1985 Topps Tony Fernandez Low pop - worth grading?
After doing a recent bunch of pack pulls from 85 Topps rack packs, I pulled two Tony Fernandez cards, #48. After reading PSAs website on the 85 Topps cards, it says that the Tony Fernandez cards are some of the rarest to find due to their location on the uncut sheet and always off center. Now both of the cards I have are fairly centered and in nearly perfect condition. The current population of this card in a PSA 9 is only three total, none higher. You think this card would be worth submitting to possibly try to obtain the first and only gem mint 10? I know it alone isn't a valuable card but maybe it would be to someone trying to complete a near perfect set in the registry? I can post scans of them if people wanna see. For what it's worth, I pulled the 277th gem mint 10 McGwire USA card that PSA graded out of the same pack one of these Fernandez cards came from.
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Hi, I looked at the pop report and saw card #174 (Rick Honeycutt) with a similar number of total submissions 12, to 10 for Fernandez. Certainly Fernandez would be considered every bit the player Honeycutt was. The Honeycutt has 11 of the 12 cards coming back PSA 9 and a single PSA 10. The "10" sold in November of '16 for $149.99. Although that price may have been from someone stretching for a Buy It Now, the fact that there are 11 other 9's compared to the 3 9's for Fernandez would suggest that a 10 would certainly make you some money. Reality though is there are reasons that only 3 of the 10 have even come back as 9. Show a scan for the experts on here to give you some direction. Good luck, Tom
Send them both in on a special. Your cost basis for the card itself is probably nil so your breakeven point is around $10 per card and if you hit a 10 you might have something special on your hands one day. Your risk reward is awesome. Very little downside and probably five fold upside right now. There is a lot of star power in the 1985 Topps set so one day it might get chased more heavily and a card like this could be a diamond in the rough in a 10. Good luck.
When I get home I'll show you guys the scans. As stated they are fresh out of a rack pack and I think the centering for both are within gem mint 10 standards.
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here are the scans. the faint line across his knees on the second one are within the card itself, under the gloss finish. i think as far as centering go, these are pretty on point for cards from this series.
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Hi, i hope your scans cut off part of the borders, because what i can see does not look like typical "10" centering.
It might have. I'll scan them again tomorrow out of the card savers. I'll also have to measure the borders and do the math to see if they fall between 55/45 and 60/40
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I can see the borders have been cut off, but looking closer, the bottom card has some chipping along the lower right border and the fish eye above "SS". Also, the top border is noticeably bigger than the bottom one. The top card might be a bit nicer, but even the top right corner looks like it might have a very slight touch. Might be hard to get 10's
Even if they come back as nines, I would imagine there's still a market for them in the $50 range for people trying to complete a set of mint cards. Being there are only three graded 9's maybe that can help. I planned on sending them in as part of my 15 vouchers when I join the collectors club. I don't think I would keep these though and would rather see them in the hands of someone trying to complete a mint set.
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I did check VCP and saw that a 9 sold in February for under $5.
Ooooof so maybe they won't be worth my time
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here are better scans
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I just don't see either one getting a 10.
Thanks! Maybe I won't submit them then
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The pics of your scans are so large/close, that it's hard to tell for sure the quality. I would submit the one that doesn't have print dots on it & see what happens. I submitted a 1985 Topps All-Star Bob Knepper (killer of a card due to centering) and it came back a 9.
There are some tough 1985 cards out there in 9 or 10 grade; Rick Sutcliffe All-Star is another toughie.
Don't crop the cards when you scan so closely and use a black or dark background to see the contrast of the borders/edges better.
Erik
It's tough, my scanner automatically crops them when it detects dead space. I'll try to submit one and see where it lands.
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$6 isn't a big gamble. As long as you're not subbing tons of these types of commons hoping for a payoff that probably won't work out, it really wouldn't hurt to toss the bottom one of these Tony's (the one w/o the red and white print dots) in with another sub and see what happens.
It came back as an 8
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