Joe Shlabotnik Graded Cards

[frankbmd]

I'm just going to throw out a question for the board.

How many Shlabotnik cards do you think are in the PSA backlog of cards waiting to be graded?

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

I'm just going to throw out a question for the board.

How many Shlabotnik cards do you think are in the PSA backlog of cards waiting to be graded?

PSA has at least a 100 on hand at all times. Problem is that each and every one of them end up getting crushed in the slab machine during the assembly process. From there they are disposed of in PSA's giant trash furnace...never to be seen again, and completely wiped out of existence.

They are then replaced by a newly printed 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. PSA 10, and shipped back to the original customer, who doesn't know whether to be pleasantly surprised, or low-key furious....thereby being stuck in the middle of some unknown information purgatory, and never making it's way out as news to the outside world.

Nobody knows why this happens, and it's probably best we never find out.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

I'm just going to throw out a question for the board.

How many Shlabotnik cards do you think are in the PSA backlog of cards waiting to be graded?

Another answer could be zero. Because grown-up Charlie Brown has been hoarding them for his entire life, already cornered the market before 3rd party grading became a thing, and gave up on getting any cards graded when his first 29 shipments to PSA got permanently lost while passing through the Kearny, New Jersey postal facility, during the mid-90's.

Ever since, set collectors across the hobby have engaged in a vast conspiracy to convince the rest of the world, that these cards never existed. Otherwise there'd be no complete master sets in any Topps collection, from the years 1957 to 1964.

[egri]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Another answer could be zero. Because grown-up Charlie Brown has been hoarding them for his entire life, already cornered the market before 3rd party grading became a thing, and gave up on getting any cards graded when his first 29 shipments to PSA got permanently lost while passing through the Kearny, New Jersey postal facility, during the mid-90's.

Ever since, set collectors across the hobby have engaged in a vast conspiracy to convince the rest of the world, that these cards never existed. Otherwise there'd be no complete master sets in any Topps collection, from the years 1957 to 1964.

I'm in that camp as well. Shlabotnik was clearly very short-printed, and Lucy threw away the only known copy. The strip where Lucy throws it away ran in August, implying that Shlabotnik was high number. If there were any others, they likely would've been tossed in spring cleaning, or when the kids went off to college. Or maybe they were dumped in the ocean along with the 1952 Topps high numbers.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by egri

I'm in that camp as well. Shlabotnik was clearly very short-printed, and Lucy threw away the only known copy. The strip where Lucy throws it away ran in August, implying that Shlabotnik was high number. If there were any others, they likely would've been tossed in spring cleaning, or when the kids went off to college. Or maybe they were dumped in the ocean along with the 1952 Topps high numbers.

Ah yes! The infamous Joe Shlabotnik chase card theory.

Inspired by the 1933-34 Nap Lajoie by Goudey, Topps decided to see if fans would notice if super-utilityman Joe Shlabotnik was missing from their yearly set.

Sadly, the dozens of letters they received from a single boy residing in Hennepin County, Minnesota was not enough to persuade them to release the card nationally.

They did pepper a few packs in the region the boys letters originated from with Shlabotnik cards, hoping this fans passion would help fuel bubble gum sales in the area.

Unfortunately, it became clear from year to year, that this increasingly unhinged fan was dangerously fixated on this ballplayer, and perhaps even more fixated on the young girl next door who became a fixture in his yearly diatribes (arguably morphing into manifesto's) to the company.

Hoping to avoid an "incident", Topps spun into damage control...not only trying to wipe the idea of Joe Shlabotnik cards from existence, but wiping from recorded existence, Joe Shlabotnik himself.

Newspapermen were paid off, statisticians were paid off. Camera footage, box scores, and any other evidence of Joe's existence, was either casually lost to time, redacted, or simply replaced with a different players image or stats. It was said, his game impact was so immemorable, that you could simply replace his batting stats with a random relief pitchers batting stats, and nobody would know the difference.

That boy in Hennepin County noticed...oh he noticed. Nobody else seemed to pay him any mind however. Often calling him a "Blockhead", and dismissing him and his "crazy" theories outright.

All he could do in his frustration was let out a sigh...mutter "Good Grief" under his breath, and then trudge towards the next thing the world was about to throw at him.

What happened to that at risk boy, you say? Well that's a story for another day my friends...another day.

[egri]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Ah yes! The infamous Joe Shlabotnik chase card theory.

Inspired by the 1933-34 Nap Lajoie by Goudey, Topps decided to see if fans would notice if super-utilityman Joe Shlabotnik was missing from their yearly set.

Sadly, the dozens of letters they received from a single boy residing in Hennepin County, Minnesota was not enough to persuade them to release the card nationally.

They did pepper a few packs in the region the boys letters originated from with Shlabotnik cards, hoping this fans passion would help fuel bubble gum sales in the area.

Unfortunately, it became clear from year to year, that this increasingly unhinged fan was dangerously fixated on this ballplayer, and perhaps even more fixated on the young girl next door who became a fixture in his yearly diatribes (arguably morphing into manifesto's) to the company.

Hoping to avoid an "incident", Topps spun into damage control...not only trying to wipe the idea of Joe Shlabotnik cards from existence, but wiping from recorded existence, Joe Shlabotnik himself.

Newspapermen were paid off, statisticians were paid off. Camera footage, box scores, and any other evidence of Joe's existence, was either casually lost to time, redacted, or simply replaced with a different players image or stats. It was said, his game impact was so immemorable, that you could simply replace his batting stats with a random relief pitchers batting stats, and nobody would know the difference.

That boy in Hennepin County noticed...oh he noticed. Nobody else seemed to pay him any mind however. Often calling him a "Blockhead", and dismissing him and his "crazy" theories outright.

All he could do in his frustration was let out a sigh...mutter "Good Grief" under his breath, and then trudge towards the next thing the world was about to throw at him.

What happened to that at risk boy, you say? Well that's a story for another day my friends...another day.

[frankbmd]

35267-80

Is the ICD-10 code for

Shlabotnikopathy

The only known remedy is peanut oil.