1988 Donruss Puckett

ArmourGuy

Another unusual insert I'd like to bring up for your thoughts this AM. This is a 1988 Donruss Puckett. If you check you'll see this is not the normal pose. Look at card reverse and see there is no card number in the baseball on top. This was issued only in selected blister packs that year and had to be hand cut. Since I cannot find it listed in the Std CAtalog (2006 Ed) I assume PSA will not grade it. Any thoughts on rarity ??

bobsbbcards

That's very cool. Why did it have to be hand cut? Was it part of the packaging for the blister pack?

HoofHearted

Hi, AGuy,

I bought a copy of this card from Tuff Cards. On their site they list this card as a "1988 Donruss Box Proof card".

Nice card! Where did you find this one?? You sure do a lot of "off-road" collecting. Keep up the good work!

brumbach

I think that PSA has graded these in the past. I have a few that I picked up back in 1988 and I posted them on the Sports Card Forum last year asking about them. Someone responded and had one graded by PSA, but I do not know if they still do.

ArmourGuy

thanks for the info guys.

yes it was part of the cardboard blisterpack so it had to be cut from this "packaging" just like the box cards of the late eighties.

brumbach

Even though the Pucketts were supposedly cut from rack pack blister packs or whatever, every one that I have seen are perfectly cut. I have some old Topps, Drakes, and 1987 Donruss box bottoms that I hand cut myself personally as best as I could back in the day that look pretty sad now. I find it hard to believe that there were so many kids or even adults that could cut these so well back in 1988 or even today.

Back in the late 80's or early 90's someone sent in a Reader's Write to Beckett or Baseball Cards Magazine asking about these and they recieved a pretty vague answere then. Up to this day all I have heard have similarly vague answers about these cards. I wish that the real story about them would come out at some point. I feel like we have more information about some regional pre-war issues or even some from the 50's than we have about some put out by one of the Big Three in 1988, and for a long-time collector such as myself (been collecting full-time since 1984) it is frustrating to say the least.

ArmourGuy

Brumbach,

I think I and a lotof others put a lot of stuff away and are coming back to it 20, years later. I for 1 am using a paper cutter at work to get the edges just right.

I dont think there is alot of stuff uncut around from the 60's though. You ever see any PSA graded Jellos or Posts - very rare because of the bad cutting. Bazookas must have been better centered on the box cause there are a lot more of them graded. The con artists out there have tried to buy up the vg 1960 "box bottom" cards and recut them, but they cannot get these cut outside the lines and thus these cards cannort get past PSA.

brumbach

I have 4 of the Pucketts. I got three of them together in a trade at Carlisle Summer '88, a big car show/flea market near Gettysburg and Harrisburg PA for those unfamiliar. I found the fourth one in a quarter bin at the Tacony Palmyra Flea Market (in South Jersey, across the river from Philly) back in 1991-1993 probably. I understand what you are saying and agree about the paper cutters, I hadn't considered that in my earlier post. As a matter of fact, I was near-hammered last night when I made that post, it actually looks pretty good considering my condition at the time!