Cut card cases. What's the deal?

BugOnTheRug

Recently I have seen several descriptions defining some early 1970's cards as coming from 'cut card case(s)'. What exactly is that and are the cards produced in this fashion any different (centering, miscuts, etc) than those that came in wax, rack, cello, or vending cases?

Thanks in advance,
BOTR

mikeschmidt

Basically it is a "case" of something like 6,000 cards, plus or minus, whereby all the cards in the case are from a single sheet of production.

Cards are generally the same as you would find elsewhere -- with the limitation being that you only find one sheet's worth of cards in your cut card case -- with a ton of duplicates!

beefcake210

I love Marc, but he's a little off on this one.

All the cut card cases - also known as "bulk vendor cases" - I've seen (from the late 60s on up) have contained approxomately 8650 cards. They are sat in a box with three rows at the bottom, and two levels of cards right on top of them, for a total of 9 rows of 900-1000 cards each. There is NO protection, or individual boxing of the cards. This means that many of the cards can get smashed pretty bad, but because most bulk vendor cases were sold to dealers or at least people who would be holding onto the cards, they tend not to have been shipped or banged around as much, so the cards tend to be cleaner than most cards from the traditional vendor cases.

Cases can be only one series, or multiple series mixed together - for instance, there are 6 sheets in most Topps products from 78 up, labeled A-F, so you can have A cases, B cases, AB cases, ABC, AF, ABCDEF (all cards), etc. The only way to determine the contents of the case is to open it up and look at a sampling of cards from it.

Also, many times there tended to be some "problem" with at least some of the cards/sheets that caused them to be put into these cases instead of wax packs, it could include extreme diamond cutting (where the entire card is trapezoidal, not just the centering!), miscut cards, etc.

Of course, if you're buying singles, you'll be able to examine the cards individually, so should avoid any of these problems. At the end, it's just a way of saying the card is "fresh" (whether it's true or not).

FB

Beefcake,

Very nice!!! As I read your description - it was all coming back to me. Exactly as you described. The one other thing that I would add is that these were generally created towards the end of the printing year.
I was buying these cases usually in October to December at a nice discount.

At best, cards were only 5% worse than a vending case. At worst, I found an occasional one where 33% of the case was shot - generally, because the dealer or Topps delivery wasn't careful.

ALSO.... this was the mid 80's and none of us were deeply concerned with razor sharp corners and perfect centering. I don't remember how bad the bulk vendor was on those issues.

If we get Zardoz up here - he might be able to shed some light. He busted a 72 cut card case a couple months back and sold the bulk of it on eBay.

Hubcap

What Beefcake described is very accurate. My experience with cut card cases has been very poor. We used to put together hand collated sets and team sets in the 60's thru 80's for resale and most of the time, about half of the cards were O/C. But back in those days, most collectors didn't card that much about centering unless it was a major star. In fact, there used to be a place in East Rochester NY that cut sheets for Topps as recently as 8 years ago. They made hand collated sets which looked like factory sets when you opened the box, as well as card packs for MegaCards. They also sold singles in huge lots. I used to buy Mattinglys from them.

In 1980, I found a 1957 bulk cut card case that yielded the makings of 13 partial sets. Seven were fantastic and the six were 90/10. I sold the O/C partial sets and got my money back for the bulk case. The others I kept one and sold the rest over the years. Just got the mid series graded and except for some cards with snow, they graded very nice.

1954

Now this is good stuff right here Beefcake.

Thanks,
1954

uniship

"In 1980, I found a 1957 bulk cut card case that yielded the makings of 13 partial sets."

AWESOME!