Opinions on the book "The Card"

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Posted By: boxingcardman

You raise some good points that have been explored in the past at various times. One of the worst issues we have as hobbyists when dealing with "pristine" cards is lack of provenance. "The Card" is a perfect example of that. No one is ever going to get to a true conclusion as to whether The Card is the remainder of a larger card or a sheet because the people who know aren't going to talk and we have no way of tracing its provenance.

What I will say about high grade cards is this: it is a mixed bag. I have been asked into a few "finds" of prewar cards as a buyer or advisor. By "find" I mean discovered outside the hobby with either an original owner's successors or in a second-hand location where the value of the item (hence the quality of the item) is not appreciated and is not likely to result in fraudulent alterations of the cards. Some people here have found a lot more; others none as of yet. The T card finds I've had (two) have yielded cards ranging from poor to ex-mt. The postwar card "finds" I've been involved with have involved cards anywhere from 30-50 years old and have yielded cards ranging into true mint condition (believe me, I've purchased quite a few raw cards from original collections that have found their ways into 7-8-9 slabs, some of which I happily still own). I've also acquired paper collectibles from sources in the entertainment field that have yielded materials (tickets to Hollywood events, primarily) ranging from poor to mint condition for very old materials. Certainly, it is possible for finds to yield top condition cards and early paper collectibles. My personal experience and observation from doing this since the 1970s is that with prewar cards the finds are nearly always of midgrade materials with a smattering of higher grade stuff. For postwar cards (1948-up) finding 7-8-9-10 condition cards is not a rare event.

My other view on the issue, which echoes those of others here, is that prior to the 1990s there was nowhere near as much ultra high grade prewar material out there. I am firmly of the belief that a lot, not all but a lot, of the prewar ultra high grade cards we see have been enhanced, whether that is something as benign as cleaning or as serious as trimming. I am also of the belief that as grading services have evolved, they have learned, but that part of the learning curve has been the slabbing of a great many cards that should never have been slabbed and that, consequently, there are many altered cards in high grade slabs. I sold back to SGC a T206 Waddell that had slipped into an ex-mt slab with trimming; you could tell from the flip that it was an older grade of theirs.

Now The Card, to me, is a special instance. As I recall from the book, Bill Hughes, who was one of the graders at PSA who examined it raw, believed that it was in fact cut down from a larger item but agreed to the 8 anyway because it would have been a shame to trash such a magnificent card. Had PSA done an "A" at time, we might have seen an "A"; we will never know. What we can say for certain about the card is that its provenance is twisted and suspect, and is in need of clarification which we may still receive at the end of a Federal subpoena.

By no means am I claiming that every card in a top slab is bad, but I do believe that extreme caution needs to be exercised in dealing with these cards because there are bad ones out there.

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