-Counts]

I've told my one grading success story here before, but I'll summarize it again. I picked up seven "colorized" 1940 Play Ball card at the S.F. Cow Palace show a couple years ago. The seller thought some kids colored them in. Later I described the cards to Mike Baker at GAI and he encourage me to send them in for grading. I sent him several, and for a couple months, they sat in the GAI office. Finally the cards came back with the explanation that they were "too controversial" to grade. Mike confirmed with me that one prominent dealer in particular was campaigning against their authenticity, but he said he believed they were legitimate. So I took the cards to SGC's table at the National in Anaheim. I showed them to several of their representatives, and they repeated the story about the previously-mentioned dealer. Out of frustration, I handed them a card of Frank Demaree and said, "Please, take this card back to your lab, and if you have to destroy it in a science experiment, go ahead. I'm convinced these cards were printed in color and I'm willing to sacrifice one to prove it." The rep from SGC took the card, and a few weeks later it was returned in a slab identifying it as a proof. It graded excellent. Here's the card before it was slabbed ...