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1985 Topps Cello - Clemens Top/McGwire Bottom
NJ80sBBC
Posts: 721 ✭✭✭✭
Hope that everyone is playing it safe and hanging in there.
A friend just recently acquired this pack and wanted to see if any of the sheet / sequence experts could confirm whether this is a legit combination to have in a pack. Appreciate the inputs.
John
Conundrum - Loving my unopened baseball card collection....but really like ripping too
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McGwire is on the E sheet and Clemens is on the F sheet. I would vote no good. ABC and DEF are usually grouped together in each section of the pack before and after the gum.
I know in other years cellos were broken down ABCD on one side and EF on the other. I'm not 100% certain it was done this way in 1985 but, either way, I wouldn't touch that pack with a ten foot pole. The odds of it being legitimate are astronomical.
Arthur
Thanks guys, great intel here as always. He bought it as a "clemens" pack only as part of a larger collection. Then noticed the McGwire afterward. Does anyone know if Steve would opine? Not sure if he is prohibited in some way as part of the PSA contract.
John
Send him an email with pics. If he's not swamped he usually responds.
PC Walter Payton - Bear Down!
I’d venture it isn’t good, but if you love the back seal certainly worth sending in to see if it gets slabbed.
Join the Rookie stars on top PSA registry today:
1980-1989 Cello Packs - Rookies
This is generally true for 1970s and early 1980s packs, but 1985 in particular is all over the place when it comes to collation. That said, I'd be inherently leery of a pack like that.
Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
My rule is this I would only buy a cello with a star showing if it were slabbed by PSA thats it the reason is simple if you bought a sealed cello box from BBCE and pulled a cello with a major star on top you are going to get it graded not sell it to someone nobody would do that unless your stupid.
I have seen grocery cellos from 1985 with Clemens on top and McGwire on bottom that were still safely sealed inside a grocery rack, so that's certainly possible in that context.
kevin
Racks usually have AB sheets in one cell, CD sheets in the middle, and EF sheets in another cell. Sometimes which end AB and EF gets switched up, but most often AB is the end near the header. In my experience, anyway. As mentioned, with McGwire being E sheet and Clemens being on the F sheet, what you describe is randomly to be expected.
Yes, racks and cellos work differently.
It's important to mention just how much bad 1980s cello product there is out there, especially for 1983-1985. It's gargantuan. I could understand the EF sheet being in the wrong location on a cello. Although rare, that "happens." But after that, you really start pushing the mathematical odds. An EF sheet on both top and bottom AND it's Clemens and McGwire? Those are long, long, long odds. Obviously you can't say it's impossible but I would say it struggles to achieve what is believable.
Arthur
if it seems to good to be true...
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
With 800 cards in the set the odds of this happening would be 400 times 800 and thats 1 in 32000. So you would literally have to go through 16,000 cello packs just to have a 50-50 chance of finding this type of cello. So does anyone actually think a person would sell this ungraded? Also there are so many scammers out there that open up cellos and reseal it I would never buy anything ungraded. There are always exceptions like someone who has something really great but are clueless to what they have but I would say any ungraded cello with Clemens and McGwire on the front and back is fake.
400 times 800 is 320,000.
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Plus, you have to factor in the odds for the sheet mistake, which I don't know how you would do. I mean, how often do you see an '85 Topps cello with same sheet sets throughout the entire pack? 1:500? 1:1,000? Even more?
Arthur