Tampering

DDaniel83

How do you tell if a rack pack has been tampered with? Just bought a few racks on EBay and was wondering if there were some obvious evidences to the trained eye?

gemint

Make sure the pattern of the seams are consistent. I wouldn't call myself a rackpack expert but I understand that the pocket furthest away from the header card is the most likely to be tampered with for obvious reasons. Look for signs of glue along the seam of the outside of the pocket furthest from the header. You can also post scans here and some of the many experts on the forums will offer their opinions.

DDaniel83

Thanks man--- I can't imagine why someone would go to all the trouble to make $20....

grote15

For starters, you can check placement of the cards in each section to see if they match the correct sheet, as Topps produced racks so that cards from certain sheets corresponded with specific sections in the rack. The formula is different for different years and there are some known variations in certain years, but even in those cases, you should never find cards from different cells mixed in same cell. There was a 1975 rack on ebay with Ryan and Rose on top that sold to some unfortunate collector for $700, in which the common cards on bottom of the Ryan and Rose cells were from correct sheets (of course) while Ryan and Rose were in wrong sections. Also for racks produced 1973 and earlier, seams between sections were much wider than those you find in later years' racks. There is also a seller on ebay named bruingirl who is selling a lot of resealed racks from early 80s.

cpamike

Here is a 1968 rack pack and some close ups of the wider seams that Topps used between 1968 and 1973. They switched to narrower seams in 1974 as they decreased the card count in the racks from 54 to 42 cards.