Authenticity of GU/GW cards

[baseball tourist]

I think that you will find that the majority of the members here regard the practice of fragmenting a jersey/bat etc for cards to be reprehensible and a collecting genre avoided by most here. Some my care less about modern GU items being used but cut up a flannel or a vintage bat and most here will get there blood boiling (me included).

[bbcard1]

i am in the minority on this forum, but I believe a broken bat or a torn pair of pants is put to a better use being put in relic cards. Of course, there is no limit to the number of jerseys current day players go through.

[Pickles]

Let's hope that emotions do not triumph over a discussion. To wish that all gu/gw cards are fake is not going to stitch the jsy back up again. The price on Ruth jsy went up an order of magnitude (20x) as a result, so I do not foresee 2000 cards at $2000 apiece in the future.

There are those, myself included, that will find a way to handle the gu/gw, some who will never touch them. I do not write on every thread I see, nor do I expect those who do not care for gu/gw memo to spend a lot of time on this one.

I look at these as sources ofj information, and appreciate factual ones. Not trying to cut up a new jsy here, just wonder about the authenticity of what is out there.

[Bestdj777]

There are a handful of prior threads on it. Again, regardless of my opinion on them, I believe the consensus of the prior threads is that the cards are not always what they say they are.

Here is one of the threads, which includes some comments about the bats not actually being game used:

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=131100

[Pickles]

BestJD, thanks for the link. A 2010 thread which basically shows a similar skepticism. I will recap for anyone who reads this further: Prices have not gone up, in fact, some gone down in the past 4 years. Not clear what "game used bat" really means. I suspect the same goes for GW uniform.

On the other hand, you read stories from the Halper collection fakes, Mastro, etc, and it really makes one wonder how safe it is to spend 10's or 100's K$ in a full article (bat, jsy, pants) from the 1920-1930 era, when the authenticity is suspect. Sad in any direction

[Leon]

Since there has been so much fraud in that area, more than almost anywhere except maybe autographs, I would shy away from them. I am with the majority and don't think old, vintage unis, bats and etc.... should be cut up. I am quite sure there has been a lot of the cards that have these splinters and pieces of cloth in them, found to be fraudulent straight from their producers, and not from where they are said to have come from. Yuck all the way around for me.....

[Pickles]

Thanks Leon. An accurate insight. I am slowly getting to that conclusion. The unfortunate part is that, unlike autos, where there are lots of suppliers, thegreat majority honest, a few less than honest, the card relic is limited to a few, purely for profit, companies who (not very accurately) advertise their integrity and commitment to the hobby, and then, perhaps not with full intent, but with lack of diligence and poor quality control, corrupt it even more than the small time auto peddlers.

That brings me to a crossover question on cut autos made into cards. Again, coming from the card manufacturers, these signed autos would give a collector a (false?) sense of security about an auto. I would not expect a high rate of innacuracy (definitely not as much, nor as systemic as the relics element) but, where there is smoke, there is bound to be fire. Any thoughts, history, experiences on this area?