July Pickups

[ALR-bishop]

Adam--are you a Gritch collector or a 71 collector ?

[the 'stache]

Adam, that Grich is absolutely spectacular! My God. I've looked at a lot of 1971 Topps baseball cards in my time. I could look at another 10,000 and not find another one with edges that clean. Congratulations!

[K-Nole]

I agree. And what i find so facinating, is that this card is 43 years old, and has a story.
What is it's story???
I mean it's 43 years old and basically, has never been touched. Where was it before somebody graded it. What happened? did the child buy it and it sat in the same spot for 35 years?
What is this cards story? That is waht facinates me about our hobby, every card has a story.

[mintacular]

Decent card:

[AMBST95]

Thanks for the compliments. I've been battling it out for a nice example the last few years and finally finished ahead. I am an Orioles fan and this purchase was for my Orioles Team Hall of Fame set.

The 71 Topps cards are so sharp looking when done right. Unfortunately, so few of them were. I give the 71 collectors a lot of credit as I would go nuts trying to find the cleanest borders. There's just something about the black borders. It's probably why I was a fan of the 86 Topps in my youth and have found myself picking up N300s recently.

[MikeGarcia]

....stuff's been piling up slowly..... here's my summer pick-ups so far : two different very old discontinued-label CSA-graded cards from 'way back in the early days of Third-Party-Grading ; the '59 Sparky Rookie has the old SCD label with sub-grades on the back like Beckett used to do ; ( there's a new grader that uses the '' SCD'' name and has a colorless grey label but has nothing to do with the old SCD which was affiliated with the magazine ).

And can someone who knows the history of SGC flips please estimate how long ago the '57 Max Surkont was graded ? Looks like an early issue ? It's a gorgeous card and really really hard to find with clear registration and no 'snow' in the black areas. Most are annoyingly blurry ; I like that old label though.

[pawpawdiv9]

There is a old thread on the changes of PSA and SGC labels in their history

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...ght=SGC+labels

No pictures, but this is what I was able to dig up about SGC flips/slabs. The dates are speculative..

(1) SG on the front(1998)
(2) SGC on the front, but no 1-10 grade(99-04)
(3) SGC on the front with 1-10 grade + gold label on the back(05-08)
(4) SGC on the front with 1-10 grade + SGC pressed into the back(09-current)

I read something about there maybe having been a change in the placement of the barcode on the "SG" flips. Don't know for sure though..

Also, a semi-related SBC flip(from 1988-90?). Apparently one of the SBC guys was involved in the early stages of SGC and they used many of the SBC concepts..