Fake Star Co. cards, minor league baseball and SLU cards on eBay

blades3

Everyone should be aware of this. I'm not shamelessly promoting my own blog, but please click into the link in my signature and read it. It deals with a ton of counterfeit Star Co. cards, minor league cards and Starting Lineup cards being counterfeited and sold on eBay. I'm trying to break a story on this and need your help. Thanks in advance. My blog

CDsNuts

There have been a few threads about this, specifically ebay user bigboydsportscards. While I'm not sure the story hasn't already been "broken" (here and the ebay message boards), I do feel a more mainstream avenue would be greatly beneficial to the hobby. Here are a few of the threads:

Thread 1
Thread 2
Thread 3

GoDodgersFan

Great post. I must add a few comments since I am one of the more experienced SLU collectors on this board. From what
I have seen from 'bigboydsportscards' on ebay, it appears only key HOF SLU cards from 1988 and 1989 were
counterfeited. I actually purchased a 1989 Ripken SLU card from 'bigboydsportscards' and these folks did darn good job
in reproducing the card. I knew something was up last year as these cards were being sold on a weekly basis.

Here's a short list for 1988-

1988 Baseball
Clemens
Ripken
Ryan


There are hundreds of these cards out in the market now and I doubt that BGS or PSA can tell the difference. Stories
like this are not good for the hobby, but they must be told.

Tom

blades3

CDsNuts: Thanks for the links to other threads. I've seen the two about Ripken minor league cards because I read this board every day, but missed the thread that mentioned the Star Co. Stockton card. I realize I'm not "breaking" a story, because we broke it two years ago and this board is always up-to-date on what's going on with fakes/counterfeits, but I am trying to get into more mainstream areas, like our magazine and site so people stopped getting ripped off.

GoDodgersFan: Thanks for the comments on the SLU cards. That's the thing about this counterfeiting ring is they are taking cards that people don't see very often, using the photo and redoing the fonts around the rest of the card so they are more difficult to detect. If you just have the fake, it's really tough to tell, but if you have a real one next to it, the differences jump out at you. I also hate writing the article because of the negative hobby news, but if 100 people read it a few may decide not to collect because of it, but I know that if 100 people get ripped off buying a fake, almost all of them will leave the hobby. I'd rather give bad news than see a ton of other collectors get ripped off.

CDsNuts

I agree. I hope the article gets out there. The problem is there aren't any resources that the hobby as a whole looks at every month (like Beckett used to be). An article in Beckett during the 80s-90s would've not only put these guys out of business, but they'd probably be arrested and fined heavily.

I applaud your efforts and I really hope people read the article.

blades3

Update: bigboydsportscards3 have pulled all their scans on Star Co. stuff. If you click into the auction, the image is missing now so they've obviously caught wind of this and consider it enough of a threat that they're getting rid of some evidence. All of the auctions say "Scan will be up shortly or one is available." It'll be interesting to see in the coming weeks if they keep listing them one after another like they have been.

CDsNuts

That's truly awesome. By the way, your blog link doesn't work.

blades3

Our site was down for a bit. The link works now - sorry about that

CDsNuts

Nice article. Feel free to use this scan of my legit Stockton Star that I bought in the early 90s for comparison:

ripkenintheminors

Good stuff. Feel free to use any of the information on my site that can be used to help the cause.

blades3

Thanks for the scan on the Stockton. I didn't have a good scan of a real one so this helps.

Thanks ripkenintheminors also. I've been on your site and it's really impressive. I viewed the other ripken minor league fake threads on here and looked at it then. thanks for the help.