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Why are some cards so easy to find high grade while others are not?
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theczar
Posts: 1,590 ✭✭
This is card grading 101 question--Throw out star cards, high numbers, short prints etc. Still why is there certain cards of common players that have extraordinary numbers in PSA 9 or 10 while others do not. Use the 1968 set for example. There are 34 Paul Schaals, 33 Ken Berrys, 51 Jeff Torborgs and 60 Bill Kelso all graded 10.
How does this happen? Did family members hoard their cards for 35 years while everyone else was abusing the cards?
Even if some cards get miscut due to their sheet placement there seems to have to be more than that to why some particular cards can be gem mint in high numbers.
I know this is naive but it just is puzzling how some commoms are bountiful while others are near non-existant.
Any ideas?
FJM
How does this happen? Did family members hoard their cards for 35 years while everyone else was abusing the cards?
Even if some cards get miscut due to their sheet placement there seems to have to be more than that to why some particular cards can be gem mint in high numbers.
I know this is naive but it just is puzzling how some commoms are bountiful while others are near non-existant.
Any ideas?
FJM
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Mark Mulder rookies
Chipper Jones rookies
Orlando Cabrera rookies
Lawrence Taylor
Sam Huff
Lavar Arrington
NY Giants
NY Yankees
NJ Nets
NJ Devils
1950s-1960s Topps NY Giants Team cards
Looking for Topps rookies as well.
References:
GregM13
VintageJeff
I just looked at a 1976 Topps uncut sheet that's on my wall.
I checked the the pop report for the "four" cards that are in the corner area.
If you look at the four cards in the corner - three will be on the outer boarder - just take four cards and stack them 2 on top of 2 - to envision the corner.
Although 3 cards out of the four are on the outside border - ONLY the card that was in the VERY CORNER of the sheet had ZERO 10s. Hank Aaron, John Mayberry, Randy Moffitt and the Checklist card #526.
Now, this is totally unscientific but interesting.
Sample arrangement: lower right corner of sheet
Moose - Niekro
Bradford - Moffitt
Moose, Niekro, Bradford - 1 10 each - Moffitt none.
mike
I think also in the 60s and early 70s a lot of card flipping went on. The way it worked in my neighborhood was we would flip the crappy cards, non-star cards and not pirates or indians or guys we saw on tv on saturdays, and the winner took the nicer cards from the others.
When card holders first came out they were expensive and saved for the better cards, the rest were placed in a 800 ct box. I'm sure some commons got whacked that way. Lots of mine did.
If I have a bunch of 58 topps and it costs $10 or $15 each to grade them, and I only really care about Pirates, I'm not going to spend the $$ to grade a senators common. That's changed with the high prices on low pop commons but it takes a while to catch up.
Just a few possible causes.
Some of it has to do with placement on the sheet, usually the corners of the sheet. But in a lot of other cases that doesn't explain why most cards are fine and others always off center ('72 Schaal, for instance)
The theory that I've heard is that when the individual cards are stripped onto the sheet occasionally one will be stripped in off center, or at a tilt. Then when the sheet is cut everyone is correct, except that particular one. When that card is centered it is because the sheet was not cut properly, resulting in all the cards being off center (ever hear of a vending box that is all OC except for a few cards? Gaspipe would be a good one to ask if this is the case) except the one that was stripped in wrong- that one would now be a nice, centered example.
Now it's time to prove this theory, which is a lot harder. Lets use a card I know is usually found off center- the '54 Red Heart Duke Snider. Based on this assumption, the number of Sniders in PSA 8 should equal the number of any other card in 8oc- except that a lot of times OC cards either won't get submitted, or will get no qualifiers requested. So throw out using a pop report. The only way to really tell if this is the case is to look at an uncut sheet, and that should tell you if a low pop card is truly a condition rarity, or an anomaly that will eventually be corrected thru future submissions.
In the case of '68 Topps there is an enormous amount of vending that has come out in the last few years. I think if you go by % of 9's and 10's it grealy surpasses the next closest year.
Always looking for Topps Salesman Samples, pre '51 unopened packs, E90-2, E91a, N690 Kalamazoo Bats, and T204 Square Frame Ramly's
the uncut sheet theory is an interesting one but i wonder how that translates when they get into packs, vending etc. do you speculate that they were just miscut even slightly enough on a high percentage basis to prevent only a few to get through to high grades.
I took a name from the middle of the sheet:
Woodie Fryman - has 7 10's out of 65 subs for 10.7%.
Randy Moffitt (lower right corner) - NO 10s for 29 subs.
Phil Niekro - has 1 10 out of 116 sub for .9%.
Bob Moose - has 1 10 out of 36 subs for 2.8%.
Buddy Bradford - has 1 10 out of 38 subs for 2.6%.
Babe Ruth (on the middle OUTSIDE Border) - no 10s for 308 subs.
Honus Wagner (to Babe's right on sheet) - 1 10 in 157 subs for .6%.
Ted Williams (to the right of Wagner - same line) - 3 10s in 351 subs for .9%.
Rudy May (middle right OUTSIDE border) - NO 10's.
It would seem that cards on the border are suspect? Tho, only a generalization and unscientific - but again - interesting.
mike
<< <i>stone,
the uncut sheet theory is an interesting one but i wonder how that translates when they get into packs, vending etc. do you speculate that they were just miscut even slightly enough on a high percentage basis to prevent only a few to get through to high grades. >>
I looked at the sheet a little closer and gave my results.
Like I said, tho unscientific and based on just this one sheet - my general thought?
1. *The cards on the VERY corner of the sheet - may get hit the hardest.
2. Any card on the border of the sheet may get hit harder than in the interior of the sheet.
mike
with regard to your question about the proliferation of certain '68's in gem mint 10, Griffins would be correct about the vending cards being easy to acquire and grade....there are certain cards from every year that can be easily graded PSA 10 because so many vending cards were cut exactly the same....this also applys to many low pops where because of the combination of poor sheet and vending cuts, there will always be a scarcity, prime example 1969 Topps #512 Cleon Jones, seen what folks pay for PSA 8's of THAT card?! Crazy, but knowledge is a good thing when making decisions on which to pay more or less....my theory on the overabundance side of things is there would be even more, but if I graded 50 more gem mint 10 Bill Kelso's, what the heck would I do with 'em?
hi jeff,
i guess i sell them for $4 each! i am glad to see you are on this board. you can add a lot of high grade selling experience to the rest of us, but 123 posts in your first month? did you retire?
anyway since the sheet theory seems to be prevalent and plausible how can i view an uncut sheet from say the 1960's or 1970's in baseball or football? (naive question #2)
Are the packs - cut and packaged first?
Is the cutting process different?
My guess is that packs and vending differ NOT in the cutting but the handling - somehow they want the cards to get into wax packs as randomly as possible.
How do they get the cards that are cut and stacked into the vending box vs. the wax? I assume a machine moves the cards along and they are folded by a machine.
Has anyone ever seen this done?
Just curious
mike
<< <i>on the overabundance side of things is there would be even more, but if I graded 50 more gem mint 10 Bill Kelso's, what the heck would I do with 'em?
hi jeff,
i guess i sell them for $4 each! i am glad to see you are on this board. you can add a lot of high grade selling experience to the rest of us, but 123 posts in your first month? did you retire?
anyway since the sheet theory seems to be prevalent and plausible how can i view an uncut sheet from say the 1960's or 1970's in baseball or football? (naive question #2) >>
czar
Only thing I can think of - wait till someone comes on with a sample sheet to discuss their finding.
The 76T is the only full older sheet I own.
mike
I've never seen it done, but it's my impression that vending is a bit different from wax in the cutting and packaging.
BTW, owe you a pm or a call, we'll catch up soon.
Czar- I don't know of any comprehensive sites for uncut sheets. I've got a fair amount of them, but not always full sheets, and certainly not from every year. If I can get them shot I'll post a few. Best bet is to search ebay and save the scans. Bill Henderson (the king of the commons) is also a good source for information, and always very friendly.
Always looking for Topps Salesman Samples, pre '51 unopened packs, E90-2, E91a, N690 Kalamazoo Bats, and T204 Square Frame Ramly's
wish i could retire, this is my second job after the M-F 9-5, but a great source of addt'l income! hopefully someone will put up a sample photo from a Topps sheet, i don't own any....Re: wax vs vending, i believe, and hope someone can correct me if i'm wrong, that Topps offered the sealed material to vendors first each year in order to have the product offered during the baseball season and the vending was distributed later in order for the dealers to build and retail complete sets, so the vending cases would have been numbered say like 1-6, and each case would contain a 1/6 of the entire set in repetitive order, so the dealers could simply piece the set together....of course, a lot of people blew it off, cuz assembling a 792 card set is a lot of work, particularly if you were a dealer and retailing it for 20 bucks, so that would explain why there are still vending boxes with juicy gems out there
forgot to mention also, supposedly the vending boxes were the cards that were rejected from production, so Topps just loaded them in the boxes and shipped them off to dealers very cheap so as to get rid of the extra product not already packaged in wax boxes, this might explain why a lot of the cards found in vending boxes are consistently off-centered, miscut, pd's on surface, etc.....ITZ
Can't remember for sure but a full vending has all the cards - at random - and one would hope to make quite a number of sets - depending on the size.
The breakdown of 1/6 - isn't that the "Cut Card Case" - vending that's more discrete in the number of players in it?
I think vending from the 50s to 70s was specifically for vending machines - then the machines went out of popularity and then the main purpose that Topps did it - is as you said - for the purpose of set builders.
These are just ramblings - just doesn't come up enough for me to hold this info in my head.
mike
correct about the "Cut Card Case" being numbered or i think actually lettered as well....i recently went thru a number of 1976 vending boxes, 9 in all, and found the same run of cards over & over and other cards never appeared, leading me to believe that they were also issued in some kind of discernible sequence
JOhn
HOF SIGNED FOOTBALL RCS
<< <i>I like Griffith's theory about one card being placed on the sheet OC or tilted, and then when the sheet is cut wrong (but at the correct angle for this particular card), the card actually comes out centered. Mike, are there any 76's on that sheet that don't look right (strait, and in the right spot)
JOhn >>
John
No, the cards are PERFECTLY aligned on the sheet - that would stick out.
One would have to know how they cut the cards out - the border has a guide:
it says on the border: Side A and further down the sheet it says: S. Guide Gripper - so the alignment of the sheet/sheets is manual and we know what that means - if the guy had a case of Bud the night before, he unknowingly screwed the Pop Report 40 years later!!!
mike
<< <i>stone,
correct about the "Cut Card Case" being numbered or i think actually lettered as well....i recently went thru a number of 1976 vending boxes, 9 in all, and found the same run of cards over & over and other cards never appeared, leading me to believe that they were also issued in some kind of discernible sequence >>
itz
I have this in my microword file:
All the cut card cases - also known as "bulk vendor cases" - (from the late 60s on up) have contained approxomately 8650 cards. They are set 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.
Hope this helps - but I can't take credit for the accuracy or lack.
mike
<< <i>I've got a theory, but no hard proof yet.
Some of it has to do with placement on the sheet, usually the corners of the sheet. But in a lot of other cases that doesn't explain why most cards are fine and others always off center ('72 Schaal, for instance)
The theory that I've heard is that when the individual cards are stripped onto the sheet occasionally one will be stripped in off center, or at a tilt. Then when the sheet is cut everyone is correct, except that particular one. When that card is centered it is because the sheet was not cut properly, resulting in all the cards being off center (ever hear of a vending box that is all OC except for a few cards? Gaspipe would be a good one to ask if this is the case) except the one that was stripped in wrong- that one would now be a nice, centered example.
Now it's time to prove this theory, which is a lot harder. Lets use a card I know is usually found off center- the '54 Red Heart Duke Snider. Based on this assumption, the number of Sniders in PSA 8 should equal the number of any other card in 8oc- except that a lot of times OC cards either won't get submitted, or will get no qualifiers requested. So throw out using a pop report. The only way to really tell if this is the case is to look at an uncut sheet, and that should tell you if a low pop card is truly a condition rarity, or an anomaly that will eventually be corrected thru future submissions.
In the case of '68 Topps there is an enormous amount of vending that has come out in the last few years. I think if you go by % of 9's and 10's it grealy surpasses the next closest year. >>
Pretty much on target as I see it.
The first spec is centering. Yes some images can be slightly off on the printing plate or as "stripped" on the layout. But the most likely error could be either in the printing process itself or in the cutting process. The image can be shifted horizontally or vertically on the sheet. This is the "S. Guide & Gripper" that Mike refers to on his sheet (It just tells the guy which side of the sheet goes where). This usually would make the whole sheet off center. Lines are provided for cutting, but here I believe there is room to compensate, hence one column or row could be cut wider but others would have to be sacrificed as off center.
I would say the reasons run in this order -
1. centering in the print process
2. placement in wax, cello, vending that effects corners
3. handling by the consumer
Keith
does help, i love finding out the history behind this stuff, if only i had more time to spend on it....now as far as the Cut Cases go, i believe it was possible to know the lettering of the case, it was on there somewhere...in '89 i think we did a deal with a guy bailing out, and it included Cut Cases from '80 Topps w/Henderson & '82 Topps w/Ripken...sorry can't recall the letter, but we emptied them out and came up with piles of those rookies....wish i'd kept some of the Ripken's, there must have been dozens...DOH!!!
<< <i>When that card is centered it is because the sheet was not cut properly, resulting in all the cards being off center (ever hear of a vending box that is all OC except for a few cards? >>
Griffens:
Interesting theory.
1977 Topps Star Wars - "Space Swashbucklers"
<< <i>
<< <i>When that card is centered it is because the sheet was not cut properly, resulting in all the cards being off center (ever hear of a vending box that is all OC except for a few cards? >>
Griffens:
Interesting theory. >>
Colle
I wonder if Anthony meant to say: "when the card [not] centered it is because....
As it goes for an entire box - I bought some boxes of 83T vending and the first two boxes were TOTALLY OC - less very few.
But that's the chance ya take.
mike
With chase cards being scarce, you had to but more packs to find these elusive cards. Just something to kick around. Joe
"I spent 50% of my money on alcohol, women, and gambling. The other half I wasted.
<< <i>Colle
I wonder if Anthony meant to say: "when the card [not] centered it is because.... >>
Nope, I think I actually type it right.
My theory- in regards to cards that are condition scarcities that cannot be attributed to being on the corners (or edge rows) of a sheet, is this:
Occasionally some cards would be stripped onto the big sheet incorrectly- too little margin, or a tilt. When the sheet is lined up and cut correctly 131 cards would be as designed- centered. The one (or however many) that was stripped in incorrectly would be off center or tilted.
However, every once and a while the cutting wouldn't be done correctly, resulting in 131 cards off center and the 1 card being correct. This would explain anomalies like the '62 Landrum, '57 Garcia, '72 Schaal IA, etc, IF they are not on the corners. The only way to really prove this would be to inspect and measure full production sheets.
I have a few sheets ('57's, '62, '66, '71, and a few others) and will compare them to the pop reports and see if this holds up. I can't think of any other reason why a card in the middle of the sheet would be low pop.
Always looking for Topps Salesman Samples, pre '51 unopened packs, E90-2, E91a, N690 Kalamazoo Bats, and T204 Square Frame Ramly's
i would love to see the scan of the 1966 sheet.
if you wouldn't mind my email is gmerz92065@aol.com
thanks
frank