Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Witness Statement #1

From Dayf at Cardboard Junkie:

Ok. I got the e-mail and checked out the scan. Now, there are a bunch of fakes of this card floating around the hobby, but this one is legit. I've only seen one copy of this card in person. There's an old guy at the flea market near me who's been collecting cards since he was a kid in Brooklyn in the '50s. His shop is like a museum, there's every kind of card there going back to to tobacco cards, old SIGNED Goudeys, piles of Topps from the '50s and '60s, even a healthy collection of bizarre '90s inserts. This guy has seen everything. He also happens to have a MASSIVE collection of old porn in the shop. Cards and porn. The guy makes a lot of money. One time be bought a stash of old Playboys from a lady whose husband had recently passed. I say bought, but it was more like "Just take 'em and get them out of myhouse". Well, inside the issue with the Pete Rose interview was this card, tucked right next to the Vargas Girl. He let me take a good look at it and then I checked out the card too.
A lot of the fakes are easy to spot. Inexperienced forgers use a blond girl, put her up too high so you can see everything, some even performed a little "surgical enhancement". This one at least has the right gal streaking in the background. You can tell that this is the original error card by the dot pattern. On the original card the pattern looks smooth and everything blends together. The copy is taken directly from the card image, but the reproduction wasn't perfect and there's a slight moire pattern if you look closely at the girl. Very,very closely. Experts have been known to examine the card for up to an hour before giving it a stamp of approval. Now, PSA grading has their problems, but this is one of the premier error cards in the industryand if they graded it, I'm positive they were extremely thorough. This is the real deal, brother. Congrats on having a fantastic cap to yourTony Gwynn collection!

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