Traditionally the night before a President leaves office he delivers a 'farewell address' to the nation in which he speaks candidly about topics that were 'off limits' while running for office or attempting to govern. Whether it was George Washington warning that the growth of political parties would lead to failed government in 1796 or Dwight Eisenhower warning about the influence of the military industrial complex in 1960, these men have used their last opportunity to command the attention of the nation to say what they felt was important, what they felt needed to be said … political consequences be damned.
Today I say 'farewell' to modern cards and, while I am not a President, I feel that after 20 years of collecting that there are things I feel that are important, things I feel need to be said.
In 1992 I was ten years old and living in a town that was poverty stricken and experiencing a crime wave. The public schools were viewed as a dead end and were seen as dangerous. I was promptly transferred to a private school and found myself amongst strangers in the 4th grade. The fact that it was a private school meant that many of the students came from better financial situations and could afford 'extras', such as baseball cards. I got into collecting and quickly discovered a love for the hobby and the friendships came just as fast.
Trading was a big part of the routine at class and I often got yelled at for reading the back of a Benny Santiago baseball card when I should have been reading a chapter in Social Studied on the French and Indian War. On a bus ride home one day my best friend showed me the most beautiful card I had seen thus far. It was a 1991 Topps 1953 Archives Bob Schultz … a common reprint of a common card. I immediately traded my best card at the time (a 1992 Topps Ruben Sierra if memory serves). From a purely financial standpoint I had been suckered, but I learned something very important that day: there were cards that existed long ago and they were beautiful.
During my quest to buy pack after pack for trading I came upon a small shop the next town over, which happened to employ a school teacher part time who kept his collection of 1950s and 60s cards in the display case. On my first trip my mother noticed a 1954 Bowman Carl Erskine (whose autograph she had received in person at Ebbets Field in the mid 1950s) and I immediately bought the card, along with a 1968 Topps Don Drysdale, because I had seen him on a rerun of The Brady Bunch. By summer's end I had done the unthinkable: I had purchased a 1960 Topps Ken Boyer / Mickey Mantle for the princely sum of $12. I was ten years old and on my way.
As the years past I continued adding 1950s-70s cards in my collection with names like Clemete, Aaron, Brock, Perry, etc. finding their way into a modest collection that was the envy of every male friend I had … until puberty. Their cards of stars of the present lost value and with it their interest waned, but my cards had the excitement of up arrows in the monthly issue of Beckett I never left home without. And although I kept picking up vintage, I never stopped buying packs of modern. To me they went hand and hand.
Reading Beckett for all those years I thought that baseball cards began in 1948, because the earliest sets listed were '48 Bowman and '48 Leaf. Then came the internet and eBay and I discovered T206, 1933 Goudey, and countless other sets that captivated my imagination. As I got older, the budget became larger, and the cards became better. Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Christy Mathewson, Jackie Robinson, and Rogers Hornsby produced decades before I was born found their way next to Cal Ripken, Derek Jeter, and Mike Piazza. I started putting more into modern cards as well and began buying hobby boxes (I didn't even know packs came in boxes until about 9 years into the hobby!).
I was growing in the hobby and began attending Nationals. Soon Babe Ruth found his way into my collection, but so did modern patch cards, cut signatures, and all the other novelties today's manufacturers were turning out. By the end of my time at college I had amassed quite the collection, but had absolutely no one to share it with other than anonymous usernames on message boards such as this.
When I finished college my collection gained steam and I found myself buying more quality vintage and soon guys I thought were untouchable were in my collection. I picked up DiMaggio, Williams, more Cobbs, more Mathewsons, without so much as a second thought. But for every vintage card there was a shiny new Ott cut signature card or patch card to go with it. Things were going very well and I loved the hobby.
Then a funny thing happened in 2007. Topps released a Triple Threads booklet featuring Mantle and DiMaggio with stenciled outlines that featured NY # 7 and NY # 5. I loved the card and quickly snatched it up, but Mantle's material looked too new, too white. It didn't sit well with me and I immediately contacted Topps to ask what the material was. To my surprise they refused to tell me. I found this quite odd as Mantle had been face of Topps since 1952 and any Mantle memorabilia purchase would be a considerable expense and would obviously be recorded.
I concluded that Topps did not want me to know the answer, because it was mostly like from a post-playing career jersey worn briefly at an 'official major league game', but clearly one long after The Mick had hung up his spikes. This bothered me. I never purchased a Topps relic card again. I never purchased a box of Topps baseball again. The damage had been done, and although it took 5 years, it ultimately killed my love for modern cards.
Since that time Topps has been 'busted' for misrepresenting seat 'relics' for game used bat cards and their guarantee of authenticity has become increasingly more vague. I began purchasing only 'older' relic cards manufactured mostly by DLP, which sometimes showed a picture on the reverse and gave me some confidence. I added beautiful cards like a Jackie Robinson patch clearly cut from the red of his #42, a lace from one of Jimmie Foxx' gloves, and a button from Duke Snider's jersey amongst others.
I loved these cards and collectors on message boards loved them too. They couldn't care less about my vintage cards, so I kept piling on the modern just so I could have some social interaction with fellow collectors on the internet. Vain? Perhaps, but I'll be the first to admit that a lot of vanity goes into collecting. We buy cards we want people to see. We want to feel we have something special; we want to feel we have something important.
By 2010 I was putting five figures into 'the hobby' each year and began picking up rare pre-WW1 vintage, and even moved into the nineteenth century. I also began breaking cases of 'old' DLP products and continued adding to my Hall of Fame relic collection.
However, as I grew in the hobby I began to become more knowledgeable about the darker aspects of it. None came across as worse than the rampant amount of fake autographs and memorabilia being regularly sold in the hobby, as so expertly prosecuted by the Feds in Operation Bullpen.
If countless forgeries are from time to time sold by the most reputable of dealers and auction houses are being sold to collectors, then who is to say they aren't being sold to card manufacturers? We already had the notorious case in 2001 when several 'bad' Walter Johnson cut autographs were pulled from that year's SP Legendary Cuts.
Is a guarantee from a company that is no longer in business (DLP) or experiencing several difficulty (UD) worth anything? No. Is a vague sentence from Topps about the 'item' (notice I don't say 'relic') on their card worth anything? Again, no.
These companies are in the business of making money and just because they manufacture sports cards does not mean they are run differently than any other business. Their goal is simple: minimize cost; maximize profit. The Ruth bat featured in recent Topps products was identified as a fungo bat dated to his time as a coach with the Brooklyn Dodgers. No, the bat card you treasure so much and perhaps overpaid for did not send a dinger out of Yankee stadium; more likely it was used by The Babe as a cane to pop his head out of the dugout to wave to the children of Brooklyn hoping to glimpse one last look at their idol. Then there was the case of the Panini rep who I spoke to briefly some years ago, who detailed their attempt to acquire a Pete Maravich jersey for the launch of National Treasures, but would not step up to the plate to get the deal done.
The above are just two examples of the major card manufacturers unwillingness to pay 'top dollar' for the memorabilia they dissect for their cards. They're buying at wholesale prices, which leads me to believe the legendary memorabilia they're buying are not the rock solid authenticated Louisville Sluggers with side writing and factory records, but the off brands like Zinn Beck that measure and weight appropriate values to what the player was known to use.
And why did some legendary players only have a single issued relic card, or just a handful? Surely each bat, jersey, or pair of pants, produces the same number of relic swatches and therefore I would conclude that you could expect similar print runs. Did the card manufacturers buy fragments? Did they learn something about what they purchased that made them hault production? Surely if thousands, and even tens of thousands, were spent on a piece of game used memorabilia the card companies would be inclined to use every last swatch to squeeze as much money out of it as they could. This, for one, always troubled me.
If you had told me a week ago I could not trust Doug Allen (who was indicted on 18 serious counts of fraud) I would not have believed you. If you told collectors ten years ago they could not trust Bill Mastro (who allegedly trimmed down the PSA 8 Wagner) they would not have believed you either. If there is one thing I learned in 20 years is that you just can't trust anyone if you want to walk away clean. A piece of paper saying something is authentic does not make it authentic … no matter who signed it. All these manufacturers have is an LOA from someone with a 'name' in the hobby and nothing more, bought at the lowest price possible.
All it takes is for one 'bad' Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, or any of the other 'biggies' to be identified and the whole legend relic market collapses. At the end of the day I was just not convinced that every single card I owned was 'good' and so began the selling process. I wanted to get out in 1925, not 1935. The low end stuff went first just to test the waters. I came out 'about' even selling myself, but it was a hassle so I consigned some of the better stuff of players I wasn't 100-percent attached to and made enough that it gave me pause to consider selling the rest.
I gave it another year and finally decided to sell the rest. The true quality relics and autos that had been part of my collection for so long. Cards I had treasured; cards I had posted here; cards I thought I would keep forever. But at the end of the day was my beloved piece of red fabric stitched onto cream fabric that I stare at for hours each day really part of Jackie Robinson's #42, or was it just red fabric stitched onto cream fabric? I don't know. I don't ever want to know.
And so … they're gone. For someone else to enjoy or worry about; I leave that choice to them. I for one will use the money earned to fund my most significant purchase in the vintage world to date. What is the card? Perhaps you feel you deserve to know if you read this far, and perhaps you are right, but it would only be met with disappointment and confusion by collectors who are more likely to spend $600 on a superfractor of a 17 year-old who may never see a game in the majors than $6000 on a Hall of Fame legend who was dead six decades before they were born.
Farewell modern cards. Farewell modern collectors. Enjoy prospecting; I will be grave-digging.
Today I say 'farewell' to modern cards and, while I am not a President, I feel that after 20 years of collecting that there are things I feel that are important, things I feel need to be said.
In 1992 I was ten years old and living in a town that was poverty stricken and experiencing a crime wave. The public schools were viewed as a dead end and were seen as dangerous. I was promptly transferred to a private school and found myself amongst strangers in the 4th grade. The fact that it was a private school meant that many of the students came from better financial situations and could afford 'extras', such as baseball cards. I got into collecting and quickly discovered a love for the hobby and the friendships came just as fast.
Trading was a big part of the routine at class and I often got yelled at for reading the back of a Benny Santiago baseball card when I should have been reading a chapter in Social Studied on the French and Indian War. On a bus ride home one day my best friend showed me the most beautiful card I had seen thus far. It was a 1991 Topps 1953 Archives Bob Schultz … a common reprint of a common card. I immediately traded my best card at the time (a 1992 Topps Ruben Sierra if memory serves). From a purely financial standpoint I had been suckered, but I learned something very important that day: there were cards that existed long ago and they were beautiful.
During my quest to buy pack after pack for trading I came upon a small shop the next town over, which happened to employ a school teacher part time who kept his collection of 1950s and 60s cards in the display case. On my first trip my mother noticed a 1954 Bowman Carl Erskine (whose autograph she had received in person at Ebbets Field in the mid 1950s) and I immediately bought the card, along with a 1968 Topps Don Drysdale, because I had seen him on a rerun of The Brady Bunch. By summer's end I had done the unthinkable: I had purchased a 1960 Topps Ken Boyer / Mickey Mantle for the princely sum of $12. I was ten years old and on my way.
As the years past I continued adding 1950s-70s cards in my collection with names like Clemete, Aaron, Brock, Perry, etc. finding their way into a modest collection that was the envy of every male friend I had … until puberty. Their cards of stars of the present lost value and with it their interest waned, but my cards had the excitement of up arrows in the monthly issue of Beckett I never left home without. And although I kept picking up vintage, I never stopped buying packs of modern. To me they went hand and hand.
Reading Beckett for all those years I thought that baseball cards began in 1948, because the earliest sets listed were '48 Bowman and '48 Leaf. Then came the internet and eBay and I discovered T206, 1933 Goudey, and countless other sets that captivated my imagination. As I got older, the budget became larger, and the cards became better. Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Christy Mathewson, Jackie Robinson, and Rogers Hornsby produced decades before I was born found their way next to Cal Ripken, Derek Jeter, and Mike Piazza. I started putting more into modern cards as well and began buying hobby boxes (I didn't even know packs came in boxes until about 9 years into the hobby!).
I was growing in the hobby and began attending Nationals. Soon Babe Ruth found his way into my collection, but so did modern patch cards, cut signatures, and all the other novelties today's manufacturers were turning out. By the end of my time at college I had amassed quite the collection, but had absolutely no one to share it with other than anonymous usernames on message boards such as this.
When I finished college my collection gained steam and I found myself buying more quality vintage and soon guys I thought were untouchable were in my collection. I picked up DiMaggio, Williams, more Cobbs, more Mathewsons, without so much as a second thought. But for every vintage card there was a shiny new Ott cut signature card or patch card to go with it. Things were going very well and I loved the hobby.
Then a funny thing happened in 2007. Topps released a Triple Threads booklet featuring Mantle and DiMaggio with stenciled outlines that featured NY # 7 and NY # 5. I loved the card and quickly snatched it up, but Mantle's material looked too new, too white. It didn't sit well with me and I immediately contacted Topps to ask what the material was. To my surprise they refused to tell me. I found this quite odd as Mantle had been face of Topps since 1952 and any Mantle memorabilia purchase would be a considerable expense and would obviously be recorded.
I concluded that Topps did not want me to know the answer, because it was mostly like from a post-playing career jersey worn briefly at an 'official major league game', but clearly one long after The Mick had hung up his spikes. This bothered me. I never purchased a Topps relic card again. I never purchased a box of Topps baseball again. The damage had been done, and although it took 5 years, it ultimately killed my love for modern cards.
Since that time Topps has been 'busted' for misrepresenting seat 'relics' for game used bat cards and their guarantee of authenticity has become increasingly more vague. I began purchasing only 'older' relic cards manufactured mostly by DLP, which sometimes showed a picture on the reverse and gave me some confidence. I added beautiful cards like a Jackie Robinson patch clearly cut from the red of his #42, a lace from one of Jimmie Foxx' gloves, and a button from Duke Snider's jersey amongst others.
I loved these cards and collectors on message boards loved them too. They couldn't care less about my vintage cards, so I kept piling on the modern just so I could have some social interaction with fellow collectors on the internet. Vain? Perhaps, but I'll be the first to admit that a lot of vanity goes into collecting. We buy cards we want people to see. We want to feel we have something special; we want to feel we have something important.
By 2010 I was putting five figures into 'the hobby' each year and began picking up rare pre-WW1 vintage, and even moved into the nineteenth century. I also began breaking cases of 'old' DLP products and continued adding to my Hall of Fame relic collection.
However, as I grew in the hobby I began to become more knowledgeable about the darker aspects of it. None came across as worse than the rampant amount of fake autographs and memorabilia being regularly sold in the hobby, as so expertly prosecuted by the Feds in Operation Bullpen.
If countless forgeries are from time to time sold by the most reputable of dealers and auction houses are being sold to collectors, then who is to say they aren't being sold to card manufacturers? We already had the notorious case in 2001 when several 'bad' Walter Johnson cut autographs were pulled from that year's SP Legendary Cuts.
Is a guarantee from a company that is no longer in business (DLP) or experiencing several difficulty (UD) worth anything? No. Is a vague sentence from Topps about the 'item' (notice I don't say 'relic') on their card worth anything? Again, no.
These companies are in the business of making money and just because they manufacture sports cards does not mean they are run differently than any other business. Their goal is simple: minimize cost; maximize profit. The Ruth bat featured in recent Topps products was identified as a fungo bat dated to his time as a coach with the Brooklyn Dodgers. No, the bat card you treasure so much and perhaps overpaid for did not send a dinger out of Yankee stadium; more likely it was used by The Babe as a cane to pop his head out of the dugout to wave to the children of Brooklyn hoping to glimpse one last look at their idol. Then there was the case of the Panini rep who I spoke to briefly some years ago, who detailed their attempt to acquire a Pete Maravich jersey for the launch of National Treasures, but would not step up to the plate to get the deal done.
The above are just two examples of the major card manufacturers unwillingness to pay 'top dollar' for the memorabilia they dissect for their cards. They're buying at wholesale prices, which leads me to believe the legendary memorabilia they're buying are not the rock solid authenticated Louisville Sluggers with side writing and factory records, but the off brands like Zinn Beck that measure and weight appropriate values to what the player was known to use.
And why did some legendary players only have a single issued relic card, or just a handful? Surely each bat, jersey, or pair of pants, produces the same number of relic swatches and therefore I would conclude that you could expect similar print runs. Did the card manufacturers buy fragments? Did they learn something about what they purchased that made them hault production? Surely if thousands, and even tens of thousands, were spent on a piece of game used memorabilia the card companies would be inclined to use every last swatch to squeeze as much money out of it as they could. This, for one, always troubled me.
If you had told me a week ago I could not trust Doug Allen (who was indicted on 18 serious counts of fraud) I would not have believed you. If you told collectors ten years ago they could not trust Bill Mastro (who allegedly trimmed down the PSA 8 Wagner) they would not have believed you either. If there is one thing I learned in 20 years is that you just can't trust anyone if you want to walk away clean. A piece of paper saying something is authentic does not make it authentic … no matter who signed it. All these manufacturers have is an LOA from someone with a 'name' in the hobby and nothing more, bought at the lowest price possible.
All it takes is for one 'bad' Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, or any of the other 'biggies' to be identified and the whole legend relic market collapses. At the end of the day I was just not convinced that every single card I owned was 'good' and so began the selling process. I wanted to get out in 1925, not 1935. The low end stuff went first just to test the waters. I came out 'about' even selling myself, but it was a hassle so I consigned some of the better stuff of players I wasn't 100-percent attached to and made enough that it gave me pause to consider selling the rest.
I gave it another year and finally decided to sell the rest. The true quality relics and autos that had been part of my collection for so long. Cards I had treasured; cards I had posted here; cards I thought I would keep forever. But at the end of the day was my beloved piece of red fabric stitched onto cream fabric that I stare at for hours each day really part of Jackie Robinson's #42, or was it just red fabric stitched onto cream fabric? I don't know. I don't ever want to know.
And so … they're gone. For someone else to enjoy or worry about; I leave that choice to them. I for one will use the money earned to fund my most significant purchase in the vintage world to date. What is the card? Perhaps you feel you deserve to know if you read this far, and perhaps you are right, but it would only be met with disappointment and confusion by collectors who are more likely to spend $600 on a superfractor of a 17 year-old who may never see a game in the majors than $6000 on a Hall of Fame legend who was dead six decades before they were born.
Farewell modern cards. Farewell modern collectors. Enjoy prospecting; I will be grave-digging.
![[Image: griffeyjr.jpg]](http://i875.photobucket.com/albums/ab320/bmanrocks12/griffeyjr.jpg)
![[Image: 3XHoG.png]](http://i1086.photobucket.com/albums/j449/rpspenner/3XHoG.png)
![[Image: untitled.png]](http://i1086.photobucket.com/albums/j449/rpspenner/untitled.png)