Unfortunately PSA Mis-identifies a lot of Minor League cards

MinorLeaguer

No biggie but I sent a polite heads-up ebay message to probstein as they have an auction with a PSA flip saying 1986 that I believe is 1988 and is a PSA error. Unfortunately I have ran into many errors with PSA while grading minor league cards identifying them incorrectly. One of the errors that makes me cringe is I have is a nice 1986 West Palm Beach Expos Randy Johnson PSA 9, I have to send back to PSA because PSA labelled it as Phoenix Firebirds (a different Randy Johnson) although it is obviously big unit in an Expos uni and I listed it as West Palm Beach on the sub form. Hope they dont damage it when they crack it out to fix their error when i send it back. Here is the Probstein auction: 1986 or 1988 Schilling? If someone has regular dealings with Rick, please let him know as well. Just don't want anyone thinking they are bidding on a PSA 10 first card of Schilling when it is actually his 3rd year of minor league cards for him. He was on Elmira in 1986 and has a tough Procards card from 1986 on that team. Baseball encyclopedia says Curt wasn't on New Britain until 1988 and the probstein card style looks like all other 1988 Procards I have. Worse for PSA, doesnt look like a one-off error. Looks like they graded many of these incorrectly in the pop report. They graded 26 as 1986 and 35 as 1988 - both with the same card number. I mention to Rick to look for a copyright date on the back, if any, to help him be sure. If you are a collector for minor league cards, know the style for each year to correctly identify the year. Procards and TCMA each typically stuck to one style across all minor league team sets each year. Many minor league cards on ebay are listed with incorrect years or incorrectly state "first-card" probably because the seller simply may not know that an earlier card exists. A good example may be 1979 Rickey Henderson when there is a 1977. Or 1981 TCMA Rochester Ripken and a 1981 TCMA Sandberg when they both have tough cards from 1980. Food for thought and happy collecting!

llafoe

Great post!

jradke4

PSA spec department and QC screw up a lot of things. its not just minor league cards. they cant even figure out cards when you send in a print out from the beckett website of what the card is. for a CO that wants to claim they are the best they need to upgrade a few departmets first.

dennis07

Probstein is away until the 11th.