Best Of

So you "lost" $100k to your self-described "moron" and just kept on buying? Kind of moron-esque looking at it from the outside. I'm just trying to understand your thought process.

Arthur

@bgr said:
I refer to Steve as a moron. I find him to be rather stupid. I’ve also said that he’s a nice person generally and I don’t think he’s nefarious in any way.

Over the years I would estimate I’ve lost about 100K to Steve’s mistakes. Worst was a 71 topps vending. Not a fasc. Was ordered. It hurts to burn thousands but it’s not the end of the world for me. Again. I’m only going to mention that Steve is just as much an expert at making mistakes as he is at authenticating unopened. So whatever guys. Butthurt. That’s a good one.

If you bought a Fritsch vending box thinking it was never touched, that's on you. Steve wraps them as 'Fristch Vault', not 'FASC'. It simply means the boxes were provided to BBCE directly from Fritsch. Those boxes sat in their warehouse for 50+ years. Over those years, some boxes were likely raided to fill in a gap in sets they sold. That's why I've never bought one. I've seen good and bad results from people busting Fritsch Vault vending boxes. It's a crapshoot (beyond the typical crapshoot of FASC vending) you must be willing to take if you buy one.

@bgr said:

@Tabe said:

@bgr said:
As everyone knows vending boxes, when not searched, contain an oscillating pattern of size which appears as light to dark. This box was random and the cards were an ordered mix of multiple series. While I do believe that it’s common to find cards in 71 vending with some series overlap (4th and 5th) what I had is a yet to be duplicated unicorn with a mix of series 2 and 3. One of a kind. This hasn’t been my only “never seen before”. As many/ most of you don’t value my opinion you can safely disregard this. This isn’t for you.

I'm not sure how you can possibly get it wrong on a FASC box. Doesn't that label require that BBCE themselves open the case?

I don’t see it in the quoted text but if I said FASC I meant to say not FASC. Though there are two high profile incidents where BBCE FASC boxes were opened and were not legitimate.

BBCE wrapped vending boxes are from a sealed case, noted on the label or not.

Most instances of "not legitimate" BBCE boxes... i.e. 1986 Fleer basketball and Jabbs 79 Topps... were indeed legitimate boxes, just some unknowledgable "experts" claiming such because they didn't get the cards they expected. Not much different than calling foul, when a FASC pack doesn't pass at PSA... many packs coming from FASC boxes may have anomalies or issues (popped seals, wrinkled/ripped wrappers, bad folds, etc) that PSA will not allow Steve to authenticate. Steve has no knowledge of the original source of any pack sent into PSA, and they won't let him authenticate packs that don't conform to the known factory "norms".

The Pokémon case doesn't bother me because it isn't in my realm and I'm only interested in Steve's opinion on vintage sports packs, not modern sealed cases. I think the bigger mistake there was offering a service to authenticate cases without ever seeing the contents.

There is no threshold to being an expert, it's all relative within that field of expertise... but when you're the best in the business and everyone who matters agrees, you're clearly an expert.