1985 Topps Vending Box BBCE. Thoughts please.
Elynn
Posts: 137 ✭✭
These are the only six card I received in this box except for the common cards.
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Elynn
Posts: 137 ✭✭
Comments
There were also 516 cards in the box
Crappiest "luck of the draw" or that fasc wasn't so sealed after all.
Very frustrating. I have opened around 40 or 50 of these and never close to this. They were definitely searched.
Hiya Elynn
Did you happen to take a pic of the box before pulling them out?
Did it look suspicious?
I've had interesting collation on vending but nothing that poor.
Sorry to see this.
No picture before. I purchased two boxes from the individual and I went ahead and open the second one with about the same results. I trust the seller but believe that somehow the case was re-sealed
Sorry to see that. In my experience they won't label FASC unless they pop the case. I think this was just horrendously bad luck. Also, not uncommon to have more than 500. Just my .02
I purchased 2 boxes and went ahead and opened 2nd (I had no intention on opening prior to 1st box results) This is the second box results!
ouch
Any chance the BBCE label was faked or redone?
I can't see Steve getting a case wrong, but I guess he did misjudge cellos for a while so there could be forgeries out there. I think this should be shown to him if for anything to make him aware of the possibility.
You should of at least pulled a Clemens and/or Pucket from the two vending boxes and a lot more star power. Not sure about recourse. Sorry to see this.
Did you try contacting Steve at all to get his opinion?
If not then I think you should have before assuming he missed a resealed case. Not buying that one.
Resealing a case is easy if it wasn't previously stapled but glued. When you "reopen" it it would be noticeable it had been resealed.
I've opened numerous vending boxes from cases I've had, and some boxes I've open had horrible collation, while some had monster hits in them. From the same case.
If you haven't contacted Steve before posting here, that is wrong. He is easily one of the more approachable dealers in the hobby, and usually rectifies situations.
They were purchased off EBay
They were still authenticated by BBCE.
I am the seller of the 2 boxes. I had the sealed case authenticated by Steve myself. I went ahead and opened one of the boxes this evening...and my results were much better. Here is the pic of the box:
I trust you Joe. Just wondering if case was resealed at some point.
Popcorn girl likely to show here...
Hard to give any opinion when you only show the aftermath esp. when 2 items were involved.
Is the seller offering more of these vending boxes?
BBCEXs opinion has been pretty solid and I doubt he missed this error. But maybe look at the seller first?
IMO, boxes look searched. Even the good box results seem to be missing a lot. 60% of the star power is in the subsets. No Puckett, Gooden, Clemens, Eric Davis, Ryan, Hershiser, Rose, Mattingly, Boggs, Strawberry, Reggie Jackson, Winfield, Ripken, Brett, Yount, Henderson, Schmidt, Gary Carter, Carlton, Seaver, Molitor, Eddie Murray, Joe Carter, Gwynn, and McGee.
In comparison, the stars shown above are Sutter, Smith, Fingers, McGwire, Fisk, and Sandberg.
Around 63% of the star cards should be in each box. This box contained around 19%. I know my lists aren't perfect, but it appears to raise a red flag.
My guess is that this case may have been resealed around 1986, before McGwire made it big. Just my thoughts.
Don
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I agree just too much missing in the 3 boxes
I don't think the seller of this has done anything nefarious, but I could be wrong. I think his box break would have been higher stuffed with core cards had he been involved in some way. If anything, he helped with a 3rd data point against the boxes being factory.
In either case, it is alarming that this case passed BBCE especially since the seller had the boxes wrapped himself. That means it looked legit to him to purchase it as well. Furthermore, I would think that beyond the case seal, BBCE at least glanced at the individual vending boxes so that means the case passed with flying colors and the vending boxes were in at least believable shape.
Vending is a tremendous risk as it is, but this could threaten the assurance of FASC vending and possibly FASC altogether could take a hit by this. Wax packs sealed with uniformity to the packs per box could prove to be a stronger assumption of the packs being from an untouched box and box from a sealed case.
This happened to me around 2002. I bought a supposed factory sealed case of 85 Topps vending from DACW. There was no evidence of resealing on the case and the factory pattern looked perfect. I opened a few boxes to make sure it was legit and well lets just say I ended up opening all the boxes because it was worthless. All stars were there but not one of the big rookies. $1500 down the drain. I was going to complain to them but never did because how could I prove that I was telling the truth. It does happen and you have to be very careful with vending cases that have been passed through many hands over the years.
There is no way this case was opened and resealed after it left the Topps factory. See below....the original shipping address stamp is there. There was no glue used to seal this case...only the large staples that Topps sometimes used. You can see the staples and staple holes on the bottom of the case are clearly original and untouched.....all of the holes you see on the top had the same staples and the holes looked exactly like those untouched, before I sent it to Steve. The tape mark you see was from the tape Steve put on it to keep the top closed when he shipped it,
Also, In the box I opened, there were more minor stars I did not show (Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Willie McGee) who would have been bigger stars back in 1985/86. I also pulled a Shawon Dunston rookie, which I remember was a popular top rookie card back in 1985/86.
I have opened a couple cases of these over the past 2 years and always get
50-75% of the 30 stars in that's set base cards per box. I received not 1 of those base cards in 2 boxes and you received 2. In 1500 cards or 3 vending boxes we opened together we got 2 stars base cards out of 1500. The chances are in the millions.
I've opened some vending in my day and I would chalk this up to luck of the draw. It happens.
I agree with Elynn's math. It's easy to chalk things up to being chalked up but you can't get around the math.
Arthur
Somethings amiss here. I don't see one picture of an open vending box showing the pre-packed cards in the box. Seems if your going to throw someone under the bus, at least give the most important evidence.
Collecting Unopened from '72-'83; mostly BBCE certified boxes/cases/racks.
Prefer to buy in bulk.
Not much better.
I would like to see a pic of one of the boxes after removing shrink wrap and freshly opened.
My take?
If one searches these? It's practically impossible to put it back together like it looks fresh from the factory from my view.
But, I never rule out someone doing a top notch job of searching and resealing.
When 90L was hot - I found it amazing that people would take the time to carefully open those mylar packs and reseal them - it would be easier and quicker just to work an extra shift and buy a few boxes and keep them.
Although RookieWax, sorry, I don't know your name, did pull a McGwire rookie it looks to be badly off centered. I'm not sure to make of the situation here but it does appear that these boxes were searched.
James
That's the puzzling part here. It appears that Steve probably opened the boxes and checked the look of the cards in at least some of the boxes. So, while it certainly looks as though these were searched, you also have the premiere expert in the business verifying they weren't searched.
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While I analyzed the third box, and it definitely had a poor showing, the first two are much worse. In the first two boxes, there were a total of two base star cards: Joe Carter and Ozzie Smith. In two boxes, you should have averaged 1.25 of every card. So, you should have received one of each star card and doubles on 25% of them. Not only were they picked through, but in my opinion, they were extremely thoroughly picked through.
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Successful transactions on the BST boards with rtimmer, coincoins, gerard, tincup, tjm965, MMR, mission16, dirtygoldman, AUandAG, deadmunny, thedutymon, leadoff4, Kid4HOF03, BRI2327, colebear, mcholke, rpcolettrane, rockdjrw, publius, quik, kalinefan, Allen, JackWESQ, CON40, Griffeyfan2430, blue227, Tiggs2012, ndleo, CDsNuts, ve3rules, doh, MurphDawg, tennessebanker, and gene1978.
Theres a lot of chatter on this, but still no photo. We all know the math and odds, but either give us a photo of an open vending box showing the intact cards, or I'm filing this thread in my unicorn folder.
Collecting Unopened from '72-'83; mostly BBCE certified boxes/cases/racks.
Prefer to buy in bulk.
Math > photo
I don’t think that something highly unlikely happening proves that the boxes are searched. Personally it would take another bit of evidence along with this to get me thinking that something nefarious has occurred here.
ETA: I know this is apples to oranges but back in about 2012 when I could afford it, I purchased 12 vending boxes of ‘81 Topps Football from Steve over a period of 18 months. The ‘81 Topps Football set is 528 cards, so in theory, odds are very likely that you'd get one of each card in the set in each box. Know how many Montana’s I have from those 12? A 6 pack... and I didn’t think for one second anything suspicious had happened with those boxes coming from where they did. Now did about the 10th of those boxes after being cherry picked, end up being hurled at my heavy front door with all the might I could muster? Yes... but I chalked it up to bad luck. As I said, different situation here, because the boxes have touched someone else’s hands, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that Captain NNOF Rookie Wax hasn’t much need for scamming a couple of ‘85 vendings.
BS>math>photo
Collecting Unopened from '72-'83; mostly BBCE certified boxes/cases/racks.
Prefer to buy in bulk.
There are clearly two issues with all of the posts in this thread.
With such wacky collation, it clearly was not packaged in typical fashion....and there would have been no guarantees by Topps that their vending was all collated and packed in the same way.
It was likely packed by hand with leftover inventory using random leftover vending boxes. I say this because when I looked through the boxes this morning, they all have varying wear...some have small tears on the top and bottom of the box....some have a lot of edge and corner wear, while others do not. You can tell that some boxes are bursting out on the side, so probably have quite a bit more than 500 cards. The box I opened was as well...so much so, the box was split on opposite corners. One box has a heavy crease all the way across the top.
Obviously, none of this was a concern for Steve because the case staple seals were clearly 100% original and untouched. If they were not, I would have requested a return through Ebay after I bought it this past summer (since the staples were the only thing holding it together-no glue)....and Steve certainly wouldn't have authenticated the boxes. He obviously felt that although strange, the boxes were in their original factory state.
Funny, that after I posted pictures of the staple seals on the bottom of the case and stated those are clearly original and couldn't have been replicated, nobody debated that. The staples and staple holes in the top of the case looked exactly the same. Anybody who has tried to remove those staples, knows that it is quite the job.. Even if you cut the top of the staple into several pieces, the ends of the staples do not come out without repeated yanking, pulling and twisting. The holes end up mangled and looking like they do in the picture I posted of the top of the case.
So, unless this thread is going to move towards accusing me of somehow removing Steve's cello wrapping, beating up some boxes, stuffing extra cards into some of them, and then putting the pieces of cellophane all back together...there is nothing left to debate here.
I believe you Joe. I do not think you did anything wrong or BBCE. All I'm saying is in my experience with these vending boxes between us on 3 boxes we received only 3 or 4 base cards out of 1500. It could be just luck of draw.
It's not an either or. No one here is questioning Steve. Steve is the best at what he does and there's nobody else I'd want more authenticating my unopen product. But he's not infallible and this is just an '85 vending case. It's not like he went all NCIS on it. I realize it's extremely important to the person that's receiving it but to Steve it's got to be pretty ho hum. All the staples looked right so what else do you want the guy to do? I'm sure he okayed the case by the staples and then someone else got the job of sealing each individual box inside.
As Elynn stated, the odds on all of those cards not showing up in three boxes is astronomical. It's not a case of "well, it's pretty rare but hey, rare stuff happens all the time so chalk this up to a crazy event." It's more "OJ did it" odds.
I do find it weird that beat up, broken, split boxes in a factory sealed vending box gets interpreted as "packed by hand with leftover inventory" (?) instead of perhaps these boxes weren't untouched from the factory.
RookieWax, I've spent a lot of time away from CU so I'm sure I've missed a lot. The only thing I remember about you is that you were trying to find a way to sell your 1990 Topps wax that you guaranteed contained Frank Thomas NNOF cards.
Arthur
It wasn't just the beaten up boxes...it was the combination of that, the unusual collation, and the fact there weren't 500 cards in any of the 3 boxes that were opened. Two of them had a lot more. If somebody were just stuffing the boxes until they looked completely full....you would expect that to happen.
And, oh, you bet I still do have a plan for selling those 1990 Topps error packs
...but that will wait until I retire from my teaching job in a few years.
Can't the same argument be made for resealed boxes? Just someone restuffing the boxes? Also, if they looked restuffed, I'm assuming they didn't look like normal vending boxes with the even portioned sections switching off? It's just weird that there are all these things that most would look at as clues of nefarious doings and for some reason your first thought is that the factory packed them by hand with extra inventory.
And thanks for being a teacher. That's a thankless, underpaid job.
Arthur